Recently Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) raised an important question in its talk show, ‘Is Bollywood Sexist?’. The discussion happened after the Tata Institute of Social Sciences released a report that stated that in most successful Hindi films, the story was driven by male characters and many hit movies portrayed women in a sexist manner.
In this new series, KiaGia.com will be asking various celebrities, media personalities and journalists about whether they, too, believe that Bollywood is sexist.
Fenil Seta is an entertainment journalist with nearly 11 years of experience. He’s also a short filmmaker; he has made three films till date – ‘Sunn Raha Hai Na’ (2017), ‘Bawraa’ (2018) and ‘Check Out’ (2023), all of which have been quite acclaimed.
Here’s what Fenil has to say on this topic:
“There’s no doubt that Bollywood is indeed sexist and the study by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences has been an eye-opener. But we need to understand that our films simply reflect society. Also, one needs to make films that society will accept. ‘Raazi’ (2018) and ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’ (2022) are the only two Rs. 100 Crore women-centric grossers. Incidentally, both starred Alia Bhatt and the audiences were pulled into the cinemas due to her star power, apart from the content of course. The women-centric films often don’t do huge business and have to be made on a tight budget to earn profits. Moreover, society also consists of women and often, they themselves prefer watching male-centric machismo films over films featuring women in the lead. Look at the videos of women gushing over Allu Arjun while exiting the theatre after watching ‘Pushpa’ (2021). And mind you, Pushpa, too, is a problematic character who doesn’t treat his woman right. And yet, he earned a female fan following through this film.
However, things have changed in the last few decades, more so after the Nirbhaya incident of 2012. Consent does play an important role when the hero is wooing a girl. Gone are the days when heroes will harass a girl and stalk her to win her over. That’s the reason that certain films of the ’80s and ’90s look completely outdated and regressive to viewers today. This shows that society has progressed. However, everyone progresses and evolves at their own pace. Those who research these studies evolved faster and expect society to follow suit at the same pace. That’s not practical. I am sure in the years to come, our films will be even more progressive and a woman-centric film will soon cross the Rs. 300 Crore mark!”
