Yesterday, I went with Anupa and friends to watch “Rockstar” – a long tortuous movie brimming with songs and puzzling character developments. But dissecting Hindi movies is a thankless job.
Nevertheless, one aspect of the movie stuck in my mind. Just like my response to the “Ta Ra Rum Pum” hero abandoning his dog, the crowning moment of stupidity came early on when the protagonist sets his eyes on a hot and sophisticated chick. You can almost hear “Up town girl” playing in the background! But this by itself is hardly loony – love knows no boundaries and all that.
So how does our man set about winning his lady? By harassing her. He first walks up to her when she’s with all her friends and insists that she give him a “chance.” As if every woman is somehow obligated to try on every random stranger she meets. Her efforts in telling him to “bugger off!” fall on deaf ears as he barges into her class proclaiming his undying love. He then worms his way into her car, holds the window down as she’s trying to roll it up, and hangs on to it as the car leaves pleading with her to accept him!
By now, our respectable downtown boy has broken a dozen rules in the sexual harassment book. But guess what? The end result is that he finally “gets” the girl in true Hindi movie style.
I’ve seen this scenario play out in dozens of movies, both Hindi and Tamil. Basically all the hero has to do is force himself repeatedly on the girl in an uncouth and blunt way to “awaken” the feelings she’s had for him all along. All she has to do is “look beneath the surface,” beyond that rough exterior to find the sensitive, caring man behind it. In other words, when it comes to chasing women, “No” means “Yes!”
It’s enough to make me want to puke.
Which woman in real life falls for a brute who doesn’t respect her privacy, follows her around (sometimes with a bunch of scary looking guys), blocks her path, enters her car and sometimes even lays hands on her without her permission? This kind of fantasy land approach to wooing women seems to have caught the imagination of large sections of men who go around harassing women on the roads, schools and colleges.
The mild phrase “eve teasing” is meant to hide the seriousness of this kind of harassment. If I were a woman, I can only imagine how scared I would be if a strange guy followed me around all the time declaring his “love” and laying his hands on me. So what makes this kind of uncouth behavior so appealing? What possesses filmmakers to have to resort to these kind of antics?
I get it that a “lower class” guy has few options to interact with “upper class” women, but that doesn’t mean he resorts to stalking and other scary behavior. That’s not likely to win him anything outside of the imaginary world of movies. There’s no god given right for every guy to be able to “have a chance” with every woman on the planet.
Some movies do it tastefully. Cameron’s “Titanic” is a great example of a love story between the poor Jack Dawson and the uptown Rose. He doesn’t have to resort to breaking and entering. The love between them grows naturally as a result of circumstances arising organically. He didn’t have to impose himself.
IHM had written about what goes on in the mind of an eve teaser, and I’m pretty sure I have the answer right here. An “eve teaser” thinks that with sufficient harassment and perseverance, every woman can be “won over” and her dormant feelings for random strangers need to be awakened by a little rough treatment, stalking and general disrespect for her right to say “No.”
Very well written and so true!
You forgot to mention the huge, unending round of applause when he said ham dono rock kar denge. He wants pain in his life, so he walks up to a “popular” girl and asks (demands) for a chance. Imagine if it was other way round, ladki ko pain dena jaruri hai, here is the answer for that: http://ibnlive.in.com/news/chandigarh-girl-injured-in-acid-attack/180570-3.html
have you seen “the bong connection?”
In reply to TG
No – what’s it about?
Yes, the harassment part was the only part that I mentioned as a strict warning in my review of the movie.
However, there is one thing I think we are all forgetting in the talk about liberation. I think we are missing out on romantic rejection leading to obsession in a large number of people. Its not just men actually, even women who might be perfectly sane do act out when rejected. Yes, by that I do not condone any of the acts, all I am saying is in most cases, people can’t take romantic rejection. This plays out in many ways, sometimes its incessant phone calls asking why, sometimes texts and emails and in worst cases, stalking and physical harm. This attitude to an end of a relationship is somewhat seen in both genders.
However what Bollywood portrays is even before a relationship starts. And I have to agree Bhagwad, Hindi and Tamil movies are the worst. A Dhanush movie comes to mind, forget the name. Dhanush, the protagonist, is a tea vendor outside a girls’ college and falls for one of the pretty girls. She also likes him back but eventually common sense prevails and she realises she can’t just marry a chaiwala. The movie then takes a bizarre turn as Dhanush files a legal suit against her and the rest of the movie is a court room drama where he extols ‘pure’ love that doesn’t see economic differences. Now, I am all for love without any barriers, but does love where one party doesn’t feel it, ever work?
In reply to cheesychic30
Wow – elevating the right to have a specific person regardless of their choice to a legal level? That’s a new high (low) for me!
So another question I have is – why don’t more women find this on screen behavior offensive?
In reply to bhagwad
That’s a question for Twilight fans. Just kidding. I don’t know, there is a specific way in which women are taught to view romance. So if a guy is more persistent, romance novels would like us to believe its because he has trouble expressing his feelings normally so true love gets out in extremes.
I think it’s mostly about plotting. The movies are written mostly from the point of view of men, even if the leading character is a woman. It’s a man’s point of view about a woman. I don’t mean this all the time, but enough of the time. So you have a male character and you want him to get the girl to add the romantic angle. Well it takes a clever write to develop characters and come up with a way that seems real for two strangers to fall in love. If you add obstacles to their romance- class tension or family opposition- then it takes an even more clever writer to untangle it so that they fall in love. Bollywood does need clever writers though since that’s not what sells the movies. So you fall back on this because it’s easy. The boy is just really persistent and then the girl realizes she really does like him once she sheds her cool exterior. Because what’s not to like about a cute, fun-loving boy who’s just doing what a boy does after all? He might be up to a little mischief but mom and granny and teacher and nanny all see the good little boy inside. Naturally so will every woman he ever meets. No character growth for the boy- it’s the women around him that need to look inside themselves and see that really they are just being snobby by not accepting him. It’s lazy writing, but it’s acceptable because Indian boys get a pass.
In reply to ceba
That’s very insightful – especially the part about no character growth for the guy. Even here, it’s always the woman’s fault for not seeing the “true chap!
While I agree with you that the film Rockstar is no art AND definitely nothing that imparts life skills for the college crowd in India, I don’t think the scenario shown in the film was as unlikely as you make it out to be.
Granted, some random dofus doing the same antics might find himself charged himself with a number of offences quite likely – but that wasn’t what the film was about. The actor in the film WAS conventionally good looking AND had a boyish charm despite his evident social awkwardness around women. He was a wildly ambitious rockstar, with a rather crazed gleam in his eye and a ‘devil may care’ attitude towards life. And the woman wasn’t your average Indian woman, she was a woman who craved adventure and risk to break from the monotony of her upper class rigmaroles. And his attitude was ‘risk personified’. Having known women as I do and having seen sexual/romantic chemistry happen in contexts like this, I don’t see why the woman falling for the hero is such an unimaginable impossibility – the crudeness of his approach notwithstanding.
I don’t know if you realised it but in a rather underhanded way, your entire post boils down to what you’ve been accusing others of – expecting predictable behaviour from women based on the stimulus that you believe ‘should work’. Thats the equivalence of saying that a woman with small breasts or the ‘wrong’ skin tone is doomed to a life of romantic dissatisfaction.
Most women are people; not generic software codes, where you throw a certain kind of behaviour as input and get rather predictable behaviours as a result. Humans are diverse and dynamic, and so are the way they interact with others. The movie Titanic reflects just one way of how romances between the classes happen and it is in no way the only or even the most probable way.
Also, having known men as I do – in my circle and beyond, the average bloke doesn’t dramatically shape his attitude towards women based on one film, out of the countless stimulus that he receives in his environment. The majority of Indian men in college environs are passive – they simply don’t have the courage or any idea of what it takes to seduce women. Then we have another bunch that doesn’t have problems interacting with women – but they can’t escalate from what are purely platonic social interactions, thanks to the rather warped messages they received about ‘how to respect women’ from their equally ill-informed peers and media. Molesters, gropers and the kind who outright harass women despite repeated advances are in the minority and the more I interact with this sort, the less I am convinced that they are in it for the power game. Its just a cheap thrill for them, a little ‘taste’ of what the society has dictated forbidden for them.
But again, you have to interact with the lowest of the low in the Indian socio-economic ladder to gain that perspective and I don’t think given the classist leaning of the majority of middle class bloggers – such a thought even crosses their minds. It is more fashionable to theorise the lives and perspectives of others from their very warped, confirmation biased minds.
In reply to Akhim Lyngdoh
Interesting perspective. Though “Titanic” is a different ballgame altogether that I’ve even mentioned in my post.
At the same time, most women who’ve commented here seem to agree with my POV. Don’t you find that informative? Given that we’re talking about women’s responses, shouldn’t we give supreme weightage to their own opinions?
In reply to bhagwad
Enlightening yes, but informative, no. The agreement of some women here does not really disprove what I’ve known and nor does it add anything that I didn’t know already. As I said, people’s preferences differ – even when it comes to how they’d like to be courted.
Try watching Rockstar without a moral undertone and you might be surprised. It is one of the first Bollywood movies that depicts humanity that is atypical of Bollywood – not too moralised or stylised. A woman who drinks and likes watching porn films – and yet, no moral undertones. She is married to a man who is handsome, rich and even has a villa in a rather exotic foreign country – what would be a dream to many Indian women; and yet, she is bored and cheats with her ex-flame. Again, no moral undertone. Also, the hero doesn’t really ‘get the girl’. She is always a tad bit ‘out of reach’ for him; always torn between what she is conditioned to do (be a good wife) and what she actually want to do (enjoy life a bit). Granted, there are some ‘What the hell?!” moments and discontinuity – but as a coneissuer of art, I have learnt that perfection is best left to desis who think there is a ‘perfect’ something, somewhere.
In reply to Akhim Lyngdoh
It depends on whether people who comment here are enough of a random sample. If so, it would be illogical to go against the opinion of all the women who’ve commented here (and who I’ve interacted with) about what is unacceptable behavior and what isn’t.
The fact remains that his behavior crosses well over the line. The euphemism “eve teasing” has become a plague and hardly a day goes by that we don’t read about some incident gone awry. I’m sure if tomorrow, women could snap their fingers and make this behavior vanish, they would do so without a second thought.
In reply to bhagwad
By no means is your readership a random sample. It isn’t like you took a survey in the street corners, making sure the respondents are as diverse as possible and taking due care to deal with all the errors possible in such a social science survey. No, what we have here is a dozen or so women who were piqued enough to respond and who possibly form the bulk of your reader ship – which wouldn’t have happened if they didn’t at least agree to your writing on some level.
Besides, we are talking about the film about a rockstar here – which is not about eve teasing by any means; by a borderline bipolar dude from a not-so-sophisticated background who approaches women in a very crazy, unthinking and poorly executed manner and sometimes, it hits gold. The dude wasn’t an unattractive and poor Romeo who stood leering at street corners, whistled at random women passing by and made remarks like “Rate kya hai?”. He didn’t grope her butts, smacked his lips and asked her if she was free for the night.
Do you really think most Indian blokes with are sane and sober, would do something as gutsy as barging into a university class and profess undying love? Hell, most of my college batchmates used to be positively scared of talking to women and discussed women like they were little rats trying to bell some rather ferocious cats. The ones who did have ‘girlfriends’* didn’t have the guts to watch a mainstream Hollywood film with her, if it had any adult content (“What if she thought of me as a ‘cheapo’ guy?” phenomenon).
After getting back to university last year, to augment my legal profession with a masters in law, I encountered a lot of late 20s blokes who are true blue virgins. Not because they were leery street Romeos but because they ‘respected’ women so much that they’d even think twice asking if she could lend a pen. The way the lot of men have repressed and desexualised themselves to conform to this prudish and reactionary desi ‘norm’ is mind boggling. They are the ones most likely to internalise and act on the idea that women shouldn’t be approached or talked to or she’d slap s354 on them. The actual street Romeos simply don’t care, they belong to a class of the populace where the fear of persecution doesn’t hold as much as it does for the upper classes.
* I use the word ‘girlfriends’ in parentheses, because in my opinion, you aren’t a couple unless you’ve been sexual with each other.
In reply to Akhim Lyngdoh
Forcing yourself on a woman after she’s said “No” once, is enough to be called eve teasing especially since it’s obvious he doesn’t just want to be friends. What does it imply? It implies that you don’t respect her wishes. This isn’t exactly rocket science.
This is precisely the concept that Indian men need to understand – “No” means “no”. End of story.
It’s not just women on my blog whom I’m referring to, but also those whom I’ve met and asked. My wife. My friends. And I don’t think you need to be ugly to be an eve teaser. Or ask “rate kya hai?”.
So far to support your point, I haven’t heard you provide even one woman as a counter example. So you can make a case about my sample being flawed (and it might be), but in the absence of any other data, I can’t just take the word of a man over a lot of other women especially since it concerns them.
Basically I have
a) 100% of around 20 women who say they feel a certain way
b) 1 guy who says they don’t
All things being equal, which data set am I supposed to believe as a neutral third party? I don’t think any man is qualified to speak about what a woman is feeling. That is for them and them alone to decide.
So till I get better data, the most reasonable thing to assume, given that all the women I’ve asked have responded the same way, is that this is exactly how they think. I’m open to changing my mind if you show me the opinions of some other real life women who say otherwise. It doesn’t mean I’ll discard the data I already have, but I’ll be willing to admit that all of them don’t feel this way.
Till then…
In reply to bhagwad
“This is precisely the concept that Indian men need to understand – “No” means “no”.”
This is a purely theoretical argument. Based on what I have actually experienced, not ALL nos from ALL women are hard-and-fast nos. The same way that just because a woman seems interested, does not necessarily mean that she IS interested. Of course, the problem is when some socially out-of-sync bloke can’t take even a hard no for a no, but then that is not the context here. As I have realised it is better to rely in body language than verbal language to judge attraction and the level of attraction.
“So far to support your point, I haven’t heard you provide even one woman as a counter example.”
And how do you propose, I ‘provide’ you a woman ‘as a counter example’? Do I….like…send a woman over to your place in a packaged box, who steps out and say, “Hey, I disagree with what you said in your blog”. Get real my friend, this is a blog and I come here only on my personal time. I argue with you only for the pleasure of argument and this whole discussion is simply not important enough for me to line up a dozen ‘witnesses’ to counter my point. AND most importantly, the reason I refuted your argument was to SHOW that there are OTHER perspectives to the situation you posted.
“Basically I have
a) 100% of around 20 women who say they feel a certain way
b) 1 guy who says they don’t”
Irrelevant. For one, ALL of this 20 women are those who agreed to your contention in your blog. They have not been cross questioned to evidential standards, nor has their opinions been passed through the rigmarole of social science research to confirm WHY they found the film offensive. If I were to argue on that line, I could bring up the evident class prejudice that has been verbalised here – perhaps some of these women felt that Ranbir was wrong is approaching a woman more sophisticated than he is? As I have observed, a lot of middle class Indian women do have a stronger undercurrent of class and economic prejudice than say…Polish women.
“I don’t think any man is qualified to speak about what a woman is feeling.”
I didn’t claim qualification, I simply postulated arguments why your view isn’t the absolute gospel truth and why the perspective of the dozen or so women here isn’t the perspective of ALL women. Pardon me if that sounds somewhat condescending, but your blog is not a place where people come to assert ‘authority’. If it were, I’d have backed every argument on a legal contention with my professional qualification and the *lack of* yours on the subject.
Lets not get petty here and start ball weighing, this is the freaking internet.
In reply to Akhim Lyngdoh
Again, all things being equal I would rather not speak for women. They are the best people to decide what “no” means. I’m not going to insult them by saying “no really means yes”. The problem is that so called “hard nos” are tough to distinguish from “soft nos” as is evidenced by the dozens of acid thrown attacks, shootings, assaults and setting on fire incidents we read in the papers every day.
It’s easy to give a counter example. The Internet is full of opinions from both men and women from all walks of life. In fact, it’s hard to not find someone who will agree with any given point of view. It’s not really unreasonable to expect no? Now if you’re going to say something unusual like “Lots of women don’t mind an obvious harasser”, then it’s pretty natural for me to ask “How do you know?” Right?
Throwing authority around is hardly “giving weight”. Like you said, this is the Internet and you could be anyone. Arguments from authority don’t really cut it here. If you want people to agree with a far out view, you have to give reasons. You could be the chief justice of India, and it doesn’t matter. Saying “I have legal training” without backing it up with solid arguments gives the impression that you’re falling back on an easy way out without having to justify your stand.
And of course you’re postulating arguments. But your arguments seem to be little more than “It’s true because I say so”. Whereas I at least can point to actual women who have stated otherwise. All things being equal, it’s not tough to decide whose view holds more weight isn’t it?
In reply to bhagwad
“This is precisely the concept that Indian men need to understand – “No” means “no”. End of story.”
I think if you raise a fund large enough to supply enough dictionaries, and make provisions for enough people to read out to those who can’t, your problem will be solved.
“…provide even one woman…”
Provide a woman? Sorry, I am not an escort service and my women are not for sale. Try Justdial.
“I can’t just take the word of a man over a lot of other women especially since it concerns them.”
Actually, if you want to argue in that line, you have very little direct control over things that concern women. Less than I do.
“I don’t think any man is qualified to speak about what a woman is feeling. ”
Technically speaking, if 24 men say that “all men like big boobs” and one particular woman who has known a man attracted to small boobs says that “some men like small boobs too” – the former cannot tell the latter that, “You are a woman, you cannot speak for men”.
As ridiculous as your line of reasoning is, I can’t say I’m entire unfamiliar with it. The last time I heard such a rebuttal, it was an Indian woman who contended, “Indian girls don’t visit pubs” and her authority was that she was ‘an Indian woman’. With impeccable logic like this, which you have shown here, how can I not admit defeat? Ha ha!
“So till I get better data…”
Not that its important for me to provide any data, given that is an internet debate. But I am curious. How do you propose bringing up data for what it entirely argument against your false consensus bias? For one, the fact that people have divergent ideals when it comes to mating and courtship preferences doesn’t even need documentation. It is very apparently to those who go out a little and don’t stay holed up in a mountain cave.
In reply to Akhim Lyngdoh
Come, now you’ve just started resorting to nitpicking grammar. In your boobs example, the woman has known at least one man. You have not given any indication of having known any woman who likes being pursued despite saying “no”. So, invalid analogy.
Again, in your pubs analogy I know lots of Indian women who go to pubs. So once again invalid analogy because you haven’t demonstrated even one woman who feels the way you claim they do.
So to your question – how do I provide data? Just give an example or two! I’m not asking for a researched thesis.
In reply to Akhim Lyngdoh
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Bhagwad, I came across your blog from IHM’s and you are an awesome writer:-) Being a man and being a feminist brings out new and radical perceptions of social problems in a way that traditional feminists like me don’t see always, I guess :-)
Regarding your post, consider me among one of those women who get highly offended by the whole ‘Uncouth-stalker-type-creepy-hero-gets-the-uppity-fashionable-gorgeous-heroine’. Just to be clear, I am not saying that love should never transcend class and beauty barriers. But when one-too-many desi films go the same route it definitely feels like they are trying to play to the egos and fantasies of only a select set of the population. Based on the way the hero seduces the heroine, its scary to realize that the targeted audience is a bunch of gropers and stalkers with scant respect for women.
Another disturbing trend in Tamil movies is that nowadays, most movies have at least one song where the hero will lament about the injustices meted out to him by the love of his life even though the fault would actually be the hero’s if you have a look at the scenes preceding the so-called angst song of the hero. You should listen to the lyrics of some of these songs. Extremely misogynist. Its almost like a personal vendetta that the filmmakers have against women. What puzzles me is that nobody takes offence at such songs but cry foul when they see item songs. And when I point out such inequalities I am always met with the same response ‘Its just a stupid time-pass movie. Why are you getting so worked up about it?’.
The reason I am getting up so worked up about it is the hypocrisy of it all. I live in a country where movies which supposedly affect the religious sentiments of a particular religion are banned. Explicit sex scenes are deleted. Disclaimers are put that ‘No animals were harmed in the making of this film’. Messages like ‘Cigarette smoking is injurious to health’ flash when the film characters smoke. Why don’t the filmmakers also put ‘We respect women no matter how we portray them in the movies’? Either respect our intelligence and do away with all these messages or be prepared to soothe each and every group of people who might get offended by the film’s content.
Sorry Bhagwad, I guess I have gone off on a tangent here but once I start to rant its difficult to stop :-(
In reply to The Gender Nazi
Thanks, and good to you see you!
I think the “it’s just a movie” sentiment is dangerous. Movies both play out our perceptions/expectations as well as reinforce them. So when an overwhelming proportion of them depict men and women behaving in a certain way, people begin to think it’s ok and expected. That fuels more of the same creating a continuously reinforcing cycle. You can learn a lot about a culture by seeing its movies. You can also track the progression of a culture by seeing how movies have changed in the past few decades.
In reply to bhagwad
Exactly! ‘Its just a movie’ line is one of the most irritating and ignorant lines ever. And there is a hypocrisy here too. People ban controversial books, paintings and blame internet and Facebook for inciting hatred. But how many of the rural masses(where comprises a good chunk of the population) have access to books and internet? However, almost every one of them would have watched the latest SRK or Rajnikanth movie or atleast know the name!
In reply to The Gender Nazi
*which comprises a good chunk of the population
In a country which worships cinema, cinema better be a good role model. Not everyone has a strong enough will to think “it’s just a movie”. It’s about time actors refused such roles and audiences refused to watch them. And that the censor board knew what to censor within its country.
In reply to Anju
I don’t think the censor board should interfere. It’s freedom of expression after all, no matter how repulsive.
If we start treating people like children by saying “They don’t have a strong enough will”, then we shouldn’t allow people to marry, vote, have kids, or drink. Those are much more serious decisions that require a strong will to carry out properly!