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Quanico, Anna Katrina G.

As a renowned culture-oriented country, India had planned to change their economy,

politics, and socio-cultural practices from traditional to modern, concerning equal rights in

education, responsibilities, duties, work, and wealth. Economists, together with social scientists

and reformers, provide ideas and procedures for India to fully develop their state into the desired

outcome of the social change (Kuppuswami & Mehta, 1968). Evidently, these planned changes

were never shaped in which customs, economy, rights, and politics were just the same.

Undeveloped practices were yet observable among them: the way they dress, practice norms, and

make rules (Bowles, 1957).

These interchangeable cultures can be vividly seen on the country’s films but there is a

conflict regarding the analysis of the films. India is known for their patriarchal societies, which,

like their culture, never change. The irony is that films represent males as oppressed and

dominated despite the patriarchy that is being practiced in India. There are indications in the

films’ production wherein females are given much attention than males that leads to the

domination of females.

The films used in the study are chosen purposively in which it is launched at the 20th

century, led by a single actor, and have a common genre. The films are “The Three Idiots” (2009),

“Taree Zameen Par” (2007), “Talaash” (2012), “Fanaa” (2006), and “PK” (2014). These films were

starred by Aamir Khan, an influential actor across India according to the reviews in each film.

Uniformity in genre was also a concern in choosing the films in which these films possess a

dramatic domain.

Indian drama films that ranged from 2006-2014 and that were starred by Aamir Khan, a

well-known Bollywood actor, denotes male oppression through the films’ dialogue, and
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representation of characters including their class and race. It is through these categories that the

analysis of the films would reflect much significance in observing how males are oppressed. The

analysis of the films requires putting into context the gender role placement of the author to the

character in accordance with the Indian culture. The analysis used in the study is literary

reasoning concerning the patriarchal society of India.

The use of literary analysis would be a great aid in analyzing movies in the context of a

male-dominated society like India but the domination of males had conflict since the 20th century

when feminism was introduced in India. Just like the western feminism, the feminism in India

focuses on equality in laws and rights for the women, concerning also the race and caste, work, and

health.

India, as a developing country, is very well culture-oriented compared to other countries in

which some traditions stay the same and they would believe that changing their culture is not

necessary for the society. The planned change never happened despite the feasible ideas of the

economists, social scientists and reformers in India. These unchanged cultures will be the basis of

analysis male oppression in the films.

Although hidden, discrimination regarding economic class is present until today that those

who are in higher class would treat others lower than them differently from the people who

belong to the same class as them. There would be untouchables in India and they group their class

in three distinct castes: Jats, Brahman, and “others” which include the workers. The Jats would be

the highest caste and the “other” caste as the lowest. The lowest class includes “Camar” ( leather-

maker), “Bhangi” (sweeper), “Kumhar” ( potter). “Jhinvar” ( water carrier), “Khati”(carpenter),

”Dhobi”(washerman), “Nai” (barber), “Chipi”(tailor), “Lohar” (blacksmith), and

“Baniya”(merchant) (Lewis, 1958).

Because females are sacred, they are to stay in the house and do chores like the traditional

way of living in the country whereas, the men would do the hard work, and be served when at

home. The males would work for the day leaving his wife at home, doing the chores and attending

to their children. The wife would also participate in agricultural concerns like milking the cow and

aiding in the fields. She would also serve roti, an Indian bread, to the men in the fields and prepare

for dinner. These would also be reflected in such movies and how traditions are practiced.

Films show how females dominate the society through the matriarchal orientation in the

family, in conflict with the Indian culture which is said to be male-dominated. Patriarchy is

practiced in India but the films emphasize how societies practice more of matriarchy in which the

roles of male are further ignored, a contrast to the Indian culture.

In Taree Zameen Par (2007), a movie focusing on a dyslexic boy, the roles of women as

mothers are emphasized regarding how they care about their disabled children. The movie focuses

on a boy suffering from dyslexia, a disease with an unknown cause, wherein what an individual see

differs from what is really viewed. Ishaan Awasthi was the name of the boy and he possesses a

talent for art despite his downfall in his basic education: reading and writing. The conflict is that

his family does not know about his condition until his mentor, having the same experience as him,

told his family. Until then, they knew how to accept Ishaan and view Ishaan from a different

perspective: as an artist.

The mother of Ishaan Awasthi would always keep the family in contact, in which she would

ask her husband to not send their son to boarding school, and she would be the one comforting

Ishaan when he is upset or angry. The father, on the other hand, is ignored when it comes to being

a father to Ishaan. The father said that Ishaan will go to boarding school because Ishaan is not

capable to study in a normal school, considering their culture that excellence is based on the
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academic performance of the individual. This denotes that their family is matriarchal and the

mother of Ishaan dominates the role of the father in a family context.

Another scene in the movie shows how women dominate men where there are autistics

performing, most parents who attended the program were mothers even after the event where

hugging and kissing partake. This shows that the supporters of the children were dominantly their

mothers wherein it is a program where the audience is the parents and not only the mothers.

Talaash (2012) is a movie wherein Aamir Khan played the role of Surjan, a police officer

who took a mystery case. The movie denotes domination of females through Simran, a prostitute,

who can make every men do what she wanted them to do despite of the unnoticed consequences

they may take. Simran is a ghost wherein some men can see him and Surjan is one of them. When

men will see her, they will end up dying in a car accident. She had an everyday conversation with

Surjan and Surjan always follows her orders: following her everywhere and having a night spend

with her. Men would even avoid the ghost of Simran while driving which induces taking a sharp

turn in a high speed that caused the drowning of some men.

The films not only focus on the domination of female but also show the limitations of men

through the gender role placement in which society dictates them what they should be and what

they should act. It is in India’s culture that the nature of females is far from the nature of the males:

they differ in professions, practices, and emotions.

As culture-oriented as they are, the Indian community stereotyped gender roles and

expectations as seen in the movie, The Three Idiots (2009). The movie centers on three students in

a university for engineering students and their struggle with their own families. The fact that the

university is intended for engineers only express that gender role placement is strong in India.
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The university where Rancho and his companions studied is for the future engineers of the

country and this university is exclusive for males. In the university, there will be no trace of female

in which even the professors are all males. These situations clearly depict how expectations were

put according to gender.

Focusing on Farhan Qureshi’s family, when he was born, his father, knowing his child is a

boy, said that the child would be an engineer. It is an implication that as early as being born,

expectations were placed to an individual. His father never questioned what Farhan wanted or

what Farhan’s interests are, until he saw Farhan struggling with his academics in the engineering

university. Farhan would be called in the college director’s office many times for the violations he

caused and the low grades he had.

When Rancho and Farhan visited Raju Rastogi’s place, the movie showed how Raju, as a

son and brother, would struggle just to attain the needs of the family considering the ‘dowry’ of his

sister and health of his father. They were welcomed by Raju’s mother serving them roti and there

she stated how their family suffers from poverty. She begun to tell the prices of each of the

vegetable she is slicing and the food she bought from the market and the ‘dowry’ of Raju’s sister.

‘Dowry’ is, in their culture, the gift that the groom wanted from his bride. Because Raju is the male

in the family capable of providing their needs, once he graduated, all of the expectations, the health

of his dad in addition, were set to him even before entering college.

In the later part of the movie, showing the characters after 10 years, stereotyping did not

change, looking at the school Rancho created: a school meant for future engineer and mostly

populated by boys. Just as the university they attended, the school for children that have capability

of building new gadgets is built by Rancho. This depicts that in the span of ten years, in which a

new generation is present, gender role placement did not change.

Taree Zameen Par would also depict how Ishaan struggle to express his feelings and this

would become the limitation of his role. Everytime Ishaan faces a problem, at the end, the movie

would show Ishaan facing a large body of water: a lake or river. Directors never put transitions in

coincidence. It may mean that it shows the artistic side of Ishaan but the deeper meaning may be

the endless possibilities that Ishaan can reach. When Ishaan faces a problem or feels upset, he

cannot do anything about it because he has dyslexia and neither one know the condition nor

maybe him.

When Ishaan stopped painting, he received a phone call from her mother saying that they

could not visit Ishaan and he did not say a word as tears fall and he hung up the phone. He misses

his family and when her mother said that they cannot come because of the tennis match of his

older brother, he cannot do anything about it, instead he kept silent, hang up the phone and left

crying.

Laura Mulvey used the ‘male gaze’ in her works to evaluate the perception of the audience

of the female characters, incorporating this, the analyses on how the characters are represented

can clearly be analyzed. According to Mulvey (1975),

“The cinema offers a number of possible pleasures. One is scopophilia. There are
circumstances in which looking itself is a source of pleasure, just as, in the reverse
formation, there is pleasure in being looked at… Freud isolated scopophilia as one of the
component instincts of sexuality which exist as drives quite independently of the
erotogenic zones. At this point he associated scopophilia with taking other people as
objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze... Although the instinct is
modified by other factors, in particular the constitution of the ego, it continues to exist as
the erotic basis for pleasure in looking at another person as object. At the extreme, it can
become fixated into a perversion, producing obsessive voyeurs and Peeping Toms, whose
only sexual satisfaction can come from watching, in an active controlling sense, an
objectified other.”

In the movie PK (2014), using the gaze, the movie showed Aamir Khan’s body in which his

chest and abdomen are shown wherein when a female is the audience, the man would be an object

in the eye of the female spectator. PK is a drama- science fiction movie wherein PK has a mission to
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study Earth but through his journey, he met Jaggu. As he, PK, landed on Earth through his

spaceship, he was naked because in his planet they don’t wear anything and walking naked is a

custom for them.

Fanaa (2006) would depict scenes that Rehan would whisper in the ears or Zooni,

seductively and how he touches Zooni on her neck and face. Fanaa centers on the story of a blind

woman, Zooni, who fell in love with a tour guide, Rehan, who, actually, was a terrorist. As they both

fell in love, whenever they meet, Rehan always express his love for Zooni by poems and quotes

together with a caress in Zooni’s neck, face, shoulders, and waist. Female speactators would

exemplify those caresses as an individual’s desire when they are in Zooni’s situation.

Classes and race are main points to consider where male oppression appears in the film. In

The Three Idiots, Viru is not consistent in dealing with his students and the reason for this is the

hidden caste system occurring in India. Viru would always assert the mistakes of both Raju and

Farhan but never did he emphasize the shortcomings of Rancho.

Viru reached the point where Raju, having the lowest family income, have committed

suicide just to stay at the university. There is a scene in which Viru stated the income of Rancho,

Raju and Farhan in front of Raju and Farhan. Raju has the lowest income of the three and he

committed suicide when Viru said that he would expel Raju from the university knowing about

Raju’s situation in which expectation of the whole family is raised on him.

As for Farhan, Viru caused the misunderstanding of the family by sending a letter to

Farhan’s parents. This caused the anger of the father of Farhan to him because the father wanted

Farhan to be a successful engineer because he believed that it is where Farhan would gain success.

His father thought that it is because Farhan wanted to disobey him and wanted to become a

wildlife photographer but, until then did he accept the dream of Farhan. But as for Rancho, having

the same class level as Viru, he cannot do anything to expel Rancho out of the university.
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PK would have a huge deal with the race of the character, when Sarfaraaz told Jaggu that he

saw a Pakistani, suddenly, the smile of Jaggu faded and because of the country he came from, it

made a conflict their love story. There had been a conflict between India and Pakistan regarding

the territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The Office of the Historian (nd) stated that,

“…The state of Jammu and Kashmir, which had a predominantly Muslim population but a
Hindu leader, shared borders with both India and West Pakistan. The argument over
which nation would incorporate the state led to the first India-Pakistan War in 1947–48
and ended with UN mediation. Jammu and Kashmir, also known as “Indian Kashmir” or
just “Kashmir,” joined the Republic of India, but the Pakistani Government continued to
believe that the majority Muslim state rightfully belonged to Pakistan.”

Jaggu’s father opposed their relationship wherein he contacted Tapasvi, a ‘godman’ who

tells prophesy. His prophesy when he knew about Sarfaraaz and Jaggu is that Sarfaraaz will

deceive and leave Jaggu which led to the separation of the two.

Cinematic effects would also take part in analyzing how men are oppressed

through the soundtrack and transition of the scenes. After the recording of the music to be played

during the film, the next process is matching the track with the appropriate scene in the movie

(Baddeley, 1963).

For the soundtrack of Fanaa, when Rehan was confessing his love to Zooni, the lyrics

signify that Rehan would surrender everything. The translated lyrics from Hindi to English is , “[i]f

I let you hear my heartbeats, you will be filled with panic[,] I'm not able to hide things, [I] want to

be destroyed in your love” (Carnivorous lamb, 2014). It signifies that Rehan is cable of doing

anything for the sake of his love for Zooni, accepting nothing in return.

Taree Zameen Par would have songs that symbolize how matriarchy is practiced and

would see male oppression in the transition of films. The first point is the music track used in the

film. As Ishaan bunked class, a song was played in relation to his downfalls and failures and how he

deals with them. He bunked his class and roam around the streets wandering. A soundtrack was
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played and it depicts that Ishaan wanted to fulfill his dreams- to paint. But he is still far from

achieving it because his family honors being an academe more than being an artist (Richa, 2008).

A song was purposively written for norms of what mothers do, as Ishaan was taken to a

boarding school and was distanced to his family. The song also emphasizes how the child

appreciates more the mother than the father despite of the patriarchal society. Ishaan would be

comfortable telling what he feels with his mother and how his family honors matriarchy through

the lyrics.

The transition of the film from the talent of Ishaan as an artistic boy to his weakness in

reading and writing shows that Ishaan is far from achieving his desired dream because of lack of

knowledge in basic education. There is a scene that Ishaan painted a masterpiece after he bunked

class, then the camera focused on the art and then changed to the messy handwriting of Ishaan.

Reading and writing are his flaws and the transition to them depicts that the dream of Ishaan to

becoming an artist is far from reality in which he needs to learn the basics of education.

How other characters, male or female, view males and how they talk about them in the

movie must also be taken into consideration whereas, this leads to how the audience views the

characters. There would be instances that they would use negative terms to pertain to the male

character and these reflects to the spectator.

In PK, the main character is lost and his fellow male comrade said that the representation

of males in the place are as ‘rascals and dumb’ also, the name ‘PK’ was given to him by the people

which means “drunk”. He saw a man who helped him in his journey in Earth and as he question

him of what a man is, the reply was that man in their context were referred to as dumb and

sometimes be called ‘rascals’. This is how they view men and this reflects to how spectators view

the male characters.

The term ‘rascal’ was again used in another movie wherein it came from a teacher directed

to a student. The Three Idiots would show that the professor, Viru Sahastrebudhe, calls them,

Rancho, Raju, and Farhan, rascals even in public places in the university where other students can

hear him.

Fanaa would show a scene wherein the girls would talk about Rehan in a negative manner

in that they would insult the character of Rehan, giving false statement to their blind friend. When

Zooni asked what Rehan looks like, her friends told her false description pertaining to Rehan

having a quirky look, odd taste of clothes, and not at all attractive, the exact opposite of what

Rehan is.

The films denote male oppression through Aamir Khan, as the lead actor for all films,

having different role variation as student, teacher, terrorist, police officer, and an alien. The roles

of Aamir Khan presented compliments each other as for a student and a teacher, Aamir Khan

showed how a teacher must act towards his students at Taree Zameen Par and how the teacher

negatively influences the life of a student at The Three Idiots. As a terrorist and a police officer,

Aamir Khan exemplifies that even with authority as an officer, a male would feel oppressed at

home and at work by comrades or by family. For an alien, it would signify that whatever form a

male would be, may it be known by people or not, oppression of men still exist. All the analyses of

male oppression is analyzed by considering the role of the character, with regards to his class and

race, and the film’s transition, soundtrack, dialogue and spectator’s view.
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Bibliography

Published

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House Publishers: New York

Bowles, C. (1956). A Home Left Behind. In At Home In India (pp.100-105). Harcourt, Brace and

Company.

Donald, J. & Renov, M. (Eds.). (2008). The Sage Handbook of Film Studies. Sage Publications Ltd.

Kuppuswamy, B. & Mehta, P. (1968). Planned Social Change. Bharadwaj, S.L.B. (Ed.), Some Aspects

of Social Change in India. Sterling Publishers (P) Ltd.

Lewis, O. (1958). Village Life in Northern India. University of Illinios Press: Urbana

Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen 16.3 Autumn.

Unpublished

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Carnivorous lamb. (2014, January 6). Moon Convinces. Retrieved from

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Dark_Hunter. (2014, August 8). Fanaa [Video file]. Retrieved from [Link]

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Engsub. (nd). PK [Video file]. Retrieved from [Link]

Joshi, P. (nd). Maa. Retrieved from [Link]

[Link]

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[Link]