[QUOTE=eveline
We don't exist, the normal, sometimes good sometimes bad, often brave, often scared, vulnerable yet strong, smart yet foolish, emotional yet practical...the ones that make the world go round...we just don't exist. period. We are not multi layered or dimensional, we don't have any facets or personalities...nope only male characters deserve that...female characters can only be linear, the heroine or the vamp. We can either be kicked or worshipped!!
The women of today, like you and me, like all of us, who work, who study, who create, who make careers, who laugh and cry, who fight and survive, joke and jell, who run offices and homes and governments and nations, homes and families...we are aliens, an unknown, unidentified, feared species, that are best left ignored...
About depicting romance in the real way...nope don't expect. There has to be pushing, pulling, twisting wrists, pinning to the wall, intimidation, sexual tensions, enforced proximities under totally nonsensical and ridiculous situations in order to show the new age romance. Lets just royally ignore the fact that a man if in real life behaves with us in such a manner, we will kick him in the right place and jail him (if not worse) with real pleasure, forget fall in love. And also forget the message that is being sent out to the millions of young impressionable girls out there, watching this sadistic mcp view of a love story, and figuring that abuse is the 22nd century interpretation of love.
But then what can you expect from men trying to be women, men trying to think, feel, act and react like women?? But then again, beggars cant be choosers, and so this female, ranting and raving, will again tune in tomorrow to eagerly lap it all up...after all do I have an option??
Every women who's posted on this thread happens to be someone I have respect and even affection for--so I debated whether to respond with what would be very much a TRP Aunty style response--But here it is, from the heart. Here I go, taking a lot on the theory that my credit might survive the brickbats coming my way--
I'm TIRED. Not emotionally, but physically-- I literally mean I am tired at the end of the day. I spend all day, every day BEING a woman who is real and flawed and vulnerable and strong. I am, as you put it, (beautifully, and passionately, I might add) a young woman who works, who studies, who creates, who make her career, who laughs and cries, who fights and survives, jokes and jells, who runs offices and homes and governments and nations. I do all that (well, not the govt/nation stuff, but I work as a lecturer (hugely junior) at a University, so I'm helping, I hope!). But you see, I DO all that. And I like to think that I'm smart and educated and a good friend and a good wife and sister and mentor and ALL THE GOOD stuff. And I'm tired.
I want to turn my mind off, and just...drift. I want to see for those 20 minutes of mindless TV, how the other half lives. The women who have to live with crazy in laws, who think their husbands are literally gods and not just really cute, but normal men we trapped with our humor and hot high heels. Our husbands are not God incarnates, but normal guys with jobs and a career, with man-scaped stubble that doesn't look so dashing so much as it itches, who watches cricket and soccer AT THE SAME TIME and eats pasta with their hands. True story.
But then I watch these shows.
There but for the grace of God, goes me. In a chunri down to my eyes, responding to Bhabbo's every whim, caring about Ahem Dikra's green tea and wooden face, getting my wrist maarao-fied by handsome hunks with fashion houses/Army uniforms. That is the alternate fantasy world where these things can happen to the heroine as I watch, things I would respond to with a kick in the pants, 911 or a swift phone-call to my barracuda lawyer. If I was Khushi I would have owned AR Fashions after that window drop by the CEO. If I was Paro, Rudra would be in the news so fast for Guantanamo level abuse the BSD wouldn't see what hit em. If I was Sandhya, Bhabbo would be under a tombstone and just a sad memorial service once a year. If. If. But thank god--I'm not.
Because the characters are not wish fulfillment, or identifiable females, so much as awed awareness of the other side of the coin. The coin I am not on, and nor are you. And they should stay that way. They should stay opaque, they should stay fantasies. Because you cannot see these women, with these impossible lives and unreal faces and fortunes, these unreal MEN, and not feel--that cannot be real. Their reality is so uch more amazing, and so much more devastating that real life is, or should be. Loss, heartbreak, cruelty. Moments of manic happiness, interspersed with crazy pain. So, the more UNREAL, the better. And they don't have to show me reality. Because the real world would result in Paro being raped in that BSD stronghold, Khushi would have broken her back from that fall,and Sandhya would have filed for, and won, a landmark case for domestic abuse. Thats real.
If there are susceptible girls watching this I hope to god their first experience out of the house and away from the high school cafeteria is safe and secure. But they need to understand the reality of men, so they can deal with stupid expectations that comes from serials, Twilight and their grandmothers. They will get a few knocks, and learn, like the rest of us had to, about the real world. I cannot protect them, beyond warning them. I wish I could, and I'd tell anyone reading this--be smart, baisa. And talk to an ADULT before you accept that guy's internet profile/meeting.
But for myself-I'm tired Baisa. And while my literary-bent mind cannot stop the analysis, imagining and creating stories for these people, that is, also, weirdly, how I relax. And the main way I relax is by accepting that Paro onscreen will do things that go beyond understanding. I can grope my way to some resemblance of a character study. I can create my own. but I am not her, I cannot identify with her. I would love to be Parvati, with that hot Rudra after me. If I was, if I was..
But I'm not. Thank the good God and pass the popcorn.
Edited by napstermonster - 11 years ago
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