FOCUS OF WOMEN IN BIG/SMALL SCREEN

From Sampath’s Desk:

 

FOCUS OF WOMEN IN BIG/SMALL SCREEN

 

Women have already made foray and deep inroads into many fields including those hitherto considered as male bastions. Although the big and small screens are generally keeping women’s status exalted and aloft, there is some concern as well. Some films/TV channel serials depict and portray women as weaklings and an ever-wailing lot. Doesn’t it smack of inanity or stupidity? In the name of entertainment, why should we kick ourselves back to the days of conservatism regarding women which we have always wanted to do away with and forget? Why go back to the foregone era instead of moving forward with women empowerment going great guns. Today, there is not a single field into which our women have not entered or are lagging behind, acquitting themselves creditably well even in the so-called traditional male domains. They are marching ahead shoulder-to-shoulder with men in all walks of life holding half the sky. 

 

Be that as it may, while we were blaming the tinsel world for showing mindless violence against women, torture of innocents, rape-cum-murders, revenge-taking, hero-worship, and even glorifying the villainous characters, the turn has now come for arraying those allegations and accusations against the small screen serials also on some TV channels some of which are in bad taste and show women in poor light, betraying their cause! This they do perhaps to sensationalize women related issues assuming that they are attracting people’s attention to them least realizing that it will be counter-productive. Why the producers of such TV serials have forgotten that we have come a long way in course correction of the past mistakes against women? Today, many wrongs against women have become a thing of the past! Aren't they?    

 

In some TV serials, some women characters are shown in poor light or as a pitiable lot. This is a travesty of truth. Some films/TV serials depict women as show-pieces, glamour girls, witches, weaklings, or weaker gender, especially as weeping and lamenting lot, constantly in tears supplicating before male characters for mercy, pardon, etc. Hypocrisy personified! Women are shown as being fully dependent on men and as if they can live in society only at the mercy of and as subservient to males. This is an old-school thought. The patriarchal mindset should go. If females are said to be dependent on men, the reverse is also equally true. Males are also dependent on females in their life. One complements the other, and both are dependent on each other. It is reciprocal; no superiority or inferiority. Again, male sadism over females is conspicuously and woefully highlighted. We have eliminated many social banes and scourges attached to and practiced against women in the past. Many wrongs against them have already been undone. Such being the case, the serials show as if such wrongs are still being perpetrated on a large-scale against women making the female characters weep, cry, scream, screech, etc.,  and what not! Still worse, in some cases, the perpetrators themselves are female in-law characters. Themes of enslavement of and cruelty against women, female foeticide, abandoning of girl children, etc. are unnecessarily over-focussed. This is disgusting, disquieting, and even alarming, to say the least in the modern world where we make a tall and loud talk of civilized life, women freedom, and equality of men and women, seeking to end gender discrimination - lock, stock, and barrel - and champion the cause of empowerment of women and rights to them on par with men. Enough is enough. The yoke has to be broken at any cost and by all means. Women can no longer be kept fettered and indoors as they are not just kitchen queens. We have to certainly bid adieu to the obdurate, obstinate, intractable, and intransigent conservatism and the thoughts of the old school. Society has to give them the wings which they richly deserve to fly free.

 

There is also a need for censoring TV serials to guard against such dismal portrayals of women. At least, one-half of members of such Censor Boards should be women.

      

 

R.SAMPATH