By Kumari Swati
Media shapes the thought process of people in the society , and hence the content delivered by the media translates into human actions . Cinema and Television are two mediums of mass communication which have a huge impact in the lives of the people.
People relate their lives with the characters portrayed in these fictional and non fictional content and thus an emotional relationship is build which affect the mental thought process of an individual.
Portrayal of women in the cinema or television dramas have been the matter of concern , and thus when we compare the way women’s are portrayed in films and television , we will observe the changing trends . One can say that the portrayal of women in earlier films and in recent films have changed drastically and there are many factors that led to such changes and one factor is the time period.
When we go down the memory lane we will find that cinema has undergone various phases and , thus there was silent era, talkies era, colour cinema , parallel cinema and then the Golden age of the cinema . Earlier the female characters were shown as a showpiece which was kept in the movie for adding the glamour quotient and dancing around trees , getting chased by villan and being protected by his dream Man. This pattern was the repetitive one which we seen in earlier movies and is still continuing in some the commercial masala movies.
But one cannot deny the fact that the time during which these movies were made , our cinema have witnessed some of the best movies of Indian cinema . The parallel cinema movement which gave us renowned Directors like Satyajit Ray , Mrinal Sen , and many more , during this time we have seen movies like Arth, Ankur, Mirch Masala and many more which had the strong female characters.
The portrayal and presentation of characters have changed with the change in the technical aspects, scripting, and the social awareness that have led to the this evolving change . There are various tales that have been popular in telly town and Bollywood industry which are compiled as a history in our magazines in form of features and controversial news stories which open the layers of those times .
This is an unending debate as the way women’s are portrayed in movies because people confuse it with female oriented movies and male oriented movies . One have to clearly understand that a women centric movie is not a guarantee that the movie has represented a women nicely or strongly and a male oriented movie does not have a strong female character. A movie is based on a story and their characters and thus we can say that it depends upon the plot , the writer and director as how they are going to represent their female characters, and also on audience as how they want to see their female characters.
The portrayal of women in our television serials also undergone a similar kind of change, but the trends were different, the concept of SAAS bahu sagas made by EKTA Kapoor ruled on television for a decade , but with the time , there was change in the fictional content and serials like Balika Vadhu changed the entire concept. Now the ideal bahu , ideal wife is no more shy and submissive but is an independent women who can raise her voice against all the old , customs which are barieer to the development of women in society
It needs a holistic approach and a comprehensive strategy to see the portrayal of women in media as we want to see, and for that we have to be aware regarding our choices, decisions , and actions and thus we can say the women is represented in a just manner irrespective of the genre and tags like male oriented or female oriented content.
