Spinning Tops and Feminists

                As I sat at the table finishing up my school homework for the day, I was listening and half watching a Telugu movie my parents were watching on YouTube called Mitr. It seemed to start off with a typical family who immigrated to the United States with the mother still trying to hang onto her Indian roots. Everything was okay until this one scene where the father asked his guests if they wanted anything to drink; as soon as the guests said water, instead of him getting it for his guests himself he asked his wife to get the water for them.  

                Okay, maybe I am slightly overreacting for this one scene, but it continued. The mother continued to act like a stereotypical woman; one who listens to her husband all the time and depends on the husband to do everything because she feels she is the weaker gender. She can’t stand up for herself. As Angelica’s group presented today, she is considered a weak character.

                This made me think of more Telugu movies that I have watched that have “weak” female characters; a majority of Telugu movies I thought of were more oriented towards male main characters with a female character only there to act as a girlfriend for the main character. She had no other purpose or role in the actual plot of the story. She was more like a distraction to the “hero.”

While I could think of many movies with a main male character, only a couple of movies came to mind when I thought of more strong female oriented Telugu movies. These few movies with a strong female character were still well received in society, so why then, especially in modern times, can’t there be more of a balance between male and female characters in Telugu movies? Why does the male character have more importance in plots of a movie than a female character?

                A movie can still be successful if there is an equal balance between a strong male and strong female character who are both central to the plot. For example, a spinning top consists of three pieces of paper; each paper is the same size and each part is necessary to make the top. Each piece of the top can be thought of as each part of the movie, one the plot, one the male character, and one the female character; all elements that are important for a movie.

When put together, the top spins pretty well. Therefore, when all the pieces of the paper were the same size, or when both the male and female character had an equal part in the movie, the top spun well, or in other words the movie can be successful.

Now if that same top has one part that is too big, the top is unbalanced and doesn’t spin as well. In my opinion, this is where Telugu movies are at now.