Kyunki Mard bhi Kabhi Mard thaa or No Man's Land

When was the last time when one saw a man who looked like a man and who had manly qualities  in a TV serial?

Someone with masculine qualities like leadership, agression, protectiveness, assertion, being the man of the house and pure old anger which are deemed as terrorism by the feminists.

Someone who had rugged looks, who wore a man's clothes and not some pansy embroidered stuff, who had traces of facial hair, who didnt have carved eyebrows, bleached skin, manicured hands ? Someone who walked and talked like a man and not some kid terrorized by the neighbourhood bully? Someone who made decisions and made others follow them instead of just cowering behind someone?

Dont stretch your brains. Because manliness became extinct from TV in the 90s itself.

If one needs to find an example of complete feminist conquest, look no further than Indian TV serials. True, in soaps all over the world, male characters are being pushed into the background but in Indian soap operas the conquest of feminism is 100% complete. This dystopia is ruled by women who have a lot of face on their makeup (yup, face on their makeup. This isnt a typo) and who are adorned with enough gold to make Fort Knox cry tears of shame. The combined weight of their attire and jewellery makes them a weightwalker and not just a weightlifter (too bad weightwalking is not an olympic sport). Their hair has more pins than a porcupine has quills and their minds have more plots and plans than CIA, FSB and Mossad put together. 

Women in these serials come in three categories-

The middle aged heavily adorned and bejewelled ones who are macabre and evil beyond imagination. They can make any crimelord look like a novice and are conspiring against everyone from the cradle to the crematorium.Luckily, their criminal empire extends only till their family which can have between sixty to two hundred members. 

The very old ones who are more devout than all bhakti saints put together, who are instant sources of pious platitudes and doyens of tradition.

The third and the most important is the young woman, the protagonist around whom this whole dystopia revolves around and conspires against. She is young, sweet and mature beyond any scope of the puny human mind with sacrifice, selflessness and goodness firmly embedded in her DNA, thanks to the 'sanskaars' given by her spectacled Babuji in a safari suit and  a purdah clad Mummy. She is shy like a mimosa, innocent like a preschooler, virginial like Snow White, a moral educator for anyone who chooses to listen, an adviser for any situation which can range from someones divorce to someone getting married for the third time, a social crusader...

Infact the TV serial need not even specify that she is a fictitious character.

She has two to three siblings. If its a sister, then she will be a prototype in making of her Didi. If its a brother, well then he will be like any other piece of furniture in the house.

The audience of these shows are overwhelmingly housewives and hence the serial makes these masterpieces comprising of utopian and feminist fantasies, all in the name of showing a woman centric programme.

Men as mentioned earlier, are relegated to the background and one hardly notices their presence, throughly effeminate and without any virility in them. They are of the following types:-

The elders of the house,  the old men speaking philosophically and doing anything else.

The husbands, who are pitiably pussy whipped and henpecked, mere tools for the manipulations of the wily mother and sinister wife.

The only manly looking men in the serials, and hence the villians, chauvinists, having amorous designs on the heroine and the other nubile women. He has to be outwitted by the heroine with the help of her robotic husband. Same goes for the evil mother in law or grand aunt or the envious woman next door.

In trying to create a woman centric story, all these serials do is degrade the woman further and make a caricature out of her. As for the men, it gives the word misoandry a whole new dimension.

Can we even expect to see a hint of reality in these horrid creations?

Why does a family have to look like a brigade dressed ornately? And why do they have to always be never less than twenty or fifty in number?

Why cant anyone dress in normal everyday clothes? Whats the point of the women wearing heavy jewellery in early morning or the men wearing sherwanis or suits during dinnertime?

Why does the house have to resemble a museum or a palace? How many joint families does one really find in urban area? Even while showing a middle class family, the house is as big as the eye can see.

Why cant they actually show men going to work? How can they not show a man earning his living but being at home whenever you see ? Why do they have to hang around their wives all the time, adding value to the already unbearble stupidity?

Why must a widow dress in a satiny white saree? Which century are these people living in? Isnt this a slap on the face of the reformers who spent all their lives for their upliftment?

Whats with this obsession with extra marital affairs and illegitimate children?

Why must there not be a definite script beforehand instead of writing it on the sets? Two years of any of these soaps makes one feel that they have been running since Henry Ford invented the automobile.

Why must the whole universe revolve around the fight between the mom in law and daughter in law? Are there absolutely no more domestic issues to talk of?

And why do half of the women have to shown as some kind of hideous characters full of hatred and envy who can think nothing but conspire and plot the others downfall? Isnt this a mutilation of women in general?

But the most important, being a woman centric programme doesnt mean that men be shown something as dead as furniture or as miniscule as mites. Will it hurt these people to show men who can head the family instead of just speaking flowery dialogues and being a pansy ? Why cant they be something whom their children, wives and parents look at with love and pride instead of  merely some kind of a tailing device which follows the wife wherever she goes?

If this is the general idea of how people want to be entertained then something is wrong with the audience as well and not just the makers. A society is also known by how it likes to amuse and entertain itself. And judging by that, we have built a very lousy identity.

 

 http://theviewspaper.net/hindi-tv-serials-no-mans-land/