Parrys

The context and subliminal messages within this ad set me to thinking ---- not that my thoughts have any definitive value, but as someone of the 60s generation, I belong to an epoch of change and have paid my dues & more, so may have earned the right to comment along with 1.3 billion others!!

Virginia Slims cigarettes created the line "You've come a long way, baby". In a very positive development, this phrase was elevated by feminists & others beyond its function of selling tobacco to young women to affirming the gains made by women towards asserting their rightful role in society against deliberate or unconscious barriers.

In India, modernization has been a mixed bag. We have women participating as Reserve Bank Deputy Governors, executives, military & administrative officers, scientists & workers in every sector. However, compared to the 60s & 70s, to someone who has not been in India for the past 2 decades, it SEEMS that the cinema & advertising industries have been very aggressive in selling women as sex objects to be vicariously leered at by the masses. The women in the business happily lend themselves to this process,e.g. Bipasha Basu, someone named Kapoor who is friends with someone named Saif (??) & says she is fond of whoever buys her jewels & diamonds, and creatures like her that unashamedly put their bodies on sale in public.

[Why on earth, I wonder, do we as a society prosecute bar ladies and massage parlor employees, who invariably come from poor backgrounds, put in exhausting hours & earn a pittance? Why dishonor them and shower adulation on the rich engaged in same business but who are considerably more successful?]

Anyway, the model in the SLAB TEST harked back to a society with sharply different public mores. This is not mere hypocrisy, but people genuinely would have been deeply upset in those decades to imagine their daughters or sisters displaying their bodies in a gruesome, vulgar manner in order to win notoriety & wealth.

[You may accuse me of unilaterally imposing a masculine ownership over women, and I will admit to many errors about issues I do not understand in the continuously changing discourse of feminism. OTOH, I DO UNDERSTAND IN EXTREMELY NUANCED WAYS, the nature and history of mores in Indian thought & culture. This has NEVER NEVER NEVER been explored in even the slightest detail by either Western scholars [I REPEAT, for emphasis] or their Indian fellow travelers & bootlickers! ]

Returning to the model, she is posed with a microscope, expressing a generational wish and desire to see young women become intellectual leaders, intellectual stars, not feather-headed IPL owners jiggling up and down like fools and without any doubt, the fronts for powerful men. Additionally, the young lady is well-dressed and exudes a type of non-sectarian, non-denominational, Pan-Indian beauty, grace, charm and innocence. Note too, that the ad agency did not choose a LIGHT-SKINNED woman. They were happy to go with someone with FRIZZY hair, WITHOUT POUTY-RICH-SPOILT-GIRL LIPS or AFFECTED FEATURES.

All in all, the ad agency had the liberty of choosing among human beings,and not just from a group of creatures that represent the worst of Indian womanhood. What these women cater to MOST EXPLICITLY represents the worst of Indian manhood. The more one evokes the darker and rotten elements within oneself or within a society, the stronger do these grow, and crowd out the auspicious aspects that anyway are extremely feeble. We can see how Zia ul-Haq's inciting hatred, darkness and anger has had terrible consequences for a subcontinent, and even the world.

Likewise, what is fed to our spirits through our eyes, ears, senses have a disproportionate effect on our beings: we are pash-u because we PASH i.e. are obligately bound to the sensorium and its perception at each level of the senses.
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Edited by Gautam, 16 May 2010 - 04:22 AM.

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