The International journal of analytical and experimental modal analysis ISSN NO: 0886-9367

The Cinematic Gaze, Addressing the Genesis of Sexism and

Gender Related Transgressions in Cinema

Dr. Kanwal Jit Singh Associate Professor and Head, School of Media and Journalism MIT World Peace University, Mobile Number: 7973136315 Email: [email protected]

Abstract

Background: The #meetoo movement has brought in limelight the practices that have been going around for quite a some time in TV, Film Industry and Media. A lot has been said about the degrading nature of the Cinematic Gaze and its various spin offs but the latest happenings attest to the fact that despite the sensitization measures on these issues, this objectification has increased and has continued to move beyond the screen and percolate inside the professional work sphere where women have been subjected to sexual transgressions.

Purpose: The intent of this research is to join the debate on Cinematic Gaze in current context and investigate the continuation in the trend of objectification of women in Cinema and Visual Media.

Design/Methodology: This is a qualitative study, taking into account recent inputs in the area of Cinematic or Visual Media depiction of women.

Findings: The research done has thrown up credible data on the growing objectification and trivializing of women’s portrayal on screen which has undeniably led to an increase in acts of sexual transgressions particularly in professional spheres. The study also highlights the attempts to desexualize the Gaze in the context of the work of prominent filmmakers.

Key Words: Cinematic gaze, Male gaze, Sexual harassment, Objectification

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Introduction

In her groundbreaking paper, Visual Pleasure and, Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey (1975) developed the concept of the “Male Gaze” that has become one of the, dominant paradigms in feminist film theory. Mulvey, explained that she had used psychoanalytic theory as "a political weapon, demonstrating the way the unconscious of, patriarchal society has structured film form" (Mulvey, f, 1975, p. 6). Mulvey noted that fascination with the cinema could be explained psychoanalytically through the notion of, "Scopophilia", the desire to see, which is a fundamental, drive according to Freud (p. 8). Sexual in origin, like, all drives—the curiosity to see is the elemental, fascination of cinema. Mulvey states that Cinema, stimulates, the desire to look by integrating structures of voyeurism, and narcissism into the story and the image. Voyeuristic, visual pleasure is produced when the spectator gains, gratification from indulging in unlicensed looking at an, image, typically of a woman. Again, Mulvey pointed out, that narcissistic (mis)recognition of self in an idealized, figure on screen, typically the male hero, is the other, visual pleasure. Mulvey (1975) analyzed Scopophilia in cinema as a, structure that functions on the axis of activity and, passivity, a binary opposition, which is gendered and is, signified, through sexual difference: "In a world ordered, by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split, between active/male and passive/female. The determining, male gaze projects its fantasy on to the female form which, is styled accordingly" (p. 11). Mulvey noted that, in traditional cinema, the narrative structure clearly, establishes the male character as active and powerful for, he is the agent around whom the dramatic action unfolds and, the look gets organized (1975). Her essay showed how, narrative and filmic conventions in classical cinema make, voyeurism a male prerogative.

The Patriarchal Mindset in

There has been undoubtedly a tremendous amount of improvement in the women’s representation vis-à-vis Cinema in and Mulvey’s findings have been basis of numerous approaches to improving the malady of female objectification. But the latest studies show that we are far away from reaching at a satisfactory point.

In a special study over a course of ten months by Dhriti Nadir, Ishan Mehandru and Navya Sara Monson at the Centre for Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 30 landmark Bollywood films were studied for the total number of scenes displaying sexual relations, a staggering 74 percent were categorized in near sexual harassment. Their sample size was selected by choosing films based on critical acclaim and box office figures besides those having state recognition like national awards, to represent popular cinema for the Indian audience. From Karan-Arjun, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham to Bajrangi Bhaijaan. The study, done by taking up the time period of ten years from 1995 to 2015 threw up the following results.

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The number of credited characters in case of males were almost twice as that of females. The distribution of dialogues among them was also skewed with females getting only about one third of dialogues. The male to female ratio of dialogues distribution of supposedly path breaking films sampled were pathetic like 83:18 in Karan-Arjun, 82:18 in Lagaan, 83: 18 in Three Idiots while scoring a 42:58 in Devdas (Mehandru, 2018).

Mahendru states that rampant sexism has been normalized in our daily lives by bollwood. In 1995, in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, the character of Raj was aggressively pursuing Simran travelling in Europe with her friends, even after she rebuffs him. The study takes an exhaustive look at the next couple of decades as well. She states that whether it is Rahul in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), Rancho in 3 Idiots (2009) or Barfi in Barfi! (2012), a woman’s personal or professional space is often taken for granted. She further justified their statistical pursuit of the systemic scopophilia and pandering to the “popular” and “dominant” male view to demonstrate and cut through the rhetoric to present hard facts which will unequivocally lay bare the patriarchal mentality of Bollywood creators. According to Mahendru such acts of harassment, however, are not singular instances of a skewed male-female dynamic. Once they analyzed gender and sexuality through a host of different parameters, they saw how we systemically discourage women representation and make caricatures in the name of queer representation. It might be a ubiquitous fact that male characters get a lot more space onscreen than their female counterparts but they wanted to buttress their claims with statistical figures (Mehandru, 2018).

Mahendru makes a demonstration by stating that In the movie Stree, actor Pankaj Tripathi tell other men that the female ghost would call out her prey’s name, but claims her victim only if they turn around to look at her, thereby perhaps, consenting to the ghost. She compares this to the media anointed pragmatic male of Bollywood, in Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (2017), the character of Akshay stalks and clicks pictures of the heroine, even after she asks him to stop. Mahendru sarcastically comments that in Bollywood, ghosts and in particular, female ghosts are the only ones following the concept of consent.

The #metoo Movement

The recent occurrences in the Film Industry popularly known by the moniker “Bollywood” regarding the #metoo movement which originated in Hollywood last year has claimed a quite a few names in the Industry. In Hollywood, #metoo movement, went viral in October 2017, as a on social media which was a movement to expose the prevalence of sexual harassment, especially in the workplace. In 2017, , an American actress used the “twitter” platform to start a public movement against incidents of sexual harassment and urged people to “tweet” about their personal accounts in this matter (Khomami, 2017). This was met with success that included but was not limited to high-profile posts from several American celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashley Judd, and Uma

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Thurman. The tweet by Milano using #metoo on October 15, 2017, was used more than 200,000 times that day and next day, more than 500,000 times (Sini, 2017). On , this hashtag was used in more than 12 million posts on that day. The platform reported that 45% of users in the United States had a friend who had posted using the term (CNN, Cassandra, Doug, 2017). On October 5, 2017, reports of sexual assault and harassment claims against film producer surfaced. By October 31, over 80 women had come out against Weinstein. This ignited the "#metoo" social media crusade against many powerful men around the world, who were taken to task. Now "" is collectively used to describe this phenomenon.

In India too, # started a year after the Hollywood when , a former Miss India and Bollywood actress accused of sexually harassing her on the sets of a film, Horn Ok Please back in 2008. Her crusade started off a ripple effect in which, women from all walks of life but especially from Bollywood came out with their versions of sexual misdemeanors. TV writer and director Vinita Nanda came out against in social media and alleged that he sexually assaulted her almost 20 years ago. She also disclosed that Alok Nath also sexually harassed other lead actress Navneet Nishan after binge drinking. , another prominent actress has also posted an unsavoury account of sexual harassement by the Alok Nath while they were shooting for a telefilm. Apart from that, Actor Deepika Amin also alleged sexual harassment by Alok Nath (Indian Express, 2018). The biggest one to tumble was M.J.Akbar, Minister of state for external affairs (The Quint, 2018). He was accused by a former Journalists Ghazala Waheb and Priya Ramani among others of sexual misconduct while he was their boss in (, 2018).

It is not so that the incidents of sexual harassment have been uncovered in Bollywood by #metoo movement. Cinema, particularly emanating from Bollywood has been held responsible for legitimizing the objectification of women and as an industry Bollywood itself is mostly an unorganized sector with gender power equation, heavily tilted in favor of men, who more than often tend to consider women as an easy prey. Szymanski states that Female sexual objectification by a males makes a woman being viewed primarily as an object of male sexual desire, rather than as a whole person (Szymanski, 2011). Sexual depictions of women in Bollywood where women are represented as weak, submissive or sexually promiscuous, like in the raunchy item dance numbers are rampant. In fact the Tanushree episode presumably happened while filming of an Item song.

The important observation from these cases is that these are a few incidents riding on the crest of social media that might be an ephemeral phase. There has been no movement on the part of the Media and Film industry to act on these incidents or bring out some kind of policy document for the code of ethical conduct and terms in Media and Entertainment industry to be followed or coming out with efforts to bring about a sensitization for a healthy workspace atmosphere for both genders. The problematic fact is that in media and entertainment industry in India, sexual harassment is rampant not only in the case of women but also men who are less forthcoming

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about revealing their harassment episodes because of the social taboo associated with it (Sharma, 2018).

Non-specific Gender Objectification

Considering that psychoanalytically, it is an innate desire, the whole debate of male gaze and scopophilia can be castigated but never omitted as it is a basal instinct and the popular media especially, cinema and now with the unshackled web media, away from the clutches of censor board have emerged with bold scenes and mind-numbing violence. The objectification process in cinema and TV has caused damage to both genders. Sommers and Wolf have stated that women's sexual liberation resulted in women taking up the “gaze”, wherein they viewed men as sex objects ( Wolf, 1994) (Sommers, 1995). Sexual objectification of men by women include films, television, beefcake calendars, advertisements, music videos, shows, male strip shows, modeling, women's magazines (Neimark, 2016). The psychological implications of objectification on men are same as in case of women leading to negative body image among men (Neimark, 2016).

In Bollywood, the “six-pack abs” trend brought into vogue ironically by a female film maker, Farah Khan when she shot an “Item Number” with superstar Shahrukh Khan for Om Shanti Om in 2007, which was later carried on by the other members of the Khan triumvirate namely for his 2008 film Gajini and Salman Khan for Wanted. Since then, the concept of a sculpted body hasn’t changed with physical manifestation of power and masculinity with definitive presence of “six-pack abs” very much in demand. In this particular aspect, the concept of scopophilia is turned on its head in the current times as the male gender is becoming victim of the said process. The “gaze” in this case belongs to both gender as on the surface, the female pleasing-body-sculpting exercise has gone awry as the male fans are rooting for the perfectly chiseled body and “trolling” the ones who have tied to fake it (Quint, 2018). The pressure on the male brigade in film Industry to maintain a chiseled body has now spawned a fitness mania in Bollywood with several prominent stars openly speaking about the unhealthy practice of unnatural muscle tone (Indicine, 2014).

Making the “Gaze” redundant

The debate of male gaze and Scopophilia has been going on for the past 40 years and innumerable researches have been made which have castigated the industry specially Media Entertainment and Advertising Industry for objectifying women. Interestingly, in the past decade they have been many instances where sexually liberating content in Film and Television have been described as positive and liberating for women. That is really surprising because previously in 70s and 80s the liberated feminism, especially sexual liberation of women was criticized as a

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misdirected attitude but in the last decade, the sexually liberated female protagonist has been hailed by the media and the society for effectively portraying the innermost aspirations of the modern woman. The recent spate of sexually liberated female oriented films in Bollywood which have resulted in enhancement of the image of the female protagonist as an actor playing layered or multi-faceted characters have been profusely praised for talking about the aspirations of the common women. In the 2017 film , the sexuality of a wide range of women is discussed from various perspectives, from a burkha clad teenager to a career oriented women, a love starved married women to a 55 year old widow who lusts for a ripped, muscular, 25 year old male. Directed by , this film with brazen display of the raw sexual emotions of women across various age strata, was initially stonewalled by Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) stating that it had explicit sexual scenes and “Audio Pornography” also because the two of sexually liberated women shown in the film belonged to muslim community euphemistically named as “One particular section of society” (Lohana, 2017). The film was received with overwhelming praise from audience and especially media critics. The Quint, Mid-Day, News 18, Miss Malini, India.com, Navbharat Times, , Indian Express, Asian Age, Daily News and Analysis et al heaped praises for the film inspite of the graphic sexual acts and use of cuss words.

In 1996, Fire, the first mainstream Bollywood film about lesbian love has been an iconic queer film since then. Directed by Deepa Mehta, the film is about discovery of passion and love between Radha (Shabana Azmi) who is an older sister-in-law to Sita (Nandita Das) that develops into a lesbian relationship. Their act of sexual liberation becomes a catalyst for defying the patriarchal bondages. In 2005, Deepa Mehta came out again with film Water about the “Varanasi widows” in which the female protagonist’s sexual awakening was kindled in an environment in which it was considered taboo. Both films despite getting praise from filmmakers and critics were vociferously opposed by right wing Hindu organizations and faced violent protests with then Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray compared lesbianism to a sort of a social AIDS which will corrupt tender minds (Bearak, 1998).

Other films in the recent times have been Margarita With A Straw (2014) Directed by Shonali Bose in which a teenager Laila (Kalki Koechlin), afflicted with cerebral palsy is having her romantic dilemmas as a bisexual woman. While Laila is not able to fully express herself sexually, she has a string of affairs regardless.

Subverting Scopophilia and Desexualizing the Cinema

The films in which basal instincts are titillated through narratives of sexual crimes like rape and molestation are created for making an easy buck at the box office. Interestingly the production house helmed by a women, that is and maker of Lipstick under my Burkha, the groundbreaking film about the sexual aspirations of marginalized women has also made Ragini MMS series of films which have been instrumental in heralding the second coming for horror films in India with a redefined genre titled “Horrex” a colloquial amalgamation of

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horror and sex (Dave, 2018). Ragini MMS 2 starring former porn star Sunny Leone is a classic example of on-screen titillation. Using the conventional, clichéd horror tropes, the film perfectly fits the bill for male sexual gaze and objectification of female form. The film uses close up of various body parts of Sunny Leone in intimate scenes, almost supplanting the sexual experience of the audience. Voyeuristic camera is at its best in the horror scenes in which scantily clad Sunny is surveyed lustily with camera creeping all over her body. The film was a hit and made over Rs.60 crores on box office besides ancillary revenue from online and satellite rights. Subjugating this viewpoint is Lipstick Under My Burkha from the stable of Balaji Telefilms. In a scene of sexual act between Rahim and his wife Shireen Aslam played by Sushant Singh and Konkana Sen Sharma respectively, the character of Shireen is wincing with pain in the sexual act, apparently because of gynecological reasons. The subjective camerawork empathizes with the character as the focus is not on her body but her emotional reaction. In the case of her husband also the camera shows him explicitly trying to get into the act but instead of looking vulgar, it just shows his perspective. In another case, arguably the most successful web series of India, Sacred Games, inspite of using expletives and cuss words, in episode six, Directed by , weaves the sexuality of characters in the narrative of the story. The camera alternatively takes the viewpoint (not point of view) of the characters Gaitonde and Subhadra played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Rajshri Deshpande in a scene involving a sexual act. By making the sexual depiction and experience subjective rather than an objective or voyeuristic viewpoint via camera in which the camera tries to reflect the state of mind of the characters rather than purveying the nudity or the specific body parts to the spectators dramatically desexualizes the cinematic experience and let the audience get more intimate with the narrative instead of the sexual act. In Sacred Games, Kashyap has made use of graphic acts of sex and besides shooting his female actors topless, he has also showed a sequence of frontal nudity despite that since about six months of airing the show, it has received very positive reviews from the media and critics. , Gulf News, NDTV, The Quint, Firstpost, Huffpost, IGN, The Wire, besides foreign experts from The New York Times, Metro, The Hollywood Reporter, The Globe and Mail, GQ et al heaped praises on the show and their Directors, Anurag Kashyap and . Terming the content as “radical”, “edgy” and “layered”, no where were the content termed as exploitative, lewd or obscene.

Apart from women centric narratives, Mainstream films have also demonstrated that the voyeuristic and sexual camera can be changed into a more subjective one by flipping the sexual exposure trope unto itself. There have been sensible efforts to include multi-layered and narrative centric women characters, who play a crucial part in the plot. Anurag Kashyap is a filmmaker who has started this trend with his films especially in the magnum opus, Gangs of Wassaypur (2012), where numerous women characters appear to give the story and the mise-en-scene to give a gender-holistic semblance. His other films namely Dev.D (2009), Gulaal (2009), That Girl in Yellow Boots (2011), Ugly (2014), Bombay Velvet (2015), Mukkabaz (2018), Manmarzian (2018) also have presence of strong, multi-faceted female characters.

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References

 #MeToo: Despite Multiple Allegations, MJ Akbar Refuses to Resign. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.thequint.com/news/india/minister-mj-akbar-former-editor-sexual- harassment-allegations-live-updates  #MeToo: Here is the list of all men from the film industry who have been accused of harassment. (2018). Retrieved from https://indianexpress.com/article/entertainment/Bollywood/me-too-accused-men-list- harassment-5396034/  Akshay and Ajay indirectly take a dig at Shahrukh Khan's 8 pack abs!. (2018). Retrieved from http://www.indicine.com/movies/Bollywood/akshay-and-ajay-indirectly-take-a-dig- at-shahrukh-khans-8-pack-abs/  Bearak, B. (1998). New Journal; A Lesbian Idyll, and the Movie Theaters Surrender. Nytimes.com. Retrieved 2 November 2018, from https://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/24/world/new-delhi-journal-a-lesbian-idyll-and-the- movie-theaters-surrender.html  Cassandra Santiago and Doug Criss, C. (2018). An activist, a little girl and the heartbreaking origin of 'Me too' . CNN. Retrieved 2 November 2018, from https://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/17/us/me-too-tarana-burke-origin-trnd/index.html  Dave, K. (2018). Horrex in Bollywood. Retrieved from https://www.filmfare.com/features/horrex-in-bollywood-7983.html

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 Mehandru, I. (2018). Picture abhi patriarchy hai: Studying Bollywood's sexism disease. Retrieved from https://theprint.in/opinion/picture-abhi-patriarchy-hai-studying- bollywoods-sexism-disease/133324/  Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen, 16(3), 6-18. doi: 10.1093/screen/16.3.6  Murphy, C. (2018). You'll never guess what adult action ladies are searching for online. Retrieved from https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/womens-porn-tastes-youll- never-5686920  Neimark, B. (2016). The Beefcaking of America. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/articles/199411/the-beefcaking-america

 Rozina, S. (2017). 'MeToo' and the scale of sexual abuse. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-41633857

 Seen This Clip of Salman Khan’s Fake Abs in ‘Ek Tha Tiger’?. (2018). The Quint. Retrieved 4 November 2018, from https://www.thequint.com/entertainment/Bollywood/salman-khan-vfx-fake-abs-in-tiger- zinda-hai

 Sharma, V., & Now, T. (2018). MeToo in Bollywood: It’s about time men came forward and started talking. Retrieved from https://www.timesnownews.com/mirror-now/in- focus/article/metoo-in-bollywood-it-s-about-time-men-came-forward-and-started-talking- me-too-campaign-india-me-too-india-tanushree-dutta-pooja-bhat-nana-patekar/296010  Sommers, C. (1995). Who stole feminism?. New York [etc]: Simon and Schuster.  Szymanski, D., Moffitt, L., & Carr, E. (2010). Sexual Objectification of Women: Advances to Theory and Research 1ψ7. The Counseling Psychologist, 39(1), 6-38. doi: 10.1177/0011000010378402  Waheb, G. (2018). M.J. Akbar, Minister and Former Editor, Sexually Harassed and Molested Me. Retrieved from https://thewire.in/media/mj-akbar-sexual-harassment  Wolf, N. (1994). Fire with fire. New York: Fawcett Columbine.

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