BLOODY RED ROSE!
THERE was a group of women standing outside Oscar theatre. Andheri, distributing leaflets against the film Red Rose. Some people laughed, some jeered, but after reading the cyclostyled leaflet which called for the banning of the film insisted that the management take back the tickets that they had bought.
A young student distributing the leaflet explained their viewpoint. “The film is about the hero-idol Rajesh Khanna, who seduces women and kills them. He is shown as an attractive, charming man – which boy/man would not identify with him?
“Why does he behave like this? Because he has decided to get revenge on all women. Women he believes are wicked awful creatures who deserve the worst that they can get. And why does he believe this? Because in his innocent childhood he had been disappointed, shocked betrayed by three women.
“We, members of the forum against Rape, feel that cinema is one way in which attitudes which are degrading to women are perpetuated in society. This film says. ‘Women deserve what they get’. This is an attitude really prevalent in society. When we have been organizing against rape one of the most frequent comments made to us is ‘women deserve it. See the way they dress.’”
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ANOTHER woman, a housewife who had brought her two school-going children with her, continued “Some people have been saying that they, the film makers do show that the man is ‘mad’, ‘insane’ at the end. But this occupies only a fraction of the film. The predominant effect of the film is sex, violence and putting women in their place.”
By now the discussion got going and the third woman who has separated from the husband angrily says “and what is the response of his ‘wife’, a woman whom he has had to marry to seduce and whom he is planning also to kill? On finding out about her husband she runs fir her life. But when he is in prison, and insane, will she leave him? Of course not!! She comes clasping her mangalsutra, ‘I shall wait and hope and love. And the next scene is of Rajesh Khanna getting a little better. The message – nasty women are responsible for men’s bad behavior towards women; if only women were like out traditional Sita then all this would never happen. It’s just a way of keeping women in their place. If you move out, see this (seduction-rape-murder) will happen to you.”
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It is great to see that women are reaction to the way that they are being portrayed in films. The role of the film and media in moulding the attitudes that we all have is simply not understood. But a relationship there is. Once I asked a woman who worked in a textile mill who saw at least two films a week why she did so. Her reaction. “The films show us so many relationships which are part of real life. The relationship between men and women, between mother and child, between friends. I like to see films because it gives me an indication of how I should behave.”
A film probably gets popular because it reflects what the common person is at some subconscious level already feeling. But by making it into a film, by glamorizing it. It gives oppressive reality. It makes them acceptable and mass phenomena. People are rushing to see Red Rose because they want to see this combination of sex and violence. They want to see women murdered and better still, murdered in the bed-the final sign of victory and dominance over the woman.
The protest of these women of the Forum against Rape makes these subconscious attitudes conscious. Do we want such sort of attitudes to be perpetrated in our society? If not, then people themselves will have to stop seeing such curiosity of because everybody is talking about it. Because if a film like this makes the box office, then many more will follow.
JULY 19TH, 1980
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