Changing Ideas of Desire: Female Gaze in Contemporary Bollywood Rom-Coms

       Love in Hindi cinema is often intertwined with toxic masculine ideals of self-entitlement, dangerous obsession, and complete annihilation of the object of desire. Whether it is conflating physical violence with affection in Kabir Singh (2019), repeated stalking of the woman in Main Tera Hero (2014), Toilet: A Prem Katha (2017), and Badrinath ki Dulhania (2017) or harassing her for not loving the man back in Raanjhanaa (2013) and Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (2016), romances in Bollywood have been replete with storylines that privilege the ‘male gaze’. Film theorist Laura Mulvey refers to the male gaze as a voyeuristic or fetishistic form of looking at women for male pleasure. She argues that patriarchy, which is pervasive and dominant in the real world,  structures the narrative of cinema which has “coded the erotic into the language of the dominant patriarchal order” by its “skilled and satisfying manipulation of visual pleasure” (835). For Mulvey, the male gaze is a way of looking at the world that subscribes to the phallocentric order in which women appear as “bearers of meaning, not makers of meaning” (834). 

         Given that love and desire are agentive emotions that place one in the position of a subject with agency and choice, it is not shocking to find fewer stories where women appear as desiring subjects. But how does love prefigure when seen from the female gaze? The female gaze, in simplest terms, is defined as defiance of the male gaze as it aims to centre women’s lives and consciousness. American director Joey Soloway describes the female gaze “as a way of feeling seeing, which occurs when a subjective camera attempts to get inside the protagonist. It uses the frame to share and evoke a feeling of being in feeling rather than looking at the character” (“Joey Soloway on The Female Gaze”, 00:17:32) In contrast to a reverse objectification of men, the female gaze is “more a frame of mind, where the approach to subject and material is more emotional and respectful” (Connor, qtd. in Telfer). 

      I argue that the female gaze starts to seep into some of the modern love stories of Bollywood. From remaining “under the shadow of the male protagonist/hero, who was mostly the centre of narrative action” (Chakraborty 137), the leading lady (usually upper-caste, educated, mostly urban) becomes an independent working subject, in control of her life’s decisions, as India becomes a neoliberal economy (135). The 2010s—with the arrival of satellite television, globalization, changing audience tastes and development of positive laws and policies for women—marked a change in the portrayal of women and the unconventional manner in which they engaged with matters of love in films such as Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, Mere Brother ki Dulhan, The Dirty Picture, Ladies vs Ricky Bahl, Queen (142). This period also portrays new forms of companionship where, instead of immediate physical attraction, there is a development of close friendship between the hero and the heroine prior to romance, as seen in two of the Dharma Productions movies of this time that I will be analyzing: Wake Up Sid (2009) and I Hate Luv Storys (2010). 

      Though even with these changes the “characterisation of these new-age heroines is often embedded in a vision that still serves a male experience of the world” (Sharma), as their role seems limited ultimately to help the hero become a better person. Despite this, I will argue that the female gaze present in the writing and directing choices of these two rom-coms, defy the active hero/passive heroine trope they are built on. Film critics Jean Narboni and Jean-Luc Comolli, while critiquing the ideological role of the cinema, endorsed those films that appeared at first as existing within the dominant ideology in form and content and yet managed to implicitly derail or call attention to that ideology. These seemingly conservative heterosexual love stories likewise open up a space for mutual and inclusive ways of seeing that lead to a process of learning and unlearning on both the female and male characters’ part.

     I Hate Luv Storys (2010) revolves around a cynical assistant director Jay (Imran Khan) and a romantic day-dreaming set designer Simran (Sonam Kapoor) who are at odds with each other over their views on love. While they are working as crew members on the film set of a love story, Simran develops feelings for Jay that are captured in the song “Bahara Bahara” where the lyrics allude that a woman is experiencing love for the first time and that it is a beautiful surprise for her. Song sequences are a quintessential part of Indian popular cinema that help provide extra insight into the narrative cinema and indulge the viewer in the characters’ desires and aspirations (Gopal 809). In the song, Simran closely observes Jay with curiosity and listens to him talk and rant about his job, being amused and concerned about him at the same time. Her rising affection for Jay does not manifest in a need to ‘own’ him, but in wanting to know him. The camera aims not to establish Simran’s “visual impact” (Mulvey 837) but instead, capture her subjectivity, showing us what she is feeling. The gaze in the song likewise does not objectify Jay but pulls into focus his personality. There are a lot of wide shots in the song that document both Jay and Simran working, grounding them in their daily chores which becomes the setting for the love song. 

      Simran’s discovery of Jay becomes a catalyst for thinking of her own life differently. Simran suffers from a ‘good girl syndrome’ which is “the mindset where a person strives to constantly be perceived as good, proper, and virtuous. This frequently involves putting others’ needs before their own, avoiding conflict, and trying to match societal expectations and norms” (Dochania, qtd. in Khan). Simran discloses how her mother is obsessed with her marriage and, belonging to a Gujarati household, wants Simran to marry a Gujarati only. When Jay asks how she met Raj, her fiance, she replies: “We know each other from childhood. He is the son of my family’s friends. Perfect match”. Yet is it too far from the possibility that Simran has chosen to be with Raj to please her mother? After befriending Jay, Simran begins to allow herself to question her “perfect” life. When she discusses with him how she isn’t feeling well these days, Jay asks her to get out of the walls she has made for herself. Jay symbolizes freedom for Simran. Someone who is often late to his work, who doesn’t say “appropriate” things in front of adults and is assertive of his opinions. As she watches him do all of this through the song, Simran senses that maybe she doesn’t have to stick to a rule book. When she starts to laugh more and be freer than her usual self, her fiance appears to be frustrated, telling her he wants his “old Simran” back. The film makes an effort to show Simran’s gradual transformation as she begins to go out more, enjoy her work as she gets drenched in the artificial rain on the film set they are working on and admit that she likes the colour red and not white (as Raj always gives her white flowers because he loves it). 

     The fascination with Jay makes her go against her mother’s wishes and her fiance’s choices, to go against being a ‘good girl’. The female gaze here is closer to the idea of “relational subjectivity” which researcher Simone Drichel defines as a recognition that we as human beings come into existence because of and in relation to others. We are inherently responsive and relational creatures instead of autonomous and self-sufficient (1). This relational nature of our existence as embedded in the female gaze comes through in Jay’s transformation. Jay wants to become a director but not of something as frivolous as romance. He makes fun of Simran for believing in something like love: “It’s a practical world, friend”. This trope reeks of how men are taught to hate everything ‘girly’ or emotional to feel masculine. In fact, Jay is later berated by people around him for acting like a “girl” while hurting over losing Simran. When he discusses with Kunal about missing her friendship, Kunal replies that he wishes Simran kissed Jay because he loves watching two ‘girls’ make out. When Kunal talks about some of the cliches that a romantic hero acts out in love such as—being involved in drama, planning to meet his lover, and running behind her at the airport—he says that today he can see this “new hero” in Jay. While not meaning this in a complementary manner, I take this “new hero” to be someone attuned to his emotions. As Jay starts paying more attention to the set of the love story he is working on, he realizes that perhaps the thing he was making fun of all along is what living is made of after all. When he proposes to Simran, she reminds him that she had loved him before but he couldn’t commit to it: “If you laugh at this love story again, I’ll be shattered forever…How can I do this to myself?” It is exciting to find Simran on the same footing as Jay, going through her own growing pains and making choices for her happiness. 

    It is when Simran claims her space as a subject that Jay’s own narcissistic gaze melts away. Hearing that Simran has set a date to marry Raj while trying to get her back, Jay decides to back off. In a very uncharacteristic manner of a Bollywood hero, he admits that perhaps he loves Simran more than Raj, but who is he to decide? Ultimately the choice lies with Simran and he has to respect that. Perhaps Jay’s rising emotional intelligence has to do something with how well Simran handled his rejection when she apologized to him for misreading their relationship. When Jay calls his mother crying, she consoles him saying that just because she and Jay’s dad couldn’t stay together, doesn’t mean every love story would have a bad ending. Suddenly Jay’s serial dating style is given a context, a history, and a reason, casting his ‘practical’ ideas on love as not mere inherent misogyny but more of a defense mechanism. Jay realizes he cannot let his fear of commitment drive his choices. In the end, Simran also tells Raj that she cannot keep him in the dark this long just to please him: “I don’t like white flowers. I like drinking on weekdays. And my favourite colour is red. I really tried to like white but white is perfect and I don’t like perfect”. In some ways, Jay and Simran are very similar, trying to fit in and not get hurt, but ultimately learning from watching and desiring each other that they cannot let their inhibitions dictate how they live.