Recently saw this movie called ‘Maa Behen’. Interestingly enough, watched ‘Obsession’ also a week before this.
First of all, women are viewed so differently in cinema.
Take a single woman: she either likes a guy or she doesn’t.
That’s it. That’s the whole crime. The guy’s ego gets hurt, so he takes revenge, demands his reassurance like it’s owed to him, and somehow the girl ends up with one of two endings the superwoman, all-good ending, or the trauma-bonding one.
‘Maa Behen’ is an extremely interesting movie. From using the term ‘KAAND’ to describe women’s love lifes a kiss, a half-sleeves top, an opinion to them being pushed over by their husbands like furniture rearranged.
In that movie a lady is one of two things: chaste or unchaste. She is a single, a widower, a prostitute, a promiscuous woman or she must have earned her good, heavenly, ‘pure’ husband by doing some dirty work. There is no third category. There is no neutral.
As long as a ‘wife’ listens, she is a good wife meaning a
DHARAM PATNI.
But the moment she becomes a widow the moment she is available
she is a WITCH, A DAYAN.
Interestingly enough, it is always there, encircling everything: the male gaze. Some men are good, respectful; some aren’t. Same with women. It is, ideally, basic human nature. But look at the symbolic architecture how ‘Adarsh Colony’s’ Almighty, its Jury, its Mahatma Gandhi, is its very own charitra Kumar Gupta. The emphasis falls on the Charitra, because not only was his charitra good and clean, he played an important role in the colony. A colony of people with different families, and one man appointed its moral arbiter.
It was interestingly dipicted that these 3 women the mother, a widow who engaged in licentious activities; a daughter who made videos on social media and a daughter who got married but whose husband had to make sure she was the ideal WIFE.
Who is an Ideal wife?
who makes 1 lakh rotis?
one who makes BAD rotis?
one who burns her hand while nakina ROlIS!
one who doesn’t make ROTIS?
one who makes ROTIS when she wants to?
Overall, these illicit women illicit only mildly, because they dont follow or abide by the rules followed and made by these ‘chaaritra’ men are looked down upon. And looked down upon hardest not by men, but by other women: women of ‘chaaritra’ and character, the ones who police these rules of Masculinity on its behalf.
In the movie Obsession, watch how something ordinary, something of daily life, gets transmuted into honor by a man. Being judged.
Being at home. Saying yes or No. The concept of Consent applies only to women. And every imposition made despite knowing exactly what it costs is rebranded as ‘Manly’.
This is not gendered. This is imprinted in our brains. Women v. women. Men v. women.
But the Respondent is always, somehow, a woman smiled out of her own life, performing for male appetite and satisfication. And the instant she fights back, she is no longer a person.
She is a:
‘CHUDAIL’
‘WITCH’
‘She is possessed’.