Recently I heard a very interesting talk on TED which was shared by one of my Facebook friends. The talk was by Colin Stokes and it was about how movies teach manhood? I loved the talk for so many reasons, one of them was the way he explained in very simple terms how opinions and thinking of kids (both boys and girls) are shaped by watching these movies. Most of these movies (including many classics like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc.) project women as helpless characters who can't even fight simple injustice done to them and are always waiting for some prince Charming to rescue them. In all these stories finally the Prince Charming comes, performs all the heroic acts, rescues the poor princess, gets his reward, and then both live together happily ever after. A nice and simple storyline for almost every romantic movie of our era, only a few things change here and there. The names of characters may change but the central storyline is the same (even today). In most children's movies or even love stories, a woman is projected as a "trophy." Something man has to win by rescuing her from trouble. Most female characters cannot come out of difficulties on their own, they always need to be rescued.
The beauty of all these movies is that they are so well made that we don't see anything wrong with them. They are classics. I agree that they are just for the purpose of entertainment and one should look for anything else in them. However, is it as simple as this? Directly or indirectly don't these movies shape our thinking also? Do these movies teach the wrong concept of manhood and womanhood to us and our kids? I think they do. This is the message Colin Stokes wants to give us from his talk. Honestly, I never thought about this issue (the impact of these types of movies on our thinking) but after listening to this talk I thought about this and found how correct he is about his assessment. I love many of these movies, watched them many times, and read most of these stories in my childhood. My kids also love many of them and when I look back I clearly see that many of these movies consciously or unconsciously shape our thinking. They can stereotype a particular gender or class in our society. Boys can start looking at girls as their "victory trophies," something that they have to win. Girls start dreaming about some prince charming who can rescue them. I know that all this sounds a little too exaggerated and over the top but there is an element of truth in this TED talk. I highly recommend it.
Another example of this that I see today is many taunts and poor jokes purposely targeted toward gay people in many Hindi movies. These jokes are many times totally unnecessary and are in bad taste but it seems no one is bothered about these things. It seems people don't find anything wrong in poking fun at gays for no reason. Targeting that community and making them objects of ridicule is considered comic. Superficially it looks very harmless and just for entertainment which should not be taken too seriously but any such comment on any other sensitive issue is not taken in the same spirit. A couple of jokes here and there are fine but when only a particular gender or group is targeted continuously and consistently then definitely there is some problem and we need to address it. Movies are a very strong medium they affect many people and in some way, they also reflect our society's mindset.
Movie making is a business and they try to sell what people want to buy. A lot of money is at stake and they need to make a profit, actually, a lot of profit. We can not expect the film industry to reform society but at least we can play our part and try to nullify any negative effects produced by some of these movies. After all, we all know that some things are not as harmless as they look. Already we can see the effect of these types of stories and movies on our own minds and our society. I am not saying to discard all these movies or to dump these stories. We should tell them with a clear "disclaimer" that these are products of pure fiction, they are gender biased, and don't have any relationship with real life. We also need to tell some stories with powerful female characters so that children don't get some stereotyped one-sided impression about their gender roles. It's not only our responsibility but it is the need of our society. Let's try to redefine manhood and womanhood. Let's give these terms some balanced meaning.
Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.
(Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing)
References:
1. http://www.ted.com/talks/colin_stokes_how_movies_teach_manhood.html
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