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!”
(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!”
