In a patriarchal society, there are dominant ideas about the feminine and masculine. This would however vary across different sections of society but dominant ideas of the masculine as macho and aggressive often define gender representations in films such as those produced by Bollywood. One seeks to show this through two films – deducing male domination, sexism and misogyny.
Biwi No.1 (1999)
Biwi Number One, a David Dhawan film was released in 1999. It is a good example of how misogyny works. Prem and Pooja (Salman Khan and Karishma Kapoor) are shown as leading a life of wealth and happiness, along with their two adorable little kids and mother (Himani Shivpuri). Then Roopali (Sushmita Sen) enters Prem´s life as an advertising agency´s model. In time, Prem moves leaves his own house to move in with Roopali. The film suddenly comes to an end, with the male protagonist realizing his fault and returning to his wife. Comedy and entertainment act as the pivotal focus in Biwi No. 1. This is the intended objective of the film- to make the audience laugh. In the course of all the fun and humour, there is another script in action. Like in many such family movies – the maltreatment of women gets normalized and male adultery is naturalized. The idea that women can be treated shabbily is not such a big deal.
In this case, Pooja’s character of Biwi No. 1 revolves around Prem. Later in the film, one sees Pooja moulding herself according to the whims and wishes of her husband Prem, so that she can get her husband back. Being a movie that can be slotted into the family-comedy category, it rests on jokes for providing comic relief to the target audience. Most of these jokes are sexist and derogatory to women. Toxic masculine characteristics are conveyed in a fashion that it all looks harmless. It shows callous ignorance of ideas such as mutual respect for partners. It appears oblivious to the damage that such ideas of masculinity can inflict on others.
Also, Biwi No. 1 portrayed a sharp distinction between Pooja and Roopali’s characterisation. The ideal women as depicted in Biwi No. 1 are often the ones who are meek, submissive and sacrificing just like Pooja and are even considered to be like Hindu goddesses. Roopali in contrast is evil, the “bad character” shown at a nightclub and busy in her business and professional life. She is needlessly villainized in the movie. Salman’s kids and mother, under the direction of Karishma Kapoor (Pooja) frame Sushmita with false allegations, owing to which Salman breaks up with her. The message is clear. No matter how wrong the husband is, our society will always blame the ‘other woman’, instead of their male counterparts.
While the story unfolds, Pooja being a Biwi No. 1 creates an alibi, wears short clothes and sends her kids and mother-in-law to live with Prem and Rupali. This helps Prem to realize that modern women are just good to look at and ‘to have some fun once in a while’, but not to spend life with. The phrase ‘having fun once in a while’ not only leads to the conceptions of hegemonic toxic masculinity alone but blatant objectification of women. Pooja understands that it’s important for her to be ‘sanskari’ and modern for Prem simultaneously, which reduces women’s social status to nothing but the objects of pleasure and gratification, devoid of thought and feeling.
Kabir Singh (2019)
Films seem to be rarely impartial in their depiction of any issue. But movies like Kabir Singh (2019) adversely overestimate men who seem to be aggressive, rowdy and ‘masculine’. Kabir Singh depicts misogyny, just like many other Bollywood movies. But the chief problem is that Kabir Singh portrays this misogynist ‘angromance’ (angry romance) with a positivist undertone.
Kabir Singh voices the story of a successful, hyper-sexualised dominant male figure, who becomes obsessed with a quiet, submissive girl, Preeti. She seems to attract his attention (as Kabir puts it) by simply breathing. These are the instances, which helped me to develop my argument even further, especially in accordance with ‘consent’. Consent plays a pivotal role in social relationships by eliminating the entitlement that one partner might feel over the other. Consensual relationships make one realize that neither one’s body nor one’s sexuality belongs to someone else. But, here in Kabir Singh, the scenario was entirely the opposite. There are more such instances as portrayed in the film, which characterize female subjugation. Some of them are when Kabir rushes into Preeti’s classroom time and again, Kabir orders her to sit in the front row and decides who she should be friends with such that she can perform better academically, and he starts taking her away from her classes to lend her “private tuitions” on a field.
While the film sets in motion, Kabir wakes up the next day obsessing about her diet, her sleep, the drape of her chunni, and the boys who might be looking at her. Ironically such a relentless investigation portrayed his ‘intense’ love for her. This eventually draws on specific concepts of hegemonic masculinity, according to which men are required to keep an eye on their female counterparts or to control them as always. And, such a kind of toxic masculinity conceptualizes “angromance” on the Hindi silver screens.
Also, Kabir is seen ‘issuing a firman’ in front of the whole new batch such that, nobody dares to talk with Preeti or come near her since she has become ‘Kabir Sir’s interest’ from now onwards. The fact that he kisses her on the cheek on the very first day they met, again without consent, and the way Kabir jumps off to Preeti for not letting her talk with any of her friends portrays a lead towards self-destruction, and a bordering on masochism. This gets, even more, worse, when Kabir starts using derogatory remarks to some of her friends, calling them ‘fat chicks’. Hence, leaving aside the misogynist, toxic, dominant and masculine aspects of Kabir’s character, he eventually turns out to be a body shamer, as well.
But paradoxically Preeti seems to be digging into this kind of abusive behaviour. This is because, after a few of those interactions Preeti was shown smiling secretively to herself every time Kabir used to show up. And, despite recognizing how problematic his actions were, the audience could observe the command he had over his life. He takes what he wants.
This, in turn, leads to a dichotomy between one chunk of the audience rightfully criticizing Kabir Singh as a prime example of hegemonic toxic masculinity, and another chunk of the audience urging not to over-intellectualise a movie. But it should be noted that filmmaking is a very precise and expensive science. Each of these depictions is carefully scrutinized and cynically selected, which are portrayed in the movie. And if Bollywood being one of the most potent film industries amid the rest, validates such angromance and masculine domination, then our society will keep on glamorizing its fallacious behaviour for time immemorial.
The power differences between Kabir and Preeti pose to be evident and uncomfortably obvious since Kabir is a senior boy, scary, aggressive and masculine whereas Preeti, a junior girl, is scared, quiet and hesitant. Dialogues such as filmi language main baat kiya na, ek kaan ke niche bajaaonga and yeh koi aisa waisa course nahi hai Preeti, this is MBBS characterize some deliberate harassment in the name of a loving relationship. Later in a scene, Kabir slaps Preeti lending her an ultimatum of six hours to convince her parents in favour of their relationship. But surprisingly she doesn’t seem to care that she was physically assaulted by her boyfriend. Instead, Preeti calls her family and informs them that they have slept together innumerable times, as if ‘sleeping together’ would provide them with a clean chit to their relationship. For me as an audience, it was hard to measure Preeti’s logic.
Kabir Singh instils a conception in our minds as if a “masculine” man is supposed to make the important decisions for his female counterpart and protect her from any kind of maltreatment, even if that refers to baring her of her agency to consent. This leads us to a chief question – ‘are we watching a film of the 2000s which glorifies non-consensual relationships and characterizes toxic masculinity?’ And unfortunately, the answer to this question is a resonant yes. That’s because the film earned 100 crore rupees at the Box office within a mere timespan of five days only.
In this article, I have observed how women in movies like Biwi no. 1 and Kabir Singh are treated as nothing but mere love interests for the hero.
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Oishika Ghosh is a Masters student of Sociology at Jadavpur University, Kolkata.
Well curated piece of writing.👍