Girl Uninterrupted:
The first season of She, written by Imtiaz Ali, had the faintly intriguing premise of a young and timid constable, Bhumika Pardeshi (Aaditi Pohankar), sent undercover as a sex worker to entrap the elusive drug kingpin Nayak (Kishore Kumar G). The series, directed by Arif Ali and Avinash Das, tried for a noir, La Femme Nikita kind of look, but seldom managed to rid itself of its air of sleaze.
Bhumi is derided for her mannish looks by her colleagues and dumped by her husband for her frigidity, and by the act of using her body to attract men, she is supposedly empowered. Season 1 ended with her in bed with the mysterious Nayak, with whom she discovers sexual pleasure, and consequently her own potential.
Season 2, directed by Arif Ali from Imtiaz Ali’s script, is several times more crass, and has the leading lady constantly dropping her clothes, as she seeks to bewitch men with her unbridled lust– a game she enjoys. She also plays both sides – her handler Fernandes (Vishwas Kini) and Nayak.
The two seasons of She put forward the idea that a female’s power is in her body, made available for sex; ironically, real power remains with men, who are able to access this body for their pleasure. The camera almost lasciviously lingers on Bhumi’s bare skin in the many love-making sequences. Aaditi Pohankar is uninhibited in these scenes, while also retaining her little-girl voice and manner of speech. She is a far better actress than the series deserves.
For all her seductive techniques with other men, Bhumi still freezes in terror in front of her abusive ex-husband and, with the police force behind her, cannot even evict him from her home, where he is squatting forcibly. It’s only when she learns from her hooker friends that he is impotent that she manages to confront him.
The plot about tracing and destroying Nayak’s narcotics network goes on listlessly in the backdrop, as Bhumi starts to learn about the crime syndicate and the random cruelty that apparently gives Nayak his clout. He tells her that killing a loved one is the real rest of power.
It is quite unbelievable that the city’s elite cops need to depend on one woman to catch a dangerous drug dealer. After all the information Bhumi provides, the cyber cell ought to have been able to track Nayak’s network, who work extensively through the web. Fernandes and his boss, Alam (Mohammad Ali Baig), are made to look foolish, as they are unable to determine whether to trust Bhumi or not. Nayak moves around with practically a whole village of followers, yet nobody except Bhumi has supposedly seen his face! As the series proceeds, it gets increasingly bizarre, and Bhumi has no moral qualms about starting a drugs network of her own with other sex workers she has met during her undercover days; this after her own sister almost dies of an overdose.
There are too many needless characters, like a band of eunuchs, and hookers with their own dramas going on.
It’s absurd how Bhumi’s outfits become a mix of men’s shirts and long skirts, as if to suggest that she is half-and-half, till she eventually decides to adopt male garb, and, in effect, become a man. This goes quite against the earlier theory that sexual prowess liberates women. So, the series, like its lead character, is confused about its politics—it panders to the male gaze, while pretending that the flashing of skin and lingerie is for empowering the woman.
Interestingly, the term ‘male gaze’ was coined by Laura Mulvey in her 1975 essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema—which, to put it simply, meant that visual media are created for a heterosexual male’s point of view and that women are sexualized to please the male viewer. Which is what She does.
(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in on June 18, 2022 )
