STEREOTYPES IN BOLLYWOOD
Bollywood has been and still is an important part of Indian culture. More often than not, we base our judgment of people on what we see on screen, or rather, what we have seen on screen since the foundation of bollywood. For most of the century, cinema has existed in the Indian Subcontinent; specific cultures and “types” of people are painted stereotypically.
Google defines “STEREOTYPE” as a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.The Cambridge Dictionary defines “STEREOTYPE” as a set idea that people have about what someone or something is like, especially an idea that is wrong.
For example, gender profiling is currently a significant problem in India. While there is patriarchy to take most of the liability for it, mass media tends to preserve a fixed behavior that males and females are supposed to exhibit. As consumers of mass media, we tend to stick to that judgment of people around us, even in real life.
A man is essentially supposed to be the household's jobholder, while a woman is supposed to be a great cook, wife, and mother. Evidence of this is shown in almost all family-based movies such as Vivah and Hum Saath Saath Hai. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai shows how the male lead falls in love with the female lead only after transforming into a beautiful nymph-like human.
Movies such as Ki and Ka attempted to patch this moral policing and gender profiling but missed the point.
Another significant problem is with the painting of religious and racial minorities. Sikhs, just as any other ethnic minority, are manifested in an incredibly stereotypical manner – either they were shown as fearless warriors in movies such as Gadar: Ek Prem Katha or as noisy, uncivilized, alcoholic party freaks like in Yamla Pagla Deewana.
Indian bollywood has made many war films and in most of them MUSLIMS were introduced as our federal enemy!! Post 9/11, terrorist attacks now cinema has introduced muslims as our global enemies. Most Indian movies that have anything war-related have Pakistanis as the foe. Like in movies like Baby, Ek The Tiger.
Similarly, people of the LGBTQ+ community, mostly homosexual men, are portrayed as having feminine features. Most movies mock the way they (stereotypically) walk and dress—movies like Student Of The Year and Dostana.
Cinema has, not just in India but globally, made us rely on these stereotypes to form a judgment of others, and this, in turn, has led us to have awful feelings towards others only because of their race, gender, or ethnicity.
But the film industry is not all toxic – although there have mostly been misses on featuring characters from various communities, there have also been some hits. Movies such as Veere Di Wedding, Raazi, and Kahaani portray women as strong-independent women in multiple situations. Shubh Mangal Zyada Savdhan There’s also movies like Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag that portray Sikhs as they are and not as the rest of the society assumes them to be. Movies like My Name Is Khan address racism against Muslims, and Mulk shows Muslims positively.
LGBTQ+ representation, however, is much difficult to show on the big screen as it is still a veto to the censor board. There are, however, movies that idiosyncratically tackle the problem – such as Margarita With a Straw, Fire, Aligarh, and Shubh Mangal Zyaada Savdhan. These movies respectfully show characters from the community.
Bollywood is slowly moving towards striking out these stereotypes and precase moving towards a better and open-minded future.
