Women in cinema take progressive route

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Post the brutal Delhi gangrape, questions are being raised about the representation of women in films. While some are criticising Bollywood for objectifying women, others are accusing filmmakers of stereotyping. Actress Simi Garewal rues that Bollywood still perpetuates values and customs that should have been buried long ago. She adds that Bollywood films don’t show progressive women. “Even now in most Hindi films if a woman is intelligent and has a career or ambitions, she will have to pay a price,” she said while delivering the Satyajit Ray Memorial Lecture recently.
While cinema has traditionally shown women as vulnerable or a ‘heroine’ who’s just living under the shadow of the ‘hero’, new age filmmakers say that times are changing with films like Inkaar, Gulab Gang, Dedh Ishqiya and Begum Samru setting the trend.
Filmmaker Madhumita Anand is among those who feel that Bollywood has to be more responsible since it has a direct and strong influence on the society.
“In our films, a man mistreats his wife and she still puts up with him because he is her devta. This is not how we want it in real life, then why propagate it,” she says. Madhumita also thinks that filmmakers need to be cautious while churning out raunchy item numbers. Why can’t films show independent women with professional lives and confidence to stand up to a man? Why can’t we see her make decisions for herself and not be punished for it in the course of the movie?
Actress Tannishtha Chatterjee, who will be seen in Gulab Gang along with Juhi Chawla and Madhuri Dixit, says that Bollywood now has space for women-centric films. “With changing times, strong character-oriented roles for women are a reality. That filmmakers are looking for heroines who are not essentially typical beauties proves that they are drafting meaty roles and not just projecting women as arm candy. And the audiences are accepting these characters as they can relate to them,” she says.
Filmmaker Sudhir Mishra, who has made Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, Yeh Saali Zindagi and now recently Inkaar with his muse Chitrangada Singh playing a strong-headed ad professional, says, “I find it much more interesting to make a film with female protagonists. They understand the idea of loss better and are not afraid of showing their weaker side. They are as capable of betrayal as their male counterparts but in the end are perhaps more there when it comes to the crunch. Perhaps the fault is in the scripts and the fact that they are sketched in a one-dimensional way.”
According to filmmaker Rajshree Ohja, cinema is a mirror of the society. “We as filmmakers reflect what is happening around us through our films. Had we been so powerful, we would have just changed the country,” she says.
Rajshree adds that item songs are just like advertisements, there to promote the film. “Pretty women are essential for a film. Men more than women buy the tickets. So they will be shown what they want to see,” she says.