What Bollywood Films Have Taught Us About Intimacy
Devdas, dir. Sanjay Leela Bhansali (2002)
Words by Ravinder Kaur
If your sole source for relationship advice, dating and sex tips is Bollywood, I don’t know what to tell you apart from you need to pause Devdas right now.
Don’t get me wrong - I love Devdas. It's one of my absolute favourite Bollywood films, closely followed by Om Shanti Om (2007), Mujhse Dosti Karoge (2002) and Sholay (1975), but I wouldn’t refer to any of them as sex education. The melodramatic acting and the decadent settings (not to mention the outfits) are some of Bollywood’s key identifiers and we honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. While Bollywood may be a great guide for the latest fashion trends, we cannot ignore the underlying euphemisms in relation to romance.
Beginning from the ridiculousness of using flowers as a metaphor for sexual intercourse, to the current oversimplification of casual sex, we know by now that Bollywood is an industry desperately trying to recover from a repressed state.
Om Shanti Om, dir. Farah Khan (2007)
Bollywood has always relied upon human emotions to make successful films; some of them being love, fear, sadness and joy. Romance has always been a strong underlying emotion and it has worked wonders for Bollywood films time and time again, and will likely continue to do so. We cannot escape the irony. An industry that financially thrives off romance films portrays elements such as relationships, dating and intimacy as dirty secrets.
Unless Emraan Hashmi (once touted as the serial-kisser of Bollywood) is involved, in which case keep the remote close and get ready to run to the kitchen whenever there’s a ‘bold’ scene. The closest thing to formal sex education as South Asians is watching a Bollywood film and being told to look away when shirtless Shah Rukh Khan dances in the rain chasing the female lead.
Bollywood has an established reputation of censorship, one which reflects the South Asian community’s outlook towards intimacy. Marriage has historically been viewed as a transaction and dowries continue to persist in South Asian countries such as Bangladesh, India and Pakistan despite being limited in value by law. Sex is therefore seen as purely a means to have children.
Sholay, dir. Ramesh Sippy (1975)
For young South Asian men, engaging in conversations with male friends or male cousins about how many sexual partners they’ve had is normal. As for many young South Asian women, this type of conversation doesn’t come naturally and is often reserved for a few close friends rather than raucously shared with a group. This ultimately relates to the expectation that women are not supposed to have sex outside of marriage whilst their brothers or male cousins are encouraged to have relations and be sex-positive. A great part of this correlates with honour culture and the belief in purity, as women are frequently discerned as emblems of their families which further means that their bodies do not belong to them.
For most South Asian people, talking about sex with their parents would result in a suitcase packed and the first flight back home to marry an eligible bachelor/bachelorette from the village. This is where lines can become blurred for young British Asians - our understanding of life in the West is ‘better’ but the inability to similarly openly speak to parents about sex can lead to problems further down the line including sexual assault, rape and porn addiction. Older generations need to foster, create and encourage environments of open communication and this doesn’t just apply to the topic of sex.
Rewind to the 90s, the only way youngsters could quench their curiosity about intimacy was through Bollywood films. The lessons about love, dating and sex were mysterious and vague.
Firstly, no one cares about safe sex. We understand it's a film and you don’t want to ‘kill the vibe’ as the heroine closes her eyes and the hero nuzzles into her neck whilst a seemingly innocent yet innuendo-lined Hindi song plays. But as the scene continues, all aspects of realism vanish. Protection is never mentioned or even implied. Ridiculously enough, the issue only crops up in romance-comedy films such as Salaam Namaste (2005) and Shaadi Ke Side Effects (2014) where unwanted pregnancies dominate the plot. Catching an STI is reduced to a gag and sexual health awareness remains a foreign concept in Bollywood films. The industry’s so-called sexual revolution fails at the first step.
Salaam Namaste, dir. Siddarth Anand (2005)
Rain equates to foreplay, at least in Bollywood. According to the hundreds of scenes where the leads merrily dance and sing together, as soon as that first raindrop lands on the heroine’s shoulder, the stimulation has begun. Before we know it, the couple is drenched and we learn that it’s more important to sing and dance about sex than do it.
Younger generations are less likely to watch Bollywood and are enticed by shows such as Netflix’s Never Have I Ever. The series focuses on the awkwardness of a first-generation Indian-American teenager’s life, and whilst (like most teen ‘dramas’) it can be a cringe-fest and vomit-inducing at times, the series is a closer reflection of real relationships and the weird world of dating.
The series shows hilarious, sad and wholesome high school moments including falling in and out of love and forming relationships constantly, and despite what older generations may think of this, this type of series is exactly what South Asian teenagers shouldn’t be afraid to watch and perhaps relate to due to scenes of being compared to Asian friends and overbearing parents.
But despite generational differences, Bollywood is a thriving industry and one that deserves to be adored and appreciated. Bollywood is gradually shifting towards more invigorating narratives, including those that are more reflective of society, in recent times - in the meantime, we can merely sit back and wait for when the industry will start showing dating and sex as just that, and not as a glorified taboo.
Never Have I Ever, Copyright © Netflix (2020)