It has been a strange week for women in cinema. In one part of the country, the self-styled vigilantes of ‘Indian culture and history’ threatened to chop off Deepika Padukone’s nose for, well, doing her job and in another part, Jyothika was chastised for uttering an expletive in a teaser.
Rajputs never raise a hand on women but if need be, we will do to Deepika what Lakshman did to Shurpanakha: Mahipal Singh Makrana of Rajput Karni Sena in a self-made video #Padmavatipic.twitter.com/82AWKGO7IU
The actor plays a cop in Bala’s film Naachiyaar. In a teaser that is devoid of dialogues, the actor is heard mouthing a cuss word towards end. It was obviously intentional, aimed to make an impact. Jyothika has so far maintained a holier than thou image on- and off-screen and her swearing is bound to elicit a response. In order to show women characters as tough and intense, filmmakers often lace their dialogues with profanities but that necessarily is not true. Remember, Meryl Streep in Devil Wears Prada? Within 24 hours of its release, the teaser has received a million hits.
An unintended consequence of this was the social media backlash. The obscenity has not gone down well with a section of the audience who feel that an actor (and woman) of Jyothika’s standing must not use such insults on-screen. Some even wondered how actor Sivakumar and son Suriya “allowed” Jyothika to do this film, while others claimed that the word is an insult to women all over Tamil Nadu. Some concerns are legitimate while others are steeped in patriarchy with men dictating what women should or should not do.
Let’s address the legitimate concerns first. Most cuss words are insulting to women, even while they are directed at men. Profanities are misogynistic and intended to insult men by shaming “their” women by pointing at their sexual immorality. So when a woman calls someone a motherf****er, it makes no sense. Also, trailers like these should come with a warning that it has adult content. The filmmaker is allowed to use gimmicky but that should also come with responsibility.
What’s wrong in the whole argument is the claim that a woman should not swear, it’s unladylike to use profanities. Also, there is no question of allowing Jyothika anything, that she is an adult woman capable of making her own decisions is not an argument that has been taken into account anywhere.
This is not new. For long, actresses have been held to different standards than the men. Tamil male actors get away with a lot of things – they cuss, rape, say politically incorrect things on-screen. They have been doing this for years together. They’re being held accountable for their actions only recently, but that’s mainly for political gain. Nobody has directed any man how to behave on-screen.
The women, however, exist in a different world altogether. They are thrust into roles that are deemed acceptable. Any deviation from the norm is not entertained. As actress Athulya Ravi found recently. She received a lot of flak for her appearance in the trailer of Yemali. She plays a young woman who has a pre-marital affair in the film. She can also be seen showing the middle finger to someone in the teaser. Predictably, this set off the moral police who eventually forced the actor to explain her actions. Following the attack by trolls, she put out an apology on her Facebook page for “disappointing” some of her fans.
Later, she told Silverscreen, “I didn’t apologise for my role; I apologised to some fans who are disappointed with my role… All I want to say is that I must not be judged based on my role. In fact, there is no need to judge any girl.”
Salony Luthra of Sarabham fame played a young woman addicted to drugs in the film. A scene towards the end of the movie shows her lighting up a cigarette. For some reason, after the release of the film, Luthra felt the need to explain that she did not smoke in real life.
Tellingly, Dhanush, STR, Ajith Kumar and Rajinikanth have never felt the need to explain themselves to the audience. These are actors who have all smoked, cussed, harassed women on-screen and never felt the need to explain their actions. Recently, Vijay Devarakonda’s work in Arjun Reddy was celebrated by critics and the audience. He was lauded for playing a misogynistic, entitled, violent man-child. Where was the moral police when everyone went gaga over his gritty performance?
“Tamil society is by and large still holding on to antiquated notions of femininity. Ideal women don’t cuss. Ideal women don’t speak out. Everybody speaks of Bharathiyar’s pudhumai penn. But very few can stomach it when a women is truly a pudhumai penn,” says Priya Shankar Menon, a psychologist researching on gender norms in the film industry.
Typically, Tamil directors like to associate such behaviour with the vamps and the ‘bad’ girls. “It’s cultural programming that makes us think like this. Oh she smokes, has a boyfriend and drinks. She must be a bad girl. There’s a very clear delineation. As opposed to male roles… they all smoke and drink and have premarital affairs. But nobody is calling them out,” says Kaajal, an up and coming actor.
“Several films show the hero as a stalker. There’s even a Tamil film that has a rapist as the protagonist. But these are all not protested. The minute a female member of the fraternity steps out of line though, the protests begin,” Menon observes.
Tamil cinema has not progressed much in terms of the way it views and portrays it’s women. For every path breaking film, there are 10 to 20 others that reinforce gender stereotypes. At such a time, films like Magalir Mattum, Aramm become all the more significant.
Jyothika is not alone in this. The great Dame Helen Mirren had to face the wrath of the moral police when she said she felt “f***ing awesome” approaching 70 at an awards function in 2014.
Nicky Minaj once told The Guardian, “Why do people ask me to lose swear words? Do people ask Eminem to lose swear words? Do they ask Lil Wayne to lose swear words? Nobody stops them and says ‘Would you stop swearing swearing… for the children, please?'”
