In Babita Singh Reporting, a film by Ambiecka Pandit, Baby, an ASI working for the Bhopal Police, is chased by two German Shepherds. She panics and flees. While doing so, she collides into a wire fence and her dupatta gets caught. As a result, she is left bleeding from her palms, and her torso while her kurta is torn down the side. She realizes that she has been injured and starts walking with a limp. This is perhaps how it plays out in real life — a single collision with a wire fence suffices to cause a major injury, and slow down a person.
Yet in films and shows, heroes are expected to somersault and get back on their feet each time they receive a blow. Not only that, they are fighting off whole hordes of the main villain’s minions, while barely landing a scratch on their bodies. Now, imagine the same lens of realism being applied to the human faces presented in Indian cinema. Do these faces bring you close to reality or widen your distance from it?
The well-known actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui had once pointed out in an interview with the film critic, Anupama Chopra, that while people might attribute to him the quality of being an unconventional-looking actor, his face was indeed the convention as far as the average face in India goes. He has acted in films such as The Lunchbox, Kahaani, and Bajrangi Bhaijaan. The other actors, who are playing lead roles and are appointed as heroes, are in fact the ones who are far from the average, and they stand out in comparison to the others they are surrounded by.
The actor Nimisha Sajayan, who played the role of Babita Singh has been a target of social media users who pointed out that she doesn’t fit into the mold of the mainstream heroine. Her understated look while portraying the role of a small-town officer in Madhya Pradesh was also praised by many precisely because of her relatability. The departure from artificial beauty standards has been considered a breath of fresh air. Sajayan herself has addressed this saying that she has faced scrutiny throughout her career which has included the likes of the Malayalam language film, The Great Indian Kitchen.
For as long as Indian cinema, and especially Hindi language cinema has flourished, it has upheld a certain aspirational image. In order to play the role of the ‘hero’, or become a leading lady, certain characteristics would be given preference: lighter skin tones, a certain height, and in recent days the pressure of looking younger and better has grown much stronger given the fact that there are more cosmetic surgeons who can aid one in achieving that look. Having access to the best skin care regimen along with monitoring one’s diet: it really does take a village in order for the actor to maintain that polished screen image. A few unspoken rules have also been around: to have a lighter complexion means that one is a good person, worthy of desire. On the other hand, people with darker complexions were relegated to play the antagonistic roles, or exist as sidekicks.
In order to portray a character who belongs to a lower socio-economic strata, it is also fair to assume that the casting should feel believable. But what is then seen in practice is that an actor who is known for their striking looks is hired for the job. An example of that would be Hrithik Roshan who played the role of Anand Kumar in a biographical film titled ‘Super 30’. It is the story of a coach from Bihar who helped 30 poor students to crack the fiercely competitive Joint-Entrance Examinations in India. Filmmaking is also a business that insists on recovering costs and hence hiring Roshan to play the role made commercial sense, but then that came with a side of brownface—a practice that many find offensive or problematic.
Simi Garewal who portrayed the role of a tribal girl in Satyajit Ray’s Aranyer Din Ratri had her face painted to sport a complexion far darker than her own, but Garewal in other cases is known for her elegance and poise, and a polished, upper-class screen persona. The question here is this: should there be some semblance between who the person is on screen, and off it?
The obsession with light skin and exceptional physical beauty did not come out of nowhere. It is ensconced in what one might refer to as the ‘colonial hangover’, or be associated with caste politics and what the markets have tried to sell us for long. Lightness of complexion was considered to be an index of privilege—a notion only amplified by companies producing cosmetic products that claimed to make people fairer by several shades.
Cinema has had its hand in reflecting this bias, by producing an assembly line of leads who did not look like the audiences buying tickets to watch the films, but like fantasy figures sharing similar physical traits. For female leads, the same standards applied, but were possibly narrower, and also the better roles were reserved for actresses who were younger. Regardless of regional authenticity, there have been many situations wherein non-native actors were cast to play the roles of local women, and even dubbed over when they could not speak the language of the film. The underlying subtext might have been this—everyday people belong in everyday stories, whereas the extraordinary feats are pulled off by the ones who adhere to beauty standards.
With the diversification of mediums through which films are disseminated to masses, and audiences acquiring a taste for newer forms of cinema that seeks to go closer to reality rather than distance themselves from it, one could make the case that the everyday-looking man and woman are now going to see themselves on the screen.
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