Ghar ki Murgi Daal barabar !
- Ganaie
- Dec 27, 2022
- 4 min read
Coutersy - Wikipedia
Ghar ki Murgi Daal barabar the famous Hindi idiom which has been a central theme of many sit coms since Shriman Shrimati. The show which was indeed one of its kind and unique because it was based on the slapstick humour of loving the wife of a neighbour. The show is light hearted and ensures comedy with Keshav Kulkarni (Jatin Kanakia) and Dilruba (Rakesh Bedi) Male leads trying their level best to woo and flirt with each other’s wives Kokila Kulkarni (Reema Lagoo) and Prema Shalini (Archana Puran Singh) secretly.
Shriman Shrimati- Keshav Kulkarni gets attracted to actress Prema Shalini who lives with her effeminate husband Dilruba, while Dilruba finds Keshav’s elegant wife Kokila attractive. Although, the show proclaims the men never cross the line with each other’s wives, nonetheless the act of pursuing other’s wife is crossing a line itself. It does romanticize, humour perversion and the fact that it’s okay to woo and flirt other’s wife. The concept is mundane as it is because it promotes infidelity and male gaze shamelessly. As a society we often confuse infidelity with adultery. The show certainly does not engage in adultery but does lie on infidelity (which could be both physical and emotional). Point is Infidelity is not always but emotional. Besides, this open and cash idea has surprisingly not offended anyone. Instead the show Shriman Shrimati has inspired many shows and one of them is Bhabhi Ji Ghar par Hai airing since 2015.
The relevance of the theme is profound even in the contemporary tv era of mythology, folklore, and Sci-Fi shows like Nagin, etc. The shows based on perversion plots are even now relevant, entertaining and audience loving! The show Bhabhi Ji Ghar Par Hain is centred around a similar plot of two men Vibhuti Narayan and Manmohan Tiwari flirting with each other’s wives Anita Narayan and Angoori Tiwari and the show is touted as a ‘family entertainer’.
Courtesy - Wikipedia
Film theorist Laura Mulvey in her essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ states and comments that mainstream film form is based on a patriarchal unconscious. She proposes and advocates for another kind of cinema, something progressive and feminine. She goes on to explain that “in patriarchal culture [woman stands in] as a signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not a maker of meaning” (Lindsay Murphy, 2011).
Mulvey argued that ideology is involved in forming the subjectivity of the individual at the level of the unconscious – and that is how a female spectator, through borrowing the male gaze, takes the ideology of a patriarchal society, which is imposed. Mulvey’s emphasis on the analysis of the specific of cinematographic system, with all its radical and provocative judgements, seems to be legitimate (UKEssays, November 2018).
Such shows are not sexist but misogynistic as well. The narrative on popular culture in the current socio-political state where women are constantly fighting for respect more than anything else bears the question of that must such content be allowed to be run. It ruins the sanctity of relationships and their boundaries. It annihilates the dignity of women and the work done for feminine or women’s rights. Mulvey explains that pleasure derived from these forms of looking “can be threatening in context, and it is a woman as representation/image that crystallizes this paradox”. Basically in cinema women are there to be looked at by men.
The makers need to understand the line which does only concern the characters and their relationships but the main thought behind the show and not cross it. As viewers, we need not appreciate it and applaud it in the name of comedy, art, or entertainment. Popular Culture is the biggest and most influential medium. Its impact and effect Are profound and significant and evident in the behaviour of its audience.
Mulvey also commented on the structure and relation of mainstream films/tv with its audience. As a popular culture, an advanced system of representation (like language and the unconscious), its structure reflects and reinforces the prevailing patriarchy which is structured by the desires of man. According to her, this is not just a necessary part of film form, but the presence of women in film disrupts the narrative by “freez[ing] the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation. The relation between the female character the role played within the narrative and the perspective of viewers as an object of desire, thereby uniting her role as an object of desire of viewers with her role on screen. Male characters with whom the audience associates, film narratives are further structured in an active/passive patriarchy, men active and females passive.
Mulvey understood, that woman as an object upon which to look and that of male-protagonist with which to identify, a woman’s image “always threatens to evoke the anxiety it originally signified”. Thus concludes by arguing that “cinema builds the way [woman] is to be looked at into the spectacle itself,” indicating that cinema is built upon a patriarchal system that promotes the active/passive division of power along patriarchal lines (Lindsay Murphy, 2011).
Work Cited -
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000. 585-95. Print.
http://thowe.pbworks.com/w/page/38087813/Summary%3A%20Visual%20Pleasure%20and%20Narrative%20Cinema
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