Last week, Sushant Singh Rajput and Kriti Sanon’s film Raabta joined the long list of Hindi films that have an unapologetically sexist and racist representation of the white woman. The firang women in the film set in Budapest are either dumb blondes who are easy prey for our lady killer, or temperamental women who like to have desi guys wrapped around their little finger.
It is not the filmmaker’s fault really — he was merely articulating what millions of Indian men have believed in, and what their mothers have taught them to believe in. That a single white woman in the West, the archetypal gori is not to be trusted. They are good at seducing and distracting the maa ka laadla, who believes no woman other than his mother deserves to be treated with respect. So it is okay to take her out on a date, make out with her and then dump her because a desi girl is waiting for you somewhere or the firangi woman does not really care for laddoos and parathas.
So much so, Hindi films have routinely used the white woman as a trope to establish how the hero is waylaid by the West in all its hedonistic glory. They are sexy, but not smart enough to understand a word of the desi insults that our men sometimes shower on them. Or they are wily and wild. Remember the time when the ‘vamp’ in our films was always a woman who wore a blonde wig and slit skirt and drank Coca Cola from wine glasses?
This could also explain why, back in the country, white women have the worst kind of experiences while travelling solo or simply walking our streets. The idea that they are easy and willing, simply because they are white, has been wired into our system. It is almost as if every fair skinned woman is over sexed and is always looking for ‘action.’ And even if they are not, it is alright to heckle them, harass them and pass lewd remarks in some vernacular language or the other.
While sexual harassment in India is not exclusive to the white woman, Bollywood has definitely played its part in reinforcing a twisted stereotype. It makes no sense then to make politically correct noises if the West returns the favour by calling Priyanka Chopra a sexy Indian goddess or something like that, does it? Or if a pop star chooses to use an image of Kali to tell the world exactly how she is feeling?
(Scribbler, scribe, traveller Chandrima Pal takes you through the sexual landscape of today)
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