"Bairer theke pore esheche (he studied abroad)," makes a man better. The funny part is, the westernised man is portrayed as ultimate husband material. For instance, in Krishnakoli, the villain is currently a girl who wears minidresses and drinks, and her character is pitted against that of Krishna, who is a small town, conservative girl. There’s a suspicion towards the educated and independent woman, too, as if education and wearing jeans corrupts women. Image credit: Blues Productions, Zee Entertainment Enterprises The westernised woman is demonised, while the poor village girl is patronisingly portrayed as a better personĮnglish-speaking, "modern" women who wear dresses or jeans are often the villains in these shows. For example, they call Priyam from Jibon Saathi “daanr kaak,” meaning raven, as an insult. Another trope is the portraying someone considered “ugly” per the narrative, as dark-skinned. One common trope is that the rich city girls in these shows have light skin, and someone who is poor or from a village, is done up with a dark shade of foundation. Ranging from stereotypical portrayals to straight-up colourism, the shows, even when trying to be progressive, end up losing the plot. The treatment of women is skewed based on their skin’s colour in these shows. The way dark-skinned women are represented is pretty stereotypical, both in ‘Krishnakoli’ and ‘Jibon Saathi’ Is such content really breaking class barriers then? You won’t find a single show where the woman is the wealthy, benevolent provider who takes care of the man. In Mithai, despite Mithai the titular character being a spirited entrepreneur, her marriage is arranged with a richer guy so that she is “taken care of.” This reinforces the patriarchal idea of the man being the provider. We don’t see the upward social mobility of someone from low-income backgrounds when the genders are reversed.
The man is the one who rescues her from a life of being destitute. The woman’s helplessness and powerlessness extends to the economic background assigned to her in these shows. You’d think such shows are class-positive, but the man is always rich and the woman is always poor, be it in ‘Mithai’, or in ‘Krishnakoli’ In Mithai, for instance, the titular character’s mother shows discomfort in sitting in a car, and this is supposed to indicate that she is better than the petty ways of the world. The undertones of that are still present in these shows, and it’s almost as if shunning comfort and luxury makes you a better person in the eyes of the narrator. In 2021, shouldn’t we stop glorifying suffering?īengal is famous for its communist history, and materialism is something that continues to be frowned upon in Bengali culture. Image credit: ZEE5, TollySerial Buzz, Zee Entertainment Enterprisesīut for the most part, these shows exalt the suffering of women. The narrative doesn’t reward Supu for being a conformist. However, the good thing is that Apu is the heroine who wins in life despite society having issues with her nature. This is supposed to make the audience see her as more virtuous.Īpu’s sister Supu, in fact, is like a foil to Apu’s feisty personality because she shrinks herself. Submissive and repressed women who are under-confident, like Shyama from Krishnakoli and Supu from Aparajita Apu, are the "good women.” Shyama wears a ghunghat all the time, and constantly undersells herself. Shyama in ‘Krishnakoli’ and Supu in ‘Aparajita Apu’ are proof that such shows paint timid women in a better light than they do spunky women So, here’s my review of such serials, as someone who doesn’t even watch Hindi shows and is worried about Bangla content mimicking the style of Ekta Kapoor’s K-serials.
Watching Bangla daily soaps like Krishnakoli, Aparajita Apu, Jibon Saathi, and Mithai with my mother shed a lot of light on the direction Bengali television is headed in.