It is high tide now to recognize and celebrate our ‘she-roes’ as well. Because the 21st century is witnessing complementing relation of Women and men and their well depiction in movies as well. Cinema is regarded as mirror of society. Bollywood is certainly blamed for stereotype approach to drive the Indian audience. But bollywood is certainly breaking such stereotype ideologies.
The portryal of women as sorrowful and melodramatic characters such as Meena Kumari outblasted to the outspoken Komal Chautala the ‘kick hard girl of Chak DE India’. The typical ‘bhagwan ke lie chodd do’ to the menacing villain changed to ‘dikha DE us launde ko’ unleashing the strength of women’s interest and respect towards her choice of life. The bad girl of bollywood who defies the orthodox society and raised her voice was against odds also got a raised position. The fallen female role was well executed by Bipasha Basu in Jism, Deepika Padukone in Cocktail or Priyanka Chopra in Saath Khoon Maaf.
The paradigm shift of bollywood’s thought process is certainly a sunshine to bring light on socially and morally weak women. The gap is bridging between the chasm of bollywood’ world and reality of ordinary women.
The last decade has witnessed a total release of 1127 movies with 56 of them being female oriented accounting to 4.96% of total release with epic movies examining the outlook of Indian society towards women like Kalyan, Dor, and Babul where sensitive issues of widow life and position of female in her own vicious circle is depicted. Moreover in a well defined patriarchal society like India, cinematic role to empower women is out looked with movies such as Paa and Kahani where a single women works with a single minded devotion for achieving their goal.
Women were insinuated in films as bearing the burden of sexual objectification and this myth was well burnt away by movies such as Dirty Picture, Luv Ka The End, Pyar Ka Punchnama.
Moving the vehicle of wheels who’s spokes were connected by Fatma Begun the first female director, directors such as Dhavani Desai making epic documentaries such as CHAKRAVYUH an awareness movie on RTI. Lovleen Tandon Co director of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE and Gauri Shinde ‘s ENGLISH VINGLISH created a nostalgic moment for Indian Cinema.
But since the grass is always greener on the other side to gain negative publicity women models are being projected to item songs with stripping to rush the male hormones and make money. Movies such as EK THI DAYAN depict the stereo type mindset promotion degrading the upgradation of women.
And it’s definitely the right hot time to strike the iron. It’s time to not limit our challenges but to challenge our limits with an idea that a thought of staying like a photon ” Positive ”.
