The dirty picture

‘Balan is the new Bollywood Hero’, cried a flier on a news capsule featuring Vidya Balan, whose Dirty Picture has emerged a top grosser.
The anchor (a woman) was gushing all over Balan’s new star status after her dare-all, bare-all act in the film, apparently a biopic on Silk Smita, the southern actor who played havoc with male hormones with her itsies and bitsies.
Balan exuded this confident, glowing persona after being recognised by people, media and critics for her “scintillating” performance, which they said could fetch her coveted awards next year.
We were treated to the promotional (read provocative) snatches of all that was dirty in the picture. And, then the question time began, with the anchor asking her what she felt about being the new “hero” of Bollywood. Balan was a picture of anything but humility. She was over the top because she had arrived, and even suggested that the Khans could add Balan after their name because she had replaced the Khans as the new hot property of Box Office.
I did not know how to react to the Q&A session and to the anchor’s conclusion that the Bollywood heroine had indeed “arrived” and she raised a toast to the celebration of womanhood; and how the Kareenas and Priyankas must take a leaf out of Balan’s book (which incidentally also means boobs in Bengali). Pardon my Freudian slip.
Our new diva said she was thrilled that she could make the people come (no pun intended) to the theatres with her orgasmic presence. She said she had only played the character of Silk Smita, who used her sexuality to get even with the men who exploited her, and reached the heady top of her career.
As a woman, two questions came in my mind: why did the media call her the “hero” of Bollywood? Why couldn’t it refer to her as a successful heroine? By adding this sobriquet, aren’t we celebrating the male authority, yet again?
Second question: Did Balan fetch the returns, or did her Silk, and her chest-heaving gyrations. Back in the Eighties, men had undeniably flocked to the theatres to feel Silk’s raw sexuality. Balan said she put herself into the Silk’s sleazy costumes and character, and managed to pull off a compelling performance. So why wouldn’t people go in droves in 2011 (like in the Eighties) when Silk’s character is splashed all over the screen from when the curtains rise to its fall?
Then the anchor and Balan discussed on how other heroines were willing to shed their inhibitions and bare all on stage to become the new “heroes” of Bollywood. Post-Dirty Picture, the anchor said Kareena Kapoor had reportedly asked her producer-director to make her film, Heroine, bolder and brasher.
The whole sequence of events is so problematic. It is sad that celebration of womanhood is reduced to celebration of her curves, her body, her sexuality. So even today, a woman remains just a work of art to be admired, to be fantasised, to be possessed, and to be destroyed, all at the whim of the male owner.
Balan, would you like to try playing an Erin Bronkovich and check whether your magic still works?