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.
Narendra Gupta has been a part of the film industry for the last 35 years. He was previously the editor of Bollywood’s lifestyle magazine Red Carpet. Nowadays he is active on his YouTube Channel, Narendra Gupta Film City and is popularly known for his honest views.
Here’s what Narendra Gupta has to say on this topic:
“From the very beginning, in Bollywood films, it’s the hero who is the centre of attention. Even today, 90% of films made are hero oriented. We rarely get to watch women-centric films every year. In the olden days too, prominent actresses like Nargis, Meena Kumari and Madhubala were seen in barely a few heroine-oriented films. Hema Malini, Rekha, Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil, Sridevi, Madhuri Dixit, etc., also did just 1 or 2 films where they were the only leading actors. They had to work mainly in mainstream films. From the ’90s onwards, Tabu, Rani Mukerji, Priyanka Chopra, Vidya Balan, Kangana Ranaut, Taapsee Pannu, Sonam Kapoor left a mark but again they did not get much recognition with women-centric films.
The success rate of women-oriented films is very poor at the box office. Hence producers don’t want to take any risks. Over the past 80 years, there are more or less only 25 women-centric films that have become hits; the rest flopped badly. Films like ‘Mother India’ (1957), ‘Damini’ (1993), ‘Bandit Queen’ (1994), ‘Earth’ (1999), ‘Chandni Bar’ (2001), ‘Lajja’ (2001), ‘Page 3’ (2005), ‘Black’ (2005), ‘Fashion’ (2008), ‘The Dirty Picture (2011), ‘No One Killed Jessica’ (2011), ‘English Vinglish’ (2012), ‘Kahaani’ (2012), ‘Queen’ (2013), ‘Mardaani’ (2014), ‘Mary Kom’ (2014), ‘Dear Zindagi’ (2016), ‘Neerja’ (2016), ‘Pink’ (2016), ‘Raazi’ (2018), ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’ (2022), have only worked well at the box office. Otherwise, there are a lot of other women-centric films which couldn’t even manage to find an audience in cinemas. That’s why producers do not want to work on women-centric films.
Mostly, heroines are used as showpieces in Bollywood. At times, they are seen in 2 or 3 scenes or songs; that’s it. You will be shocked to hear that even big actresses are given the script on the sets. They don’t even have a basic idea about their scene or character before they arrive. This is so shameful. Frankly speaking, even stories of women-centric films are not so strong that producers would take the risk. Various women-centric films were during the pandemic, some of which have not even gotten a release.
As a result, I don’t think even in the coming days this scenario will change in Bollywood.”
