Movies Promote Crimes Against Women and Racism in the Society

Whenever any crime against a woman is committed, the first person to be blamed is either the politician or the police. The film industry is hardly mentioned at all. From time to time, women’s right activists voice their concern over nudity/vulgar scenes and item numbers. But these item girls and villains who rape heroine or the protagonist’s sisters are not the role models of the masses.  What the hero does is what that stays long in our mind and that we imitate. Films promote the traditional male characters that are partly responsible for promoting sexual crimes against women. In every Bollywood films, we will see heroes pestering and stalking heroines, forcing unwanted attention to heroines. But they will end up getting the heroines, and the audiences are cheering and happy at that. That is the conventional Bollywood way for heroes to win heroines. Take any examples of blockbuster movies. In Deewana, Sharukh Khan, a spoilt son, was seen stalking the heroine, a widow. In Tere Naam, Salman Khan, a college dropout, was seen harassing and stalking the heroine, a college student. No one reacted and voiced against the heroes’ behavior toward heroines. Everyone was happy when their heroes won the heroines. Worst of all, in the movie Darr, Sharukh Khan was seen stalking and calling up the heroine late night in her home telephone all the time, tormenting the life of heroine, her fiancée, and her family members. At one point, she was suffering from acute depression. In spite of all villainous activities Sharukh portrayed, no one sided the protagonist Sunny Deol. It is the villain and women stalker Sharukh who got all the accolades and sympathy from audiences. Imagine Sharukh and Salman are the heartthrobs of millions of people, will they be able to think what their heroes are doing are wrong? Beware of this, because they are indeed heartthrobs and have huge fans following throughout the country. When the movie Fire was released, there were huge protests against the film demanding either to ban the film from running in theaters or delete the lesbian act between the two lead female protagonists. Ironically, the names of female protagonists in the movie were Radha and Sita, the name of Hindu deities. Imagine, if Sabhana Azmi and Nandita Das were heartthrobs for the country just like Salman and Sharukh, what message would they send and lesson they would teach to their die-hard fans? Our all-time favorite villains Ranjeet, Prem Chopra, and Gulson Grover each had almost hundred rape scenes in their filmi careers, but they failed to motivate the masses since it is heroes not them who are worshiped by the masses. What villains do in the film is not a threat to the society, but what heroes do does. We are not judgmental to what our heroes do. We cheer and glorify whatever they do. We believe whatever they do is right, and start applying in our life.

Imagine what lessons are taught by heroes in other states where heroes are worshiped as deities. I can’t comment much on other regional movies in other states, but I have clearly seen the transition in the behavior of youths and rising crimes in my state Manipur. We grew up watching Hindi films. We saw villains raping heroines, killing brothers for property dispute, killing brides for dowry, villains kidnapping heroines or heroes’ mothers or sisters for ransom. Although we watched these movies all the time, we never imitated or tried to imitate. We always believed that our culture is different from these. So we watched these as just films, and never tried to imitate what Hindi films showed to us nor influenced our mind. However, after the ban of Hindi films in Manipur, regional moves started becoming very popular. Now the erstwhile foreign culture shown in Hindi movies is no longer alien. Now we can relate these acts to our culture and society after seeing the same acts in our own regional films. Killing wives for dowry or other reasons was unknown to Manipuri society, and rape and molestation of women were unknown or happened very rarely. But today, we are not so lagging behind other states for such crimes. I believe the same is true in other states.  One easy way to get this fact right is to compare the crime rates between the U.S. (the home of Hollywood) versus other European countries.