{"id":665,"date":"2016-07-30T16:28:32","date_gmt":"2016-07-30T16:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=665"},"modified":"2016-07-30T16:28:32","modified_gmt":"2016-07-30T16:28:32","slug":"dangal-kolkata-bollywood-shah-rukh-khan-amitabh-bachchan-pink-dear-zindagi-kahaani-2-vidya-balan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/?p=665","title":{"rendered":"B-Town Wonder Women and their Wingmen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Y<\/span>ou didn\u2019t have to wait until December 23 to hear the most affecting line in <\/p>Dangal<\/em>. There it was on the movie poster, \u201cMhaari chhoriyan chhoron se kam hain ke?\u201d kick-starting the campaign to shape the way we would view Dangal<\/em>: as a feminist film. Pick your quibbles with it, but Dangal<\/em> delivers on the promise that it made on several counts: In the story that it chooses to tell at all, in centering the conflicts of its female leads, and in its refusal to sexualise their bodies for presentation.\n\nThe rhetorical question that Dangal<\/em> sets out to answer over the course of two hours and forty minutes, could well serve as the tagline for a particular kind of film we saw in 2016. Movies that were premised on the struggles of their female hero\/heroes \u2013 and the men who enabled them or delivered them from those troubles. Films like Pink<\/em> and Dangal<\/em> took off with a get-set-go feminist stance, while those like Kahaani 2<\/em> and Dear Zindagi<\/em> chose to deliver the same message with subtlety \u2013 each with varying degrees of success. (Of course, four swallows do not a summer make, but who\u2019s to prevent us from being hopeful?)\n\nDangal<\/em> dives into the incredible true story of wrestling champions Geeta and Babita Phogat who were hurled into the sport by their father Mahavir Singh Phogat. A lot of the criticism that the film has drawn focuses on how Aamir hijacks a story meant to be about female wrestlers, how Geeta and Babita appear to have no agency without him.\n\nFair critiques really, but to my mind, this is also missing the wood for the trees. At its heart, Dangal<\/em> is a film about breaching a male sphere: On the mat and on film. The only female bodies that occupy half of its substantial runtime are those of children. That\u2019s a fairly progressive step for Bollywood, which has started thinking of its heroines as individuals only in the last decade and a half. Dangal<\/em> is just as much a film about tiger parenting, and a man who would move mountains \u2013 and his own prejudices \u2013 to get his daughters to succeed.\n\nIn a 2014 essay<\/a> titled \u201cWhy Feminism Needs Men\u201d, author Rebecca Solnit makes a point about the three kinds of men out there. \u201cSo there are the allies and the haters,\u201d she writes. \u201cAnd then there are a slew of men who may mean well, but enter the conversation about feminism with factually challenged assertions that someone \u2013 usually, in my experience, a woman \u2013 will spend a lot of time trying to rectify.\u201d While Solnit\u2019s discussion is focused exclusively on how men think about violence against women, this third kind of man is crucial to any debate on feminism.\n

Does every male figure who aids a woman become a hectoring patriarch letting the girls know what is good for them?<\/blockquote>\nThese men, in my wholly unscientific observation, surpass the other two categories. They fill up our offices, our immediate and extended families, several of them are our friends. The fence-sitters who begin conversations with, \u201cI don\u2019t want to sound sexist, but\u2026\u201d It is to this category that films like Dangal<\/em> and Pink<\/em> can really speak.\n\nI caught a morning show of Pink<\/em> wound up tight in a nearly empty hall this September. Two young men behind me crunched through their nachos, pausing to giggle at certain junctures, particularly at lines laden with innuendo. By the end of the film, however, I overheard one of them talk to the other about consent: \u201cKabhi socha nahi tha na aisa iske baare mein?\u201d\n\nOf course anecdotal evidence proves nothing and Pink<\/em> has several legitimate problems: Just like Dangal<\/em>, its female leads lack agency, Taapsee Pannu\u2019s spitfire character is completely flattened as the film goes along, the court scenes are particularly overblown\u2026 and then there is Amitabh Bachchan\u2019s hamming. The last was exceptionally galling for most of us. \u201cWhy did it have to be a man,\u201d asked a friend with whom I discussed the film recently. \u201cWhy couldn\u2019t his role have been portrayed by a woman?\u201d (Shabana Azmi, we both answered instinctively.)\n\nBut then again, why couldn\u2019t it be a male actor? Is there a singular way of looking at men who come to the aid of women in film? Does every male figure who aids a woman become a hectoring patriarch letting the girls know what is good for them?\n\nThere are two ways to look at Bachchan and Khan lending their heft to two of the most feminist statements we have seen in mainstream cinema this year. According to the first, this is a cynical appropriation of a hot-button issue that both the stars have piggybacked on to make films where they have the meatiest roles. Likely; probably true.\n\nOn the other hand, a more generous \u2013 perhaps na\u00efve \u2013 view, is that the two genuinely believe in the subjects that the films dealt with. It is helpful to include men in the conversation around women\u2019s issues. No matter where you stand on the \u201cHe for She\u201d campaign<\/a>, we know achieving an equitable world would be way easier if men would pitch in. We\u2019ve moved along from our witches\u2019 covens: Feminism needs male allies and partners, and Bollywood could really do us a solid.\n\nSujoy Ghosh\u2019s Kahaani 2<\/em> \u2013 the sequel to the original Kahaani<\/em> only in spirit \u2013 has a fine example of an ally in Arjun Rampal\u2019s character. He has just enough screen time and his character is perfectly positioned to come to the aid of a distressed mother of a wheelchair-bound daughter, whether in helping her get rid of a child-abusing villain or in hitching a ride from the boondocks to Kolkata. Even though Rampal\u2019s character is linked closely to the film\u2019s climax, its denouement belongs solely to Vidya Balan.\n\nAbout a week before Kahaani 2 <\/em>released, Dear Zindagi <\/em>hit theatres. It\u2019s rare to see a film that draws such polarised views. I found myself rather bored by its protagonist\u2019s first-world problems, but I was secretly cheering to see that a young woman\u2019s interior problems, her inability to commit to or hold down a relationship, her loudness were deemed fit enough for the screen, all without judgment. (Remember that this is a niche exclusively occupied by Ranbir Kapoor.) Shah Rukh Khan plays a dishy psychiatrist who helps the young woman find her feet, nudging her through gentle, if anodyne, advice and encouragement \u2013 not by telling her what to do.\n\nThe impact that these films leave is not going to be immediately measurable, but I hope in the years to come we\u2019ll still think about how each of them have gone some distance in ensuring that the stories of women are just as relevant and just as successful. And that there will be some men who will enable them, on and off-screen, edging around the traps patriarchy sets for everyone. Of course none of these stories were perfect \u2013 but in the conversations that they have ignited, there is more promise than Bollywood has held in a while.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2016, we saw movies like Pink and Dangal that were premised on the struggles of female heroes \u2013 and the men who enabled them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":666,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[702,1009,141,27,1097,1230,1231,1232,1233,1158,1234,152,1235,154],"class_list":["post-665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-amitabh-bachchan","tag-arjun-rampal","tag-bollywood","tag-dangal","tag-dear-zindagi","tag-kahaani-2","tag-kolkata","tag-mahavir-singh-phogat","tag-pink","tag-ranbir-kapoor","tag-shabana-azmi","tag-shah-rukh-khan","tag-sujoy-ghosh","tag-vidya-balan"],"yoast_head":"\nB-Town Wonder Women and their Wingmen<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In 2016, we saw movies like Pink and Dangal that were premised on the struggles of female heroes \u2013 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