Dear friend,
Hindi movies and songs must have really contributed to the survival of the 70s, 80s and 90s youth. While there wasn't much joyful or interesting things especially poor youths could do back then, Hindi movies and songs were a pleasant thing to look forward to. The melodious songs were full of the promise of beautiful romance and unearthly love. It must have made a lot of people daydream of a world of romance that actually had 50% missing about the realities of life.
A decade later it started getting harder to watch Hindi movies as very few good ones came out and the songs began to dwindle in the standard of their lyrics and their tunes. Bikini styled skimpy clothes began to rule the screen combined with the introduction of awful moves for women dancers making them sex objects. It looked like every movie had to have one of those 'item' songs. The dance moves began to get repetitive and sometimes seemed to border on fighting moves or jumping moves and sometimes even ape-like moves. Those type of songs were just made bearable to watch with mildly catchy tunes. Very repetitive lines put in the song, which they probably assumed would make the song a very big hit, actually sounded quite annoying if the tune wasn't too appealing.
The movies' settings began to change more into foreign countries' scenes perhaps with the intent of luring more Western audiences. The few movies that I thought would be promising to watch had all their storylines taken from some foreign movie which made it automatically comparable to its original one. Finally I stopped watching Hindi movies altogether preferring to continue watching Hollywood and other foreign movies. However, I came across very beautiful songs sometimes rarely over the years.
Recently after a long hiatus of not watching Hindi songs or movies, I decided to check out songs they showed on channel B4U. That day they were showing Punjabi songs which were different and refreshing somehow. And then there came Norah Fatehi songs with the horrible dance moves. One song had the same ape-like movements that looked so vulgar as it was repeated in tandem with a certain line in the song everytime. Obviously she didn't care at all how silly or vulgar she looked. Maybe ruling the hearts of men through any type of dance moves was more gratifying than having self-respect. I mention her only because the latter thoughts on songs are based on a few hours of a day's observation and she is the only recent performer I know by name.
It seems all actresses have to go through this unwritten initiation of wearing the same kind of skimpy revealing clothes at some point in their career and do the vulgar latkas and jhatkas if they want to continue in that profession, ignoring the fact that men are attired in a totally opposite way with most of their whole body covered. As even very unlikely actresses are also finally seen succumbing to doing those type of dance moves and donning the same skimpy attires, it seems like they have no choice but to abandon their dignity and self-respect.
Hearing about the alarming number of rape cases in India, a thought occurs: how many of those types of songs could have a very strong influence on men? Could such productions incite them to do unexpected things as they become accidental victims to a strong atmosphere of lust created by watching such type of songs? If in the manner that violent video games have a bad influence on children, could Bollywood have its own negative influence on Indian men?
Sincerely yours,
XX
I could relate well with the argument of the writer. The objectification & hyper-sexualization of women in popular culture is probably a matter I can personally never accept.
ReplyDeleteBut the reality is the the world doesn’t work the way I think it should.
IG for instance, is supposedly a platform to share pictures. Kylie Jenner has over 300million followers on IG & she’s earning in excess of a million on a single IG post when some of the biggest names in the world of photography including Natgeo photographers who spent an entire life at it hardly has over a million.
Everyone including the 3-year-olds know Shakira but nobody knows Sabrina Pasterski. When the former gets a divorce from Gerard Pique, her bitter love song makes it’s way to the ears of even every five-year-old in subsaharan Africa but when the latter is taking the mantle of theoretical physics where Stephen Hawking left it, nobody, not even the academics know what she’s doing. Shakira’s hips obviously don’t lie. Sabrina’s hips don’t even exist.
So the point is hyper sexualization of women isn’t simply a Bollywood phenomenon. From Marilyn Monroe to Mata Hari it’s the same thing - the power of aggressively provocative sex appeal. Kim Kardashian broke the internet with the same power. So I am of the view that it is pointing fingers at Bollywood over this or Nora Fatehi conquering Bollywood with the power of her butts is not totally fair.
Whether it's India or Subsaharan Africa, people living in poverty need a relief and a distraction from the harsh realities they call life. Amitabh was hounded when he criticized 'Slumdog Millionaire' by saying that what Indians need/want is not further exposition and reminder of the harsh conditions of their life but instead deserves the escapism of Bollywood in order to be able to cope and go on with their lives. Of course, Amitabh Bachchan was criticized for this stand.
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