The role of popular Indian cinema in the persistence of oppressive social-gender norms

Abstract

Movies are a very powerful medium of expression. People watch movies and emulate some characters, their behaviours, their habits knowingly but a lot of things are absorbed sublimely. Actors who play certain characters are chosen or made to look such that they fit an ideal which consciously or subconsciously becomes aspirational for the audience. Under the guise of making films relatable for the audience films propagate and reinforce stereotypes. Back in 1960s, male gaze was popularised. Potrayal of women in powerful, empowered or even substantial roles for that matter was unheard of until quite recently. Most movies reinforce deep rooted gender stereotypes. Distorted portrayal of gender roles and relationships makes it impossible for the audience to visualise a world without these structures making structural change very rare almost a utopian ideal. To change something, it is important to understand it completely first. We have looked at movies across genres and tried to describe in detail, every scene which we felt invisibles or normalises conventional societal ideals and propagates traditional gender roles, existing patriarchal structures. We then segregate them to investigate tropes used across movies which end up influencing our ideas of masculinity, femininity, and heteronormativity. We chose 6 movies, namely ‘Shandaar’, ‘2 States’, ‘Ki & Ka’, ‘Agneepath’, ‘Batla House’, and ‘Shershaah.’ We watched the movies multiple times to identify tropes, language, cinematography, appearance of characters playing the roles, used by filmmakers to reinforce and propagate existing stereotypes and binary gender roles