OBJECTIFICATION OF MEN IN FILMS / FILM FATALE: COLUMN PUBLISHED IN THE HINDU BUSINESSLINE

THE NAKED TRUTH

The increasing objectification of male stars is disrupting the status quo, making some people uncomfortable while others celebrate. But does this mean gender equality is at hand?

By Anna M.M. Vetticad

Shah Rukh Khan’s naked torso caked in mud, his rippling muscles bathed in bronzed make-up, the anti-gravitational wonder of his low-rise trousers miraculously staying up, while teasing us with its revelations… If you’ve seen director Farah Khan’s Happy New Year (HNY), you know this image is not a figment of my fantasies, but a dominant visual from the film.

The past 15 years have been marked by an increasing display of the male body in mainstream Hindi cinema. With HNY though, Farah has taken the trend to a whole new level by ensuring that her heroes’ nude upper bodies overshadow even the tiny waist and endless limbs of her heroine Deepika Padukone. The objectification of the two men in the film (Shah Rukh and his perennially open-shirted or shirtless co-star Sonu Sood) is so in-your-face that it led one SRK fan to lament the exhibition of what she calls “Bollywood’s answer to cleavage” in an article on a prominent news website. The writer thought nothing though of introducing Padukone’s character in the film solely in terms of her legs. She is not alone in adopting this contradictory stance.

Why are so many people inured to skin show by a woman, but uncomfortable with a similar display of male flesh? When I discussed the double standards with friends, one gentleman in our group told us he sees nothing attractive in the six-packs paraded about by most male Bollywood stars these days. Fair enough. That’s his call. He then added though: “I don’t think even women like it.” Err… The ladies in the gang pounced on him in unison: how about letting us decide for ourselves?

So there you have it: the reason why SRK and Sood’s exhibitionism still invites comment while the pageant of bosoms, midriffs and legs from actresses worldwide is considered par for the course. Our reactions to objectification are governed by many factors, but most of all by social conditioning. All of us – men and women – have grown up on a diet of ads which use the female body to sell everything, including products for men; on films that emphasise the looks of actresses more than actors; on film industries worldwide that are prone to discard older actresses while giving actors far greater longevity, based on these notions: (a) that good looks are a bonus for male stars but essential for actresses (b) that women lose their looks early (c) that attractiveness is not necessarily a factor of age or even physical beauty for men since personality, charisma and talent count more for them.

We’re so accustomed to the misogyny intrinsic to these beliefs, that too many of us – women included – don’t question them. The increasing objectification of male stars in recent years (especially by Bollywood) has been disquieting though for the status quo-ists.

Feeling unsettled is one thing; being a hypocrite is quite another. Reacting to the spotlight on Daniel Craig’s body in Skyfall and expressing pain “from all the hours (Craig) has spent in the gym”, The Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote in 2012: “Gary Cooper in High Noon wins Grace Kelly by strength of character, not muscles. He was about 50, and Kelly was a mere 23... Maybe the best example of the unmuscled hero is Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. Bogart was 15 years older than Ingrid Bergman and it did not matter at all. He had the experience, the confidence, the internal strength that can only come with age… These older men seduce; they are not seduced.”

About Craig, however, he wailed: “…he triumphs physically, not cleverly. He does not woo women; they just come on to him.” Boohoo! How blasphemous that a film should highlight a man’s physique, that women should be assertive lovers, that an older male actor should face the demands that female stars have always dealt with. Now consider what it does to regular women to be bombarded 24x7 with images of impossibly good-looking actresses, especially those defying age, many of whom are products not just of simple make-up and healthy habits but also of Botox, cosmetic surgery and so on. In such a scenario, men like Craig and SRK provide some respite by acknowledging the heterosexual female gaze (not to forget the homosexual male gaze).

Let’s not, however, claim a gender equivalence here. These men work hard on their bodies and show off the results, but they are nowhere near as many in number as their female counterparts worldwide, nor are their portrayals habitually reductive as is the case with women on celluloid. Their looks are just one aspect of the star package; they continue to dominate their films’ storylines; and we have yet to see them subjected to the kind of leering camerawork, low-brow choreography or insulting lyrics like “Main toh tandoori murgi hoon yaar, Gatkaale saiyyaan alcohol se (I’m a piece of flesh, come consume me with alcohol)” with which Bollywood’s ‘item girls’ routinely degrade themselves.

So yes, let’s offer kudos to male stars who sportingly offer themselves up for harmless objectification, but keep in mind that they operate within a power structure dominated by men. Let’s not for a moment equate the compulsions of heroines or marginal actresses with those of their male counterparts, or assume that gender equality is now at hand in film industries or elsewhere. Baby steps are always worth celebrating, so long as we remember that that’s what they are – baby steps.

(Anna MM Vetticad is the author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. Twitter: @annavetticad)

(This column by Anna MM Vetticad was first published in The Hindu Businessline newspaper on November 1, 2014)

Photographs courtesy:

(1) Still from Happy New Year – Red Chillies’ Entertainment

(2) Still from Skyfall - https://www.facebook.com/skyfallmovie?fref=ts

Note:
(1) A still from Skyfall did not run with this column in The Hindu Businessline
(2) This column should be read with an earlier article on objectification the author had written for Hindustan Times’ Brunch Special Collectors’ Edition 2013 titled “Look Who’s Watching: Bollywood Has Finally Discovered The Female Gaze. About Time Too!”

THE FEMALE GAZE & BOLLYWOOD / ESSAY PUBLISHED IN HINDUSTAN TIMES’ BRUNCH SPECIAL

(This article by Anna MM Vetticad was first published in the Hindustan Times’ Brunch Bollywood Special Collectors’ Edition in the summer of 2013)

LOOK WHO’S WATCHING

BOLLYWOOD HAS FINALLY DISCOVERED THE FEMALE GAZE. ABOUT TIME TOO!

A feminist’s grateful nod to John Abraham, Hrithik Roshan, Salman, Shah Rukh and the rest of their shirtless colleagues for acknowledging the female eye.

By Anna MM Vetticad

It’s amazing how many sensible men are convinced that women don’t have hormones. Maybe this conviction arises from a fear of discovering that their mothers might sometimes be driven by unmentionable female body parts; and worse, that their mothers might, just might, have had sex to procreate.

But the reason lies largely in another possibility: that few of these men source their information about women from women. What follows are blanket assumptions: that women are not sexual beings and therefore, that men could never be objects of heterosexual female longing.

The truth is far from it, and for a change the Hindi film industry has made – and acknowledged – this discovery ahead of most of our society.

Never before was Bollywood’s bow to the female gaze more evident than in Vicky Donor in 2012. Making a guest appearance in the song Rum whiskey, actor-turned-producer John Abraham went beyond the by-now-common scenario of a leading male star going shirtless to reveal a fabulous body. There was John dancing when suddenly, for no apparent reason except that we were expecting him to oblige us, he stood still and two ladies stripped him topless. Other women hosed his bare torso, while he stretched out both arms as if to say: ladies, do as you please with me.

Bless him! Up to the 1980s, female sexuality rarely found overt expression in mainstream Hindi cinema beyond the “cabaret girl”. Unlike the usually asexual or apologetically sexual heroine of those times, the cabaret girl wore skimpy clothes, danced raunchy dances and even had sex. The flipside was that she was always a supporting actress playing the male villain’s sidekick or making a one-dance appearance; and while she provided eye candy to male viewers, there was no male equivalent catering to a female audience.

Though a sprinkling of heroes had taken off their shirts on screen in previous decades, Sanjay Dutt and Sunny Deol in the 1980s were among the earliest to be consistently body proud. It was their junior Salman Khan though who pioneered persistent shirtlessness.

If the initial goal was admiration from male viewers, these heroes got an unexpected bonus as many Indian women – conditioned to be reticent about their appreciation of male good looks – began to air their hormones in public.

The change was driven by economics. The number of women in the workforce had been rising; this meant more women making their own film-viewing decisions instead of depending on fathers, boyfriends and husbands; it also meant more women confident enough to openly cheer at great-looking, bare-bodied heroes.

And so by the turn of the century, when fitness-conscious leading ladies became the norm, leading men followed suit. Cabaret girls of the pre-1990s gave way to “item girls” and gradually, “item boys”. Though male viewers remain Bollywood’s priority, women are now less ignored.

So why has the male gaze historically ruled global cinema? Simple. In a male-dominated society, it is assumed that a human being is a man unless specified otherwise. In a film world led by male producers and directors (all heterosexual or closet homosexual), it is similarly
 assumed that the audience is male and heterosexual unless specified otherwise. Films therefore have not presented men as objects of heterosexual female desire, the assumption being that women are not keen on such visuals since the creators of these films are not.

Today’s Hindi film heroes seem to disagree. Cameras now embrace their every rippling muscle as lovingly as those lingering shots that were once devoted to the female body. The female gaze on heroes is even more pronounced in films by Bollywood’s handful of mainstream women directors. Remember, it took a Farah Khan to put the national spotlight on SRK’s abs in 2007’s Om Shanti Om.

Sadly, the bodylicious hero’s success with women has not yet led Bollywood’s production majors to realise that there’s a vast female audience out there yearning for well-made women-themed mass entertainers produced as lavishly as male-centric projects.

For today though, let’s just see our glass as half full. For today, let’s bask in the pleasure that our modern-day male Helens give us.

In fact, well-meaning activists unwittingly perpetuate a new double standard when they lobby the Central Board of Film Certification to clamp down on female-centric item numbers while ignoring the “item”-isation of heroes. Objectification – whether of men or women – should not be objectionable if the goal is to inoffensively please the gazer while celebrating the sexuality of the gazee. It’s only when the “object” is degraded and demeaned (as when Kareena Kapoor is equated with a “tandoori murgi” in Fevicol se), that it becomes our responsibility to disapprove.

The equitable objectification of both genders today is that rare ray of hope for women actors and audiences in an otherwise male-focused industry. This egalitarianism is epitomised by 2008’s Dostana which featured a bikini-clad Shilpa Shetty while John Abraham posed in golden trunks and later absent-mindedly scratched his bottom as he wandered around in briefs. In 2012, Rani Mukerji spent the entire film Aiyyaa fantasising about the delectable Prithviraj.

Women, you see, do have hormones after all. Just ask our boys in Bollywood.

(Anna MM Vetticad is the author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She is on Twitter as @annavetticad)

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/BeingSalmanKhan

Note: This poster of Jai Ho was not published in the magazine. For the record, this article was written several months before the release of that film.