{"id":15722,"date":"2018-12-03T09:30:54","date_gmt":"2018-12-03T04:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak?p=15722"},"modified":"2018-12-04T15:40:36","modified_gmt":"2018-12-04T10:10:36","slug":"growing-up-with-bollywood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/growing-up-with-bollywood\/","title":{"rendered":"Growing Up With Bollywood"},"content":{"rendered":"

I grew up during the 80s and 90s and that meant that I had access to very limited TV programs. My TV-viewing life began with only one national TV channel \u2013 Doordarshan or DD, and later DD 2. There are so many options today and I don\u2019t know what to settle on and therefore, \u201cchannel-surfing\u201d is my best friend, mostly when I see an ad beginning to play on the current channel I am watching. The beauty of the remote control and choices! Of course, now that there are the options of Netflix, and Prime Video, I can skip an ad altogether. Back then, while growing up, I did not have much of a choice so I ended up watching all the ads between the shows. These were ads about hair oils that showed that \u2018beautiful and desirable\u2019 women had to have long hair, or the \u2018good woman\u2019 had to be an intelligent\/wise cook so that when her son, husband or family members returned home she provided them with healthy and tasty food. The ads on washing powders were on quite similar lines too. Not that they have changed entirely, but there are some breaths of fresh air, remember the Havell\u2019s ads? Here\u2019s one \u2013 The Coffee Maker<\/a> to jog your memory.<\/p>\n

While growing up, for a long time I too bought into these notions of beauty, and of the good girl\/woman. Most of the movies that I watched on TV were on Sundays and showed \u2018evil mothers-in-law\u2019 or \u2018vamps\u2019 played by Lalita Pawar, Shashikala, Bindu, and Helen to name a few. They added to my notions of who the undesirable and \u2018bad women\u2019 were. Those who were conniving, hypocritical, dressed \u2018provocatively\u2019, smoked, drank, were courtesans, bar dancers etc. They were always a member of some \u2018notorious gang\u2019, the love interest of the drug-lord, or entertained the \u2018negative\u2019 characters in the movies, and were portrayed as sexual beings \u2013 because they would willingly or openly sit closer to the male characters on screen (Hina Kausar as the courtesan in the song Dil to Deten Nahi, <\/em>in\u00a0Kaalia, 1981<\/em>), or after engaging in sex with their lover would rollover and light a cigarette (Sunita played by Parveen Babi in the movie, Shaan<\/em>, 1980).<\/p>\n

Enter the \u2018good woman\u2019, often the female protagonist, the wronged widow, dedicated mother etc. \u2013 the one who you can take home to your family, and want to marry \u2013 the complete opposite. She is demure, mostly \u2018fully-clothed\u2019, abhors \u2018bad behaviour\u2019, and is very shy about expressing her sexual desires etc. Similarly, for the \u2018evil\u2019 mothers\/daughters-in-law who were portrayed as wicked and uncaring because they were either \u2018selfish\u2019, opinionated, wanted to spend time with their friends instead of taking care of the family, or were too focussed on running their business \u2013 translated: if you are independent, have agency, express your opinions and so on, you are selfish, and not a \u2018good woman\u2019 thus, not desirable or \u2018marriage-material\u2019. This also meant that you had to be \u2018tamed\u2019, made into that \u2018good, desirable, demure, ‘sati-savitri<\/em>\u2019 who knew her place: at the feet of her husband of course! You can imagine what that did to me while growing up and seeing any girl talking to a boy, or even glance at one, or later when friends asked me to go for drinks with them, or a night-out in the town! Thankfully, some of those perceptions have changed and it\u2019s in the past, but it was not easy.<\/p>\n

These notions also added to the shame and guilt about my body \u2013 how to dress \u2018decently\u2019, attracting too much or the \u2018wrong-kind\u2019 of attention, sexual harassment, abuse and\/ or violence being my fault for dressing a certain way, being \u2018too open\u2019 etc. I not only took the burden of self-blame of course, but I also viewed other women\/girls in the same light! Add to these, the fears\/ concerns of what my parents, grandparents and concerned relatives used to ask, \u201cWhat will the neighbours think?\u201d This was a concern if or when I stayed out late, returned home with boys, or wore \u2018short\u2019 clothes. I would get to hear this all the more after I began shedding my inhibitions and began going out with friends, stayed out late, and\/or dressed \u2018inappropriately\u2019. It took me some time to realise that the neighbours and their relatives perhaps didn\u2019t care much, but were living under the same fears as I was socialised into, or even maybe just busy living their own lives. Yes, there were occasional curious, and accusatory glances from a few neighbours, but by this time my skin was growing thick, and I was learning to ignore them or glance back with a \u2018none-of-your-business\u2019 look.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the film stereotypes were also true for the \u2018villains\u2019 often played by Amrish Puri, Prem Chopra, Amjad Khan etc. They were portrayed as openly sexual \u2013 visiting bars, enjoying mujras<\/em>, drinking themselves silly among other things and then running drug cartels on the side.<\/p>\n

Clearly, people who expressed any kind of sexual desires openly were seen as vamps and villains, and the ones who were the \u2018good\u2019 people did not express non-love related sexual desires, and followed a natural progression to marriage and raising a happy family \u2013 that lived happily ever after!<\/p>\n

Retrospectively, I also noticed a critical thread in all of these movies: they were primarily heteronormative and anyone deviating from these norms were mostly either not represented, or shown as characters that were \u2018funny\u2019 or \u2018ridiculous\u2019 \u2013 effeminate characteristics in male-bodied actors, or men with \u2018feminine\u2019 make-up \u2013 lipstick, ear rings, eye-shadow etc.<\/p>\n

Movies today seem to have taken a turn with some of these representations, especially those of the villains, vamps, \u2018heroes\u2019, and \u2018heroines\u2019. Characters nowadays seem to have more layers than one; circumstances seem to influence their actions which means that they can have flashes of \u2018goodness\u2019 instead of being linearly \u2018negative\u2019 since birth. Which means, that nice people can also become nasty and vice-versa (closer to real-life, I\u2019d say!) and there are possibilities of people having non-heterosexual identities, and\/or relationships on screen (Margarita with a Straw<\/em>), and couples with children who are in their late 20\u2019s to early 30\u2019s having sexual desires and engaging in sex (Badhaai Ho<\/em>). But that does not necessarily mean that the male protagonist is not stalking, or harassing the female protagonist to \u2018woo\u2019 them even today (lyrics to the song \u2018Tu mere agal bagal hai<\/em>\u2019 from Phata Poster Nikla Hero<\/em>, 2013).<\/p>\n

It is not easy to say whether pop culture is responsible for shaping us, our notions, and\/or perceptions, or if it is merely representative. I do remember watching some of these movies, ads etc, while growing up and not entirely relating to them. However, there were a few movies, books, magazines which reinforced stereotypes be they about gender and\/or sexuality, and I found comfort in them because they made me feel like I belonged, while others encouraged me to challenge some of these norms, and stereotypes. Is it possible that if there is only one kind of narrative in pop culture that it will tend to frame our notions, perceptions, and mindsets? I believe that while pop culture will continue to exist in the mainstream, it also provides us the scope to create alternative narratives and\/ or counter-narratives that question, challenge and unpack the existing stereotypes and norms, muddy the waters, and re-imagine other possibilities of being that don\u2019t limit people to boxes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While pop culture will continue to exist in the mainstream, it also provides us the scope to create alternative narratives and\/ or counter-narratives that question, challenge and unpack the existing stereotypes and norms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":284,"featured_media":15731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,1882,8],"tags":[28,1891,1809,1665,1079,579,25],"class_list":{"0":"post-15722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-categories","8":"category-popular-culture-and-sexuality","9":"category-voices","10":"tag-bollywood","11":"tag-heterosexuality","12":"tag-hindi-films","13":"tag-popular-culture","14":"tag-representation","15":"tag-sexism","16":"tag-sexualities"},"menu_order":651,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/284"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15722"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15798,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15722\/revisions\/15798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}