The culture of patriarchy and gender discrimination is endemic across the Southsian film and television industry, and stakeholders are not doing enough to change the status quo. Whether it’s regressive movie plots that sexualise and objectify women or television serials that normalise domestic violence, similar examples are rife across the region, especially the Subcontinent.
This was the common thread in a recent panel discussion titled ‘Directing Change: Gender Representation in South Asian Films and Television’, a virtual event that featured leading journalists, filmmakers and film critics from across the region.
“Gender representation across Indian languages is extremely troubling and there are so many commonalities in the way women are treated,” said Indian film critic Anna MM Vetticad. She pointed out how “sexual harassment is portrayed as an acceptable form of courtship, and domestic violence is normalised” on screen in cinema across India.
An award-winning Indian journalist, feminist and cultural commentator, Vetticad is the author of the book The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic, an overview of the contemporary Hindi film industry. “We live in a patriarchal society where women face violence all the time,” she said, “But are you portraying a reality or glorifying a problematic reality?”
Her Bangladeshi counterpart, Sadia Khalid Reeti, shared how misogynistic film plots dominated the narrative in her country. “Representation of women in Bangladeshi cinema has always been a reflection of how women are represented in society,” she said, sharing the storyline of one of Bangladesh’s biggest blockbuster films in which the young female lead is depicted in a negative light because two men fall in love with her and end up dying in violent circumstances.
“This is also because we have mostly male filmmakers,” opined Reeti, a film critic and screenwriter who has served as a jury member at Cannes Film Festival, International Film Festival of Kerala and Dhaka International Film Festival among many others.
Bringing in a producer’s perspective was Shailja Kejriwal, the only Southasian woman to have created cross-border content for television, web series, films and theatre. As chief creative officer, special projects, at Indian media and entertainment giant Zee group, she has pioneered path-breaking content that united India and Pakistan on a single platform for the first time in over 60 years through the television channel Zindagi and the production project of 12 films, Zeal for Unity.
“People think that just because there are women in decision-making positions, these are creative decisions. But money decisions govern creative decisions,” rued Kejriwal, explaining why it seems to some that that Indian television serials in the 1970s were more progressive than the ones we have at present.
Since only those with wealth and education had access to a television set at home in those days, films and serials were made keeping that audience in mind, she explained. But with television access now available to most people across socio-economic strata, content is created keeping the larger masses in mind, many of whom may be mired in patriarchy, discriminatory systems and lack of education.
Kejriwal, who has produced nationally acclaimed films and conceptualised Zee Theatre, which has presented over 80 thought-provoking teleplays since 2015, shared anecdotes from her own time as a producer, including the ‘problem’ of casting a 30-something single woman in a lead role in a Hindi film. “Just recently [Bollywood] made Pathaan and the way we show an ISI agent is ridiculous. And the way we depict women in a Rs 1000 crore film is bizarre,” she said.
The issue of sexist storylines in television serials found resonance across the border in Pakistan, with filmmaker Aisha Gazdar sharing her views on the steady decline in the quality of television content ever since the advent of Indian TV channels, including Zee, in her country.
The thought-provoking and nuanced family dramas of the 1980s in Pakistan, which were extremely popular across the border in India as well, are now a thing of the past, she stated. “People who have control of TV channels and production houses use them for their own ends,” said Gazdar, who founded Films d’Art, an independent film production company based in Karachi.
Her award-winning films include The Honour Deception, a short documentary on honour killings and the complications arising out of the Qisas and Diyat Law (Law of Retribution), and Silent Voices: Women home-based workers in Pakistan.
Questioning the logic of depicting domestic violence and repression of women in a casual manner in television dramas, Gazdar cited an example of a Pakistani television serial in which a woman is slapped by her husband for wearing something that his mother disapproves of. “Female audiences outnumber male for drama serials in Pakistan… No, they don’t want to see a girl being slapped because of what she wants to wear,” she said.
Australian-Indian actor, writer and filmmaker Saloni Chopra shared her own take. “Stories are usually told from a male perspective and the more women get behind the camera and the more women tell stories, that’s bound to change,” said Chopra, who played the lead role in Girls on Top, a joint production by BBC and MTV India, and also featured in Maya, a short film which was part of the Official Cannes Selection 2013.
“The one thing still missing [in South Asian cinema] is stories of older women. I don’t see us represent women above the age of 40. We’ve isolated them completely,” she added.
Author of the memoir Rescued by a Feminist, and producer and director of an Australian production Coconut, Chopra has been a vocal advocate for women’s rights and personal agency. Disappointed about the limited scope of representation for Southasian actors in Australian films, she decided to make her own feature film about modern love at odds with culture and tradition set in Melbourne.
Her views found endorsement from Bangladeshi indigenous rights activist Muktasree Chakma Sathi, who said the few indigenous actors in her country could never hope to play any roles outside of the token ‘tribal’ in films. “If you ask me about the representation of indigenous people in Bangladeshi cinema, zero is the answer,” she said bluntly.
A former journalist with a background in law, Chakma founded Supporting People and Rebuilding Communities – SPaRC, an indigenous women-led organisation based in Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh. She was Bangladesh’s first indigenous woman to win the UNICEF Meena Media Award, and the first indigenous woman to be selected as Senior Indigenous Fellow and a fellow of the UN OHCHR Fellowship Programme, Acumen Fellowship Bangladesh Programme, and Swedish Institute.
As a content creator who makes her feminist point through TikTok videos, Chakma has herself faced the brunt of online discrimination and trolling. “Indigenous women [content creators] in Bangladesh face cyber harassment and bullying not only from men of the majority community but also from men of their own community,” she regretted.
Organised by eShe, a media platform that amplifies women’s voices, and Southasia Peace Action Network (Sapan), the virtual event was hosted by Aekta Kapoor, the Delhi-based editor of eShe, and featured closing remarks by Boston-based journalist and peace activist Beena Sarwar, founder curator of Sapan.
“Just because [the filmmaker] happens to be a woman does not mean they’ll bring a gender perspective to the production. It’s not about male or female/femme, it’s more about patriarchy, capitalism and market forces,” Sarwar commented.
While film critic Sadia Khalid Reeti saw reason for optimism with more Southasian films making it to international film award platforms and with more women filmmakers stepping up, others such as Shailja Kejriwal were more pessimistic about the diminishing space for strong women characters and women-led films in Southasia.
“Leave us at least one corner,” she said, sharing how the television show Churails — a series produced in Pakistan by her organisation in which the subtext was women’s rage — was banned in Pakistan and pulled off air in India as well.
Journalist Anna MM Vetticad spoke of the need to hold filmmakers accountable for the male gaze in films. “This is a question I always raise with male directors, writers and producers: how is it that content about women doesn’t come naturally to you? And why are you not asking yourselves that question? Women form 50 percent of humanity. How do you not see us around you?” she asked.
Documentary filmmaker Aisha Gazdar went a step further and stressed on the need for watchdog organisations calling out sexism in films, television and advertising. “Unless we protest and push back on a regular basis,” she warned, “we’re just going to be talking to the converted and not finding results.”
Co-published with eShe. Lead image: The News Minute
Note on Southasia as one word: Following the lead of Himal Southasian, Sapan uses ‘Southasia’ as one word, “seeking to restore some of the historical unity of our common living space, without wishing any violence on the existing nation states”.
Southasia Peace Action Network 