Bollywood – creating female stereotypes, one rom-com at a time

This feature originally appeared on Bollyspice.com. You can read the full post here.

I happened to watch Cocktail at an extremely crowded press plus crew plus family plus friends show. While you can read my official movie review, as I was thinking about the film some more I wanted to write about some of the other aspects that bothered me about Cocktail.  These  additional thoughts touch on some points I couldn’t include in a movie review and summarize howCocktail, which in my opinion could have been a good rom-com, was turned into a series of Bollywood’s formulaic clichés, so much so that the gloss and glycerine could give the Indian TV soaps a run for their money

I am tripping high on Veronica! Could do with another dose & bartender make that a double please!! #Cocktail @Deepikapadukone is HAWT & how!
— Pooja (@pooja1712) July 12, 2012

Alright then, moving on........


***Dont read further if you want to avoid spoilers***

Now to the point or in fact points…

First, for everyone who has seen the movie, the common notion was that everyone was hoping in the end Saif would get the boot and the two hot DP’s (Deepika & Diana) would hook up together (they almost did – wasn’t ‘nahi chahiye mujhko teri second hand jawaani‘ a cue for just that??!).  This could very well have been Dostana in reverse, including the very loud Punjabi mummy (played by Dimple Kapadia here) who gives kangan to her daughter in law as shagun! But no such luck, cause in a very formulaic ending, true love triumphs in Bollywood and everyone lives happily ever after….

Now this is quite ironic, because a day after the movie releases, our dear lead actor confesses to a major daily newspaper publication that in real life ending up with Meera would be rather boring. Oh Bollywood, pray do tell then why you inflict such boring scripts on thy audiences? Minutes into the movie just when I thought here is something different, a good case study of urban mature relationships, of effortless flirting, living-in, shot-glasses and just general bonding, true to the karmas of being Bollywoodized, the characters flip a 360, running to the nearest film library seeking refuge in all the possible escape routes Bollywood has mopped up in its rom-coms till date.

Here is where I will list some of them and we shall call it:

• By Indian traditions, ladka chahe kitna bhi characterless ho, ladki toh usse dal-roti pakaane wali hi chahiye (Doesn’t matter how much of a Casanova the guy is, in the end he seeks a girl who is homely)
• Almost every girl has to choose between being a Veronica or a Meera. Former is a rich spoilt brat who can’t keep her pants on, latter is the desi-clad demure who thinks it’s the end of the world cause she was ditched in marriage. Yep! A balance between the two is an almost impossible a character to script in Bollywood.
• How much ever a girl declares being fancy-free and a believer of no-strings-attached, what she ultimately wants is marriage and a man by her side. Which means she will (at the snap of fingers in this case) shed off her LBDs and don a red salwar (which the guy’s mother will approve) and be the homely girl her man wants her to be!
• Clueless, good-for-nothing, nonchalant guy is an almost perfect man who is always right in the end, while the feisty, strong, sorted girl will regret her doing and be proven wrong. ALWAYS.

Bollyspice has writers across the globe. Most of them juggle corporate careers/education while writing for Bollyspice simply out of love for cinema. Many of them are NRIs, who’ve lived away all their lives, connected to the homeland mostly by virtue of cinema. We decided to have their thoughts over Bollywood’s obsession with typecasting its heroine leads into certain characters. Head on to the Bollyspice page to read more on what they had to say.