The women of modern era, especially the new generation female celebrities, are often vocal about their dreams and aspirations and hardly refrain from openly expressing their opinions on a variety of matters.
Award-winning actor Parvathy’s comments at an open forum as part of the recently concluded International Film Festival of Kerala, about the ‘misogynistic’ dialogues in the Mammootty-starrer Kasaba had created uproar on social media.
Since then the actress has been the victim of online trolling. However a unique voice of support stands out amid much vitriol being hurled at Parvathy for voicing her opinion.
Screenwriter duo Bobby and Sanjay, in a Facebook post titled ‘Adaminte Vaariyellu (from the rib of Adam), had expressed their view making a mockery of male chauvinism.
They wrote:
“The real issue is not even Parvathy or Kasaba, but the fact that a ‘woman’ had spoken up. Don’t misunderstand because we (men) have no qualms about women voicing their opinions.
But we’d prefer if you spoke only about the latest trends in fashion or a few recipes or even share your dreams about a future husband. Isn’t it appropriate to politely decline to comment when it comes to expressing opinions about much ‘serious’ matters? Why wouldn’t you even apologize for what you have said, especially since us, the male lions have been roaring at you.”
Bobby and Sanjay says that Parvathy not only refused to bow down to patriarchy but has retaliated with much confidence and strength, which they say the men folk are not used to. They added that the patriarchy expects young women to remain meek and gentle and whoever dares to challenge its notions would be furiously dealt with in various ways.
“The first step of assault on such daring woman is to furiously question their credibility (this would roughly translate to ‘who the hell are you to speak thus’). If the woman is found to remain unfazed the next step would be to hurl jibes beating out our brains and churn out insulting jokes and metaphors. If that too doesn’t work we would stoop to the next level and start abuses invoking woman's body parts before slandering her,” say the screen writers.
They say that these three levels of assault or abuse arise from the grave intolerance towards strong voices that come up from women, which the men find uncommon. The post which has an introspective nature criticizes the male dominance by saying that men do not have in their agenda the courtesy to show mutual respect or to engage in a healthy discourse or debate. “Had we known that (mutual respect), we wouldn’t have misunderstood your comments to be a dictate against including ‘misogynistic’ dialogues or characters in the movies. We would also have realized that you had in fact appealed against glorifying such dialogues and characters. All disputes would have ended had we known that the male characters in one of the best woman-centered movies ever made in Malayalam were all torch bearers of misogyny - Adaminte Vaariyellu. The name of that movie is the title of our post too,” the script writers post.
Bobby and Sanjay say that though Parvathy had named only one movie, she had in fact represented one among a lot more in that category. On a note of self criticism the writer duo confess that her criticisms could even be directed at those movies which were written by them.
Bobby and Sanjay conclude their post in a rather funny yet thought provoking way.
“For reminding us to consider women and their point of view whenever we pick our pen to write, for letting us introspect and thus pushing us into the abyss of uneasiness, we strongly express our disapproval,” the writers note.