The irony of male gaze in Oo Antava

Gaze. The unblinking, uncompromising set of eyes that watch you at all times while you go about your daily business in public. The persistent eyes of the auto wale bhaiya stay less on the road ahead and more at your cleavage through the rear-view mirror. The gnawing stare that is followed by a grin as ominous as the footsteps you hear behind you on a desolate street at night. The gaze, that is overwhelmingly male, tightly grips a woman’s life in the same way that a man’s hands tightly grip her throat. You get conditioned into adopting this gaze in girlhood, and it becomes a sore wound that oozes blood every time you step out of your home. As you approach womanhood and are fortunate enough to be educated, you resolve one day to relearn how to live outside the shadow of this gaze. Instead of adjusting your top, you stare back in the mirror with rage. You muster the courage to return the gaze, wherever possible.

One industry that has played a major role in the blatant objectification of women in this country is the cinema. The audience in India internalized the perception that women are a secondary subject as a result of the continual dichotomization of women as either a damsel in distress or vamps. In contemporary times a lot has been written about how cinema has actively perpetuated the idea of women as mere objects. The series ‘Respectfully Disagree’ by TheSwaddle is an excellent initiative to unlearn years of misogyny that we have internalized. The rise in the academic and digital upheaval about the problematic gender representation in cinema seems to have finally reached the ears of mainstream directors and screenwriters. Lately, a feeble attempt is being made to reconstruct this ubiquitous gaze but how successful has it been?

Samantha Prabhu starred in the song Oo Antava from the movie Pushpa released in 2021. There is a very clear dissonance between the song’s lyrics and its visuals. The overarching message of the song highlights the harassment that women face at the hands of men regardless of the type of clothes they wear, the color of their skin, and the shape of their bodies. The lyrics of Oo Antava appear fairly progressive in comparison to traditional item numbers that infamously and flagrantly abuse a woman’s right to dignity. However, when we look at the song’s music video, we see that it has all the hallmarks of a generic item song. Though I couldn’t locate the tweet for this article, I seem to recall that the Chikni Chameli music video was described as being painful to watch by a woman on Twitter. The men’s hungry gazes, non-consensual touches, and smirks all contribute to the horrible impression that the song leaves on you. The masculine gaze is as present as ever in all item numbers, from Kareena in Fevicol Se to Jhanvi in Nadiyo Paar.

Despite the song’s reformist lyrics, Oo Antava’s visuals stick to the style of its forerunners. The words that Samantha is mouthing do not align with the way she is being treated in the video. Her words make a valiant effort to break through the gaze, but she has been deliberately restricted from returning it. She remains an object for the men to ogle at. Samantha Prabhu appears to be berating the male spectators for staring at her, but ironically, she is still singing along to the song and entertaining this very gaze. She doesn’t seem to be addressing the men in the audience directly; rather, her message appears to be directed toward the men beyond the screen. Breaking the fourth wall to deliver a message while catering to the same gaze you seem to be calling out in your message. Additionally, there seem to be few women in the crowd as well but unlike the men who are busy looking at Samantha, the women aren’t there to do the same. Their dancing like the heroines isn’t for their own leisure; it’s a performance for the men around them. A woman’s existence has been reduced to a performance for the men to enjoy in a song that vehemently calls out the discrimination that women face in a public space.

Knowing the impact cinema has on Indian audiences, it becomes imperative for the makers of films to be responsible. However, despite the regular backlash cinema receives for its regressive portrayal of women, it refuses to change.

The gaze is continuously altered, substituted, and hidden but is never returned.