Amidst the clutter of ads jostling for attention in the newspaper is one with a distorted picture of a woman (Tabu) in some stage of distress. The film is Hawa and the tagline: Sexual Violence.
When Tabu signed this film because it was 'different' (it is inspired by Sidney J Furie's The Entity. But after the Barbara Taylor Bradford-Sahara case, when the novelist accused Sahara of basing their serial Karisma on her novel Woman Of Substance, filmmakers don't boast about their sources for fear of being sued), she probably didn't know she was going to be advertised like this.
The ad for Kushan Nandy's 88 Antop Hill also used images of terrified women with the tagline: 'Are you scared of being alone?'
At long last our filmmakers are catching up with the abominable Hollywood slasher movie tradition of titillating audiences with lengthy scenes of women being terrorised, brutalised, or killed.
Post-Seventies, women have often been used as showpieces and sex objects in Hindi popular cinema. Even today, top actresses are paid less than their less talented male counterparts for equal screen time in keeping with the industry belief that women don't sell films, men do. Yet, women's bodies are used in various ways to lure audiences: in many places, the audience is predominantly male.
Even earlier, actresses in skimpy clothes were used as bait, but the commodification of female bodies reached a new low with films like Jism, Andaaz and Khwahish, that had nothing else to offer except semi-nude heroines. Khwahish actually rode on its '17 smooches'. Or even Praan Jaye Par Shaan Na Jaaye that used the crudest of sexual language and visuals to ostensibly make a point about women's emancipation.
There is a rare film like Satta that portrays the modern urban woman semi-accurately. The others use the sexual liberation of Indian cities -- there are enough women willing to strip for success -- combined with the most backward social rituals (why do Karwa Chauth and Vat Savitri suddenly make a reappearance in our films and television serials?) to leave women confused and in a no-win situation.
Even in a 'cool' youth flick like Ishq Vishk, the heroine keeps the Karva Chauth fast for her boyfriend -- the element that swings his affections in her favour and away from the sexy, career-oriented femme fatale he is in love with. Hilariously, the actress in question, Amrita Rao, poses in the tiniest of costumes and grandly declares that she will never wear revealing clothes. Obviously the meaning of revealing clothes has changed so much that a girl in low-slung pants and tiny, strapless bustier does not think she is exposing.
This trend can be traced back to the time models and beauty queens started coming into films. They walked the ramp and beauty contest stages dressed in almost nothing. They had no qualms stripping for films that required them to look sexy. It is just that sexy has gone from strappy gowns and wet saris to bikinis and bustiers; from 'only when situation demands it' to 'anytime, anywhere'. So girls like Bipasha Basu, Lara Dutta, Priyanka Chopra, Katrina Kaif, Neha Dhupia are signed up not for their talent, but for their hot bods, which they are more than willing to display.
At least the other recent sex symbols like Urmila Matondkar and Kareena Kapoor have talent. These girls have nothing to commend them for -- yet -- except that they are uninhibited.
If the so-called openness that a section of filmmakers are jumping to portray through the toned bodies of their actors (male and female) was actually accompanied by a truly progressive mindset, it would be somewhat acceptable. But they are taking the worst of the old and the new and making an unpalatable hash.
The biggest irony lies in the fact that the really huge hits are clean family entertainers. If the box-office desperadoes had an iota of talent or intelligence, they wouldn't consistently miss the wood for the trees.