Objectification is exploitation

Objectification. A term that is used when women are degraded to the status of a mere

sexual object, meant to satisfy the male gaze. Objectification of women leads to their

exploitation because when men and media sexualise a woman’s entire being, they benefit

either commercially or socially, by making films keeping her sexuality in the centre or at

home where she is oppressed to keep the family’s honour.

But do you know there could be another angle where objectification leads to an entire

community’s exploitation?

I am talking about how under the garb of bringing stories of individuals with disabilities to

light, Bollywood has repeatedly objectified and exploited them. The trend of having a

disabled person as a main character is only recent but has managed to completely

misrepresent an entire set of people.

The recent Bollywood film Salaam Venky is a clear example of how disabled people are

portrayed either as an object of inspiration or pity. The story of a chess player K.Venkatesh

and his mother K. Sujatha has been shown, with his disability as the only centre point,

instead of all that he achieved in his life. Film directors show these stories in order to ‘inspire’

the masses but what they fail to understand is that we do not exist to inspire non disabled

people. Yes, we need representation of the community in mainstream media but not at the

cost of misrepresentation, not at the cost of exploiting our struggles and objectifying our

entire being.

Its high time, we as a society realise when people of a certain community are objectified and

stop supporting such media.