Her-Story: Three Tests to Find out If Movies Do Justice to Women
It’s time to take Bollywood to task.
We are all made of stories.
Sure, bones and muscles and sinew are involved and so is blood, mucus and water, but, at the end of the day, our identity is composed of stories. Whether it is the honey-hued memories of childhood or grand narratives of civilisation, the black chaos of dreams or the structural precision of jokes – stories surround us, constitute us, help us make sense of things.
Which is why it is infuriating when the most popular and far-reaching stories available to us – movies – butcher the narratives of one-half of the world’s population.
Sexism and Bollywood are old bedfellows. The bias is both pervasive and insidious, so much so that we do not always realise when we are being had. In the interest of developing a more nuanced relationship with movies and countering prejudice, therefore, here are three simple tests.
Named after American cartoonist Alison Bechdel in whose comic it first made its appearance, the Bechdel test is a yardstick that a shocking number of movies fail. Movies like Lagaan, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Bajirao Mastani, Dabangg, Fitoor, PK, Singham Returns, Holiday etc., feature either no female conversations or the kind that revolves around men, reinforcing the stereotype that any value a woman might have lies in her relationship with the men in her life.
This test is not a fail-safe measure of a film’s commitment to its female characters, however. Movies like Piku, NH10 andQueen fail the test since they focus on individual female protagonists but are still nuanced (and unusual) portrayals of femininity in how they deal with a woman’s familial obligations and frustrated desires. The Bechdel Test, therefore, is only meant to serve as a very loose measure of a film’s treatment of female characters.
These films are insulting (and borderline misogynistic) in their fetishistic treatment of the female character. The actress’s ability to titillate the largely male, heterosexual audience is central to her characterisation, story arc be damned. At the altar of revealing clothes & “item numbers,” humanising traits of kindness, humour, ambition, drive are sacrificed. Fetishistic close-ups, dolled up costumes & minimal screen presence are dead giveaways of how dispensable these scripts consider women to be. Offenders include Kick, Singh Is Kingg, Dhoom 3, Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, Gabbar is Back etc.
Movies which fall under this category operate under the assumption that men are the primary movers and shakers of the world and any story worth telling will necessarily be about them. They treat female characters like seasoning on a dish, adding them to either ‘spice up’ the narrative with sexual allure or play the soft, romantic interest. Offenders include Dus, Shootout at Lokhandwala, Shootout at Wadala, Fukrey, Golmaal, Maqbool, Happy New Year, Chocolate, D Company etc.
None of these tests is supposed to be a definitive judgment on the quality of a film since there are so many other factors that determine our movie experience – the soundtrack, costume, editing, performances, personal resonances etc.
What these tests are meant to do is serve as a reminder of how frighteningly easy it is to dismiss the complex socio-psycho-drama of one-half of the world’s population.
We hope you’ll remember us at the movies.
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