Double Standards for Women’s Content?
Among the few genres that are firm audience favourites and allow women’s stories to occupy the spotlight are romances and slice-of-life drama series. However, possibly because they’ve traditionally been considered “feminine”, they command less respect and rarely get the same kind of attention and resources as the more macho genres. Recent theatrical releases are a timely reminder of the sexist double standards that are ingrained in our society and often reflected through audience responses. The expectations from a film about women’s issues or led by a female cast are different from the standard, male-centric narratives. Films like Queen (2013), which was an unprecedented hit, suggest that to win over audiences, a woman-led narrative has to be exceptional. There’s no space for films about women to be middling in terms of quality.
For example, there’s no doubt Grand Masti (2013) is a much worse film than Thank You For Coming (2023), no matter what your yardstick. Director Indra Kumar’s sex comedy was led by three actors who were not A-listers and the film’s crudeness takes a hammer to the idea that commercial Hindi films need to be family entertainment. Yet Grand Masti was one of the top earners of its year. In contrast, Thank You For Coming features one of Hindi cinema’s more talented stars and while it has its share of flaws, director Karan Boolani doesn’t allow any hint of crassness to stain this story about a woman trying to figure out who is responsible for her first orgasm. The film fared poorly at the box office.
Content that features someone other than a man in a central role will inevitably be considered ‘risky’ because conventional wisdom suggests audiences are more forgiving of mediocrity when it comes fronted by a male actor (particularly if he’s a star). Fortunately, on streaming, taking that risk has often paid off, as successful franchises like Aarya, which is on its third season, show. In commercial cinema, we’ve seen audiences cheer for action heroines Deepika Padukone and Nayanthara as loudly as they did for Shah Rukh Khan in Jawan (2023). Unconventional stories like Satyaprem Ki Katha (2023), which uses hero Kartik Aaryan’s masculinity to highlight women’s experiences, have become surprise hits. So even if most of the numbers are disheartening, perhaps there is change and hope lurking in their subtext because evidently, there is scope to do much more than is being done at the moment to make Indian entertainment more gender inclusive. As head of India originals at Prime Video Aparna Purohit put it, “We need to ask ourselves is that the sum of our ambitions? Can we do more? And how?”
Here’s to more experiments and more heartwarming answers in the coming year.