On Monday, the Rajya Sabha was filled with demands that mainstream media – films, in particular –be censored because they’re sending out images and messages that are brainwashing Indian men into seeing women and girls as prey.
A day later, reports came in that the state government of UP was concerned about the performance and morale of its police force. To fix this problem, they had decided upon a plan of action. The ADG, Law and Director, issued a five-page circular asking for special screenings of films like Dabangg, Ab Tak Chhappan and Singham. That spawn of Satan Bollywood does have its uses, it seems.
Incidentally, one parliamentarian who was particularly vocal about “the rise in obscenity” and the need to censor films was Ram Gopal Yadav, of the Samajwadi Party. Now, pop quiz. Which political party is in power in Uttar Pradesh? If you guessed Samajwadi Party, you get a toffee.
Indian commercial cinema has long been attacked for depicting women in a demeaning way and cementing conservative gender stereotypes. It has the knack of dumbing down complex problems and representing them in a flat, photogenic and persuasive way. However, to blame blockbusters for the incidence of rape seems excessive when there are real life characters like Congress leader Satyadev Katare spouting the kind of lines that few Bollywood villains would dare utter. Even if they did, there’d be a hero (and very occasionally, a heroine) punching their lights out for having dared voice such an opinion.
It’s worth keeping in mind that mainstream media, like advertising and Bollywood, are reflections of society. They don’t create the inequalities that pockmark our society. They just help them gather strength. Haters like Yadav may want to believe that we’re passive and defenseless against the ideas and imagery in commercial cinema, but it’s not quite so straightforward.
Take the ADG’s directive that the UP police force should watch blockbuster cop movies in order to raise morale and be inspired. For the moment, let us not question the ADG’s faith in Bollywood’s persuasive powers. Let us also ignore the fact that real cops might not find much in common between their lives and those of Bollywood cops. Let’s assume that the hypothesis laid out by the ADG – that watching an unrealistic movie about cops will change the way real cops perceive their jobs – is credible. The reason I’m suggesting we ignore these details is because the most problematic aspect of the ADG’s orders isn’t his naïveté. It’s the kind of films he’s chosen.
Despite the fact that the “lady cops” in Bollywood are usually upright and pretty darn fantastic, none of them feature in the list of films the ADG has recommended his demoralised police force watch. There’s no Zakhmi, which saw Dimple Kapadia wear khaki and then abandon the uniform to punish her rapists. Also missing is Khalnayak, in which Madhuri Dixit played a cop who went undercover to restore her love interest’s reputation.
That she had to sing “Choli ke peeche” in the process of doing so could be counted as an added bonus. (Don’t snort at the lack of realism. It’s as credible as Ajay Devgn’s Bajirao Singham turning humans into unidentified flying objects.) Rekha added glossy red lips and a lot of attitude to policemen’s khaki in Phool Bane Angaarey. Bipasha Basu and Sushmita Sen, who played cops in Dhoom 2 and Samay, also get no love from the ADG.
Now compare these to the policemen of whom the ADG does approve. Dabangg is about a dirty cop whose redeeming feature is that he can make his belt buckle boogie. The hero of Ab Tak Chhappan is a cop who takes the law into his own hands and is decidedly trigger-happy. Singham may have been about a good cop, but considering how said cop was making cars and goons fly, you couldn’t really take him seriously.
What do these three men have in common? Machismo, muscles and violence. And entirely inconsequential love interests. Clearly, as far as the ADG’s vision of police and power are concerned, power is a masculine and muscular affair. Not just that, even if they are dirty cops, the fact that they are male makes them good enough to be role models.
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