No Bollywood for Middle Aged Women !

There's an old saying - art is reflection of the society! 99% of Bollywood movies are certainly an exception. Interestingly the India film industry aka Bollywood has two clearly defined categories - Stars and Actors ! Stars are evergreen, media friendly, people savy stalwarts, usually adept in marketing and PR activities.  Ironically very few women have been able to achieve stardom in past 100 odd years of India cinema. 

Until late 1970s, heroines, as we usually prefer calling them, had a well defined role, character and attributes. In addition, mothers and sometimes sisters too were important part of the Bollywood stories those days! The divas of 50s, 60s and 70s gracefully retired as they hit mid 30s, though most of them were married in the same fraternity,i.e. no dearth of opportunity.  Why only the women/ the heroines take a sabbatical to raise their kids and then they slowly move into obscurity forever? Why women from these wealthy and seemingly liberal entertainment industry powerhouses only become the scapegoats of the double standards? Some might say that the choice was theirs, but how free, how unbiased that decision was !

Those days going to a theater was not considered a good manner, so women rarely went to theaters. According to my guesstimate more then 90% of the Directors, Producers, writers and the technical staff was and is male. So there were genuine reasons for not casting middle aged women those days, i.e. no market for women oriented movies, very few women representatives to hoist the flag !

Cut to 2012 and the situation is still the same. Unfortunately not even young, educated, outward thinking, highly smart, international competition winner and even talented heroines are not able to demand, command good script, well written characters except those of confused love birds. The superstar actresses of 90s and early 00's are already forgotten. The mothers and sisters are no longer relevant in the mindless movies made for weekend multiplex audiences. What a wastage of talent ! 

I think the reason for current state of affairs lies in a box, infact two boxes. The one box is what you are currently using. A significant % Women in 40s and 50s in India currently are not yet Online. So they are not able to voice their opinion, voice their demands unlike their teen kids. This box has done one more thing. Because the teens and the young kids are constantly in touch with their friends and the rest of the world, so they dont miss the middle aged women anymore in personal and virtual lives and even movies. 

The other black box, is our good old, earlier known as Idiot Box. The Indian Television Industry has been filling this vacuum for past 15 years. It has preserved and reserved the Prime Time for Indian women and served them quiet adeptly. Infact the Television has provided good opportunity to showcase talent to several middle aged hero and heroines who were good actors but couldn't achieve stardom in Bollywood.

However I am slightly perplexed here. What happened on the Television screen was the cause or the effect of what happened on the Silver Screen ! Perhaps the reason lies in our expectations. We the viewers always expected our heroines to be beautiful, young, elegant and sexy. We are/were not interested in their acting and so couldn't accept their growing wrinkled face or disproportionate vital statistics ! 

Let me know what you think...