Is Bollywood Carrying A Baggage Of Sexism?

Indian cinema has been one of the best paths to deliver significant messages to the Indian audience.Established in 1913, it has spread its wings to reach great heights of success and popularity in a short span of time. Indian cinema which is also named BOLLYWOOD has made a mark in the sky of movie industries around the globe. It has a variety of genres across the spectrum, like Drama, action, comedy, tragedy, and horror.

Bollywood is famous for the reflection of Indian culture shown in its movies. Most of the movies and the characters in them get inspired by real-life people and situations.

Bollywood Movies have been a treat to watch and let's accept it that we all are bolly junkies.
We all have binged watched movies like kabhi khushi kabhi gham, kuch kuch hota hain, Haseena maan jayegi and more.

But have you ever sat back and thought that these perfect masala movies which we watch with our whole family are actually carriers of sexism?

And are we the ones who pinch our pockets to pay to watchage-old casual sexism and objectification?
What if I say yes, yes we are fed by the industry with misogyny so often that we have forgotten how unhealthy it is for your brains.

Let's see how we as an audience have been unconsciously watching sexism, misogyny, and objectification of women on the silver screen.

Starting with 90's blockbuster, kuch kuch hota hai, this movie was our jam back then.
Remember how we loved Rahul and Anjali's ( main characters) love story and wished for something similar.

But in reality, Rahul was just a douche bag for criticizing his best friend (Anjali ) for her tomboy looks in college and then falling in love with her when she wears a saree and let her hair flow in the air because you know that's how girls should be.

Here we can clearly see how a woman was forced to be in a category in order to be loved and feel wanted. Well, this is sexism on your face and guess what we enjoyed it without realizing it cringes.

Then in 2001, we were again blessed with a blockbuster showcasing misogyny in a fantastic way, I'm talking about kabhi khushi kabhi ghum.

In this movie, Amitabh Bachchan has a very famous dialogue which I will quote below -

Keh diya na....bas! keh diya.

Its actual meaning is that whatever he saidis the final decision and his wife has no right to question it. That's straight up misogyny guys.

And not only through action but bollywood alsoprompts sexismthrough dance and songs
Songs like Gandi Baat (R...Rajkumar), cheez baadi(Mohra), Munni Badnam ( Dabbang) are very few examples of songs with extremelyhorrifying and sexist lyrics.

We dance to these songs unknowingly that they prompt eve-teasing, stalking and objectification.

In a very famous song named APUN BOLA the male lead teaches the audience how to impress ( actually force )a girl and make her girlfriend is by eve-teasing her and making her life hell till she accepts it in order to save herself.

It's 2019 is still Bollywood carrying casual sexism in its arms?
The answer is yes, a recently released movie showcased girls as a prop, I'm talking about student of the year 2, we see how male characters of the movie are busy in preparation of winning the student trophy whereas the female lead is just dancing and gossiping around having no ambition to be fulfilled. I mean isn't it too unreal?

But why do they produce these type of movies? That too in huge numbers?
Maybe, because we love to watch them,society and our brains have become so comfortable with the portrayal of sexism in Bollywood. We don't actually mind watching them, instead, we watch them with our family.

To stop this trend prevailing in the industry since so long we must train our mind to not accept it and promote it.

Movie makers often say that they make movies according to the audiences need and preference. So in the end, it gets back to us, we get what we demand.

And it's high time that we stop demanding casual sexism.

Picture courtesy - Google