Sexuality and Popular Culture

The recent Hollywood hit, Wonder Woman, which ran to full houses, misleads young minds about notions of sexuality. The movie revolves around a demigoddess, Princess Diana of Themyscira, popularly known as Wonder Woman, who unequivocally states: “Even though a man is necessary for reproduction, his presence is completely unnecessary for achievement of sexual pleasure.” Such references in popular culture lead to misguided notions about sexuality.

The fear here is that the subtlety of that message was not lost on the masses that have been raised on a healthy dose of sexual education focused on suppression of desires and abstinence. The notion that for girls it is necessary to guard one’s virginity is generally given precedence over protection of one’s life, as they are often told to save their hymens for ‘the one’ that they are to wed.

The problem arises because songs, movies, and social media about sexual freedom, coupled with a lack of authentic information on ideas of sexuality, consent to sexual contact, the maturity to comprehenThe recent Hollywood hit, Wonder Woman, which ran to full houses, misleads young minds about notions of sexuality. d the nature of sex­ual relations in isolation from soc-
ietal conditioning leads to misinf-
ormation among young adults. For instance, in the Bollywood hit Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, the heroine stops the hero from kissing her on the lips for fear of becoming pregnant. Expectedly, a lot of young adults were under the misimpression that kissing can cause pregnancy.

The movie’s message seems clear that a superior, or rather, Wonder Woman, does not need a man. A man is only useful as a commodity with his one tablespoon of contribution necessary for procreation. A Superman may need his Lois Lane, but Won-
der Woman surely has to be the epitome of self-sufficiency. This “pedestalisation” of womanhood has very damaging repercussions. Portrayal of women as perfect even without a companion burdens the entire gender to live up to their media-driven image.

For women, expectations of the need to measure up to the ‘A’ league of different roles of a mother, daughter, sister and wife erodes their individuality as a person, and reduces them to a sum total of societal expectations. It further classifies society into roles of man, woman, and feminists: a man needs a woman, a woman needs her family, and a feminist requires no one.

American psychologist Carol Gilligan’s theory of moral development states that boys and girls seem to be differently wired because of social conditioning. Indian society conditions its boys to be aggressive, and pursue what they desire. They are made to feel entitled to physical and sexual contact with whomever of the fair sex that they desire.

Girls, on the other hand, are given very judgment-based sex education, which generally revolves around abstinence when they are young, and then the need to please their husband on the wedding night. They are encouraged to avoid and abhor sexual desires. As a result, girls internalise, or are expected to internalise, a feeling of disgust towards any sexual contact. This results in stereotypes, like ‘boys will be boys’, or ‘boys only want one thing’, or as heard in the movie Cheeni Kum, ‘marriage is the price a man pays for sex, and sex is the price a woman pays for marriage’. These stereotypes are used and exaggerated as tropes in cinema and on television.

For instance, in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Shahrukh Khan’s character only had to pursue the female lead across Europe, harass her in public and demonstrate borderline rapist tendencies before she realised that that was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. This normalises eve-teasing as an acceptable expression of romantic love. Audiences relate to such themes, which reinforces such notions.

Misplaced feminism

Young adults, especially millenials who belong to middle, upper middle classes and the elite, are probably the only ones who have a chance at unlearning societal conceptualising of sexuality. They have access to feminist ideology, which challenges these patriarchal notions. Yet, a lot of young adults end up buying into patriarchy. This is because of a misplaced understanding of feminism.

Popular representations of feminism generally involve a group of man-hating women who have been the unfortunate victims of a man, and base their hatred of the lot on that single incident. It is a common trope which is used in a lot of slapstick movies for getting a few giggles from the audience. Popular culture conveniently fails to convey that feminism is not a fight women pursue against men, but a fight that both men and women pursue against oppressive patriarchal institutions.

Therefore, the message this movie disseminates is that any woman who desires a man for sex-ual pleasure must necessarily be sub-feminist. However, its director Patty Jenkins explicitly highlights that the movie has no feminist orientation. It is just another superhero movie meant for mass consumption. This stance has been criticised because it does not conform to populist half-baked notions of feminism.

The problem lies not with the movie not being made from a feminist standpoint, but with the perception of the movie as a feminist movie, and the subsequent educational value attached to the message it sends across about sexuality.

(The writer is an Assistant Professor who teaches Feminist Jurisprudence at the School of Law, Christ University, Bangalore)