MOLESTERS OR HEROES?
Salman Khan in Kick
and Akshay Kumar in Holiday continue
the Bollywood tradition of sexually harassing their heroines under the guise of
humour and romance
He lifts up her skirt with
his teeth and follows her, surrounded by a group of men. Is he the obscure scum
of the streets? No, he is Devi, the protagonist of the film Kick currently playing in theatres. She
is the heroine Shaina. And those other men are dancers accompanying the lead
pair during the song Jumme ki raat.
When Shaina realises what Devi is up to, she briefly shows annoyance. But hey,
he’s the hero, not the designated villain of the formulaic template, so of
course a few shots later she is dancing with him. You see, staying angry for
long is not in the script if the man who lifted your skirt without permission
is played by Salman Khan.
Sexual harassment, did you
say? Not in the eyes of mainstream Bollywood where molesting a woman is
considered cute, sweet and the epitome of courtship, if the molester is the
hero of the film.
Khan is not the only male
star practised in the art of mistreating women on screen under the guise of
humour and romance. In this year’s Holiday,
Akshay Kumar’s character Virat aggressively pursues an uninterested Saiba (Sonakshi
Sinha). One day, he sees her at a traffic signal, positions his motorbike’s mirror
to catch her reflection and kisses it, revelling in her outrage when she spots
him. The song Tu hi to hai is filmed
on Virat unrelentingly following Saiba, even grabbing the unwilling girl and
kissing her. Despite her anger at his behaviour, she is soon shown falling for
him.
From roughing up the
heroine in Holiday to joking about rape in Tees
Maar Khan, from calling the girl “maal”
(hot stuff) in Rowdy Rathore to
pinching her waist with fingers that act of their own accord, Kumar has done it all. His irrepressible digits in Rowdy Rathore seem designed to assure
the male audience that they cannot be held responsible for sexual
misdemeanours; a metaphor for boys as helpless testosterone-ridden creatures
who cannot help themselves when faced with female beauty. Or as Samajwadi Party
chief Mulayam Singh Yadav infamously said with reference to rape: “Boys will be
boys. Mistakes happen.”
Despite these repugnant
examples, it’s only fair to point out that Bollywood’s molester heroes are no
longer as common as they once were. When the physically invincible men of the
’70s and ’80s gave way to the gentler romantic hero of the mid-’90s, harassment
as courtship did not disappear from Hindi films but it did decline.
In the glory days of
Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan, gaining a woman’s affections by badgering her
was the norm. In the 1975 classic Sholay,
Veeru (Dharmendra) gropes an evidently uncomfortable Basanti (Hema Malini)
while teaching her how to shoot. In an endorsement of harassment as
the way to a woman’s heart, at one point he even sings, “Koi haseena jab rootth jaati hai, aur bhi haseen ho jaati hai (A
woman’s beauty is enhanced when she sulks)” — an initially enraged Basanti is
in love by the end of the song.
The cleverest way of
appeasing audience misogyny has been to show a woman being ambiguous
about her consent. Hum in 1991 comes to mind. Through the song Jumma chumma de de, when Tiger
(Bachchan) demands the kiss she promised him, Jumma (Kimi Katkar) has
irritation written on her face but her body speaks another language. She stands
on a table, lifts up her skirt and thrusts her groin at Tiger gawking at her
from below. Can there be a more overt representation of a woman’s desire for
sexual intercourse? The she-asked-for-it defence for the subsequent treatment
of Jumma is already written into the scene.
Sometimes, the hero’s
sexual harassment has been projected as playfulness. Sometimes it has been
given the form of undisguised hostility. In Karz
Chukana Hai (1991), model scout Radha (Juhi Chawla) photographs Ravi
(Govinda) bathing. He takes revenge by sneaking into her bathroom to shoot her
showering, and posts her nude pictures on their college bulletin board. Note
how the script had the woman indulging in reprehensible — even if highly
improbable — behaviour that could be deemed his ‘provocation’.
Remember though that the
hero is both protector and molester. Devi in Kick bashes up goons harassing women, just moments after he himself
is shown pestering an unresponsive Shaina. Perhaps the logic is that she is
marked out for him, therefore he has a right to do as he pleases with her. Or
as Shahid Kapoor’s Vishwas sings to Kajal (Ileana D’Cruz) in Phata Poster Nikhla Hero: “Khali peeli khali peeli rokne ka nahin. Tera
peecchha karoon toh tokne ka nahin… Hai tujhpe right mera (Don’t
unnecessarily object when I chase you… I have a right over you).” In a society
that echoes this view of a man’s ‘right’ over ‘his woman’, imagine the extreme
optimism of anti-rape campaigners who persist in making an issue of marital
rape.
Over the years, Bollywood
has justified such films by pointing out that they reflect reality. Well,
shouldn’t cinema condemn rather than glorify regressive realities? No doubt bad
films will not turn good men into molesters overnight, but considering the
extent of gender segregation in vast sections of Indian society, this
irresponsible portrayal of man-woman relations has the potential to perpetuate
existing misconceptions and indoctrinate impressionable youngsters who lack
guidance in these matters at home and school. Dear Khans and Kumars, do you
hear us?
(Anna M.M. Vetticad is the
author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. Twitter: @annavetticad)
(This column by Anna M.M. Vetticad was first published in The Hindu Businessline on August 2, 2014)
Photographs courtesy:
(a) Hum – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hum_(film)
(b) Holiday – https://www.facebook.com/FilmHoliday
(c) Kick – https://www.facebook.com/GetYourKick
Note: These photographs were not used in The Hindu Businessline
