Radhika Apte pointed out a troubling pattern in the Bollywood romances she grew up watching, as well as those that came before them. She recently confessed that though she’s a ‘huge’ fan of Shah Rukh Khan, revisiting his old films made her realise how they glorified stalking, which in turn formed the idea of desire among impressionable young women of that time, including her.
In a recent interview with ‘News18’, Radhika said, “Being tied and our ‘pallu’ being taken off were the dreams we used to get as teenagers. How scary is that. No offence… I’m a huge Shah Rukh fan, but when I revisited some of the old films I used to like, I was really taken aback. Because when a woman says no, it’s never taken as no. Chasing a woman was romance. That’s what we wanted at that time and it was really shocking.”
Apte admitted that Bollywood has come a long way since then. “We’ve come a long way, but there’s also a long way to go, not only for women, but also men and society. That’s all ever-evolving,” she added.
Radhika stars in Vikramaditya Motwane’s segment in ‘Lust Stories 3’, an anthology which will release on ‘Netflix’ on September 18.
Shakun Batra, who has also helmed a segment in ‘Lust Stories 3’, argued that over 20 years before Shah Rukh Khan even made his film debut with Raj Kanwar’s 1992 action romance ‘Deewana’, late legendary filmmaker Raj Kapoor was ‘very comfortable with the idea of trying to explore’ desire with films like ‘Mera Naam Joker’ (1970) and ‘Ram Teri Ganga Maili’ (1985).
Shakun specifically referred to the storyline in ‘Mera Naam Joker’, in which a young Rishi Kapoor is attracted to his schoolteacher (Simi Garewal) and to the one in ‘Ram Teri Ganga Maili’, in which a widower (Rajiv Kapoor) finds himself attracted to Mandakini’s character.
“But even at that time, the gaze was always male. And the women were sexualised. You’re putting that element down and making jokes at its expense anyway. That’s the problem – the sexualisation of women and then, by saying, ‘Don’t sexualise them’ and then calling them ‘devi’ and putting them on some pedestal of morality that you approve of. I find that problematic,” countered Apte.