When 54-year old astride Akshay Kumar pulled up his sleeves as Samrat Prithviraj Chauhan, he was awestruck by 25-year old Manushi Chillar’s entry sequence in the trailer. In an uncomforting title track of 56-year old Salman Khan’s flick Radhe, the filmmakers found it fitting for 29-year old Disha Patani to groove over the beats aside the senior actor.
Ageist or awkward or plain misogynist one might ask, since we hardly ever see top actresses from the 90s playing college girls while romancing an actor half their age. They are now doing ‘meaningful’ roles of powerful cops or mothers taking revenge for their child’s murder or such.
The pattern that repeats itself with almost every film starring a Bollywood superstar is the casting of a female lead much younger than him. Bollywood’s obsession with young women who are paired opposite men in their 50s is problematic for many reasons. The audience’s acceptance of this mismatched pairing often encourages the sexualization of young women on screen since the leading lady is usually there for a romantic song or two or has her role reduced to getting kidnapped or harassed or so.
Over the years, the phenomenon of casting young women opposite their aged male counterparts has evolved as an accepted norm. In the yesteryears, Dilip Kumar continued to flirt and romance actresses in their twenties – many of whom started their careers being launched opposite him. The tinsel town publications gladly celebrate the love story of Saira Banu who at 22 married 44-year old Dilip Kumar in real life. In the 1970s, on the screen, the duo featured in a series of hits like Gopi, Sagina and Bairaag.
In the 1980s film Dayavan, 42-year old Vinod Khanna who played a don rescued a 21-year-old Madhuri Dixit off the streets and married her. Except, Khanna was not portrayed as a 42-year-old man. The film industry’s strange obsession with pairing the lead duos with double the age difference has gone unchecked for years. Many appreciated the on-screen chemistry between Salman Khan and Revathy in 1991 film ‘Love’ where they played love interests at same ages in their respective careers.
However in 2014, when Revathy made her comeback in Hindi cinema with 2-states, she was cast as Alia Bhatt’s mother, probably in a role five to seven years older than her actual age. But In the same year, Salman Khan, who was 48 then, was cast opposite Jacqueline Fernandez, in her late twenties. Madhuri Dixit and Shahrukh Khan started their careers in the same decade. The diva got married, took a break from films, and started off her second run in Bollywood only to be cast as a housewife in Marathi film ‘Bucket list’ or in eccentric roles including that of Begum Para in the 2014 film Dedh Ishqiya. Whereas Shahrukh Khan continues to share the screen with half of his age, from Deepika Padukone, and Alia Bhatt to Anushka Sharma – you name them all!
At a time when actresses like Sridevi and Karisma Kapoor were starting their second innings with the films, Bollywood superstars like Shahrukh Khan, Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar were launching younger actresses – Deepika Padukone (Om Shanti Om, 2007), Anushka Sharma (Rab Ne Bana di Jodi, 2008) and Sonakshi Sinha (Dabangg, 2010).
Actress Shefali Shah who often receives critical appreciation for her roles, revealed that there came a time in her career when she had to decline roles after getting repeatedly cast as an over-aged woman since she started her stint in the films. In 2005, Shah featured opposite Amitabh Bachchan in Waqt: The Race Against Time, while Akshay Kumar played her son. “I played aged very early. I played Akshay Kumar’s mother (who was 35) when I was around 28. I got Hasratein when I was 20 and played a 30-35-year-old in it. After a point, I decided if I’m not getting the work that really drives me crazy, I will sit at home,” she revealed in an interview.
It seems leading ladies of Bollywood have a shorter ‘shelf-life’ so to say compared to their male counterparts. While the men continue their action in run-of-the-mill Bollywood style action-packed rom-coms, female roles evolve with their ages when they return to the screens. The industry has negotiated this change with a thumb rule that while women are expected to age gracefully, men continue to come of age on the screen even in their 50s.
The unhealthy age gap in the silver screen relationships has been an unaddressed issue that escalated over the decades. It is not only reflective of the society which continues to objectify young women who drool over gracefully ageing men in their grey, but it also underlines the fact that unrealistic portrayal of onscreen chemistries could badly impact the society with the absurd representation.
The selective ageism on the part of men who refuse to grow up on the screen is a phenomenon not only restricted to Bollywood but can be seen in southern films too. One needs to ask, whether an unjudgemental acceptance of film where the roles are reversed – women in their fifties getting cast opposite men in 20s would see the light of the day with no eyebrows raised?
