SEX BIAS, THY NAME IS INDIAN CINEMA
Cinema is the most powerful medium. It can pack the worst things into the best packing and sell them to the eyes of viewers. The messages conveyed through the films remains live on viewers’ mental spaces for long. After seeing a film when a viewer goes home, he/she carries with him/her a message the filmmakers overtly or covertly had communicated through the visual effects.
A viewer returning from a theatre filters all the images seen and tries to sort out the elements of pleasure the crowd had adored. Coupled with the message of ‘be a conformist and remain happy forever’, they arrive on a premise that if they want to be happy, they need to be followers of the old traditions. Thus the cinema overtly or covertly professes for the orthodoxy.
The Traditional Films: The term ‘orthodoxy’ has several meanings. But in general it refers to the observance of the beliefs of older generations, without testifying them under the lenses of reason. These beliefs which are not rationally justified but are imposed by some overseeing body. Somemes this phenominon is known as dogma, too. The term dogam refer to the incidences of intellectual bancraptcy wherein we deny reason to be taken as primary basis of authority In this age of enlightenment everywhere, it is irony of our entertainment industry that the films having unconventional ideas go bankrupt. On ticket windows these films, made by keeping true modernity in focus, have measurably failed to get attention of the people.
The New Wave Cinema: However some innovative souls had stepped out of the main road and had produced films with a different perspective. The films like ‘Arth’, ‘Mirch Masala’, and ‘God Mother’ were among them. These films depicted, especially, the women’s unusual responses to the challenges they face in life. In ‘Arth’ the woman protagonist denies to remarry after an unhappy ending of her first marriage. In a novel production ‘Mirch Masala’, the collective strength of women fights with the dominant forces present in our society. In ‘God Mother’, the woman protagonist acts with an altered vision. She resorts to reciprocal violence after her husband is murder.