এ লেখাটা বাংলায় লিখতে পারলে ভালো হত, কিন্তু তা করলে লেখাটা পড়বার লোক কাউকে আর পাওয়া যাবে না। সুতরাং ইংরেজীতেই লিখছি। ভার্গব রামচন্দ্রকে বলেছিলেন, আমার তপস্যার ফল নষ্ট করো, কিন্তু আমার গতি কেড়ে নিও না। বাংলা তার তপস্যার ফলের বস্তা জাপটে বসে আছে, গতি যাক ক্ষতি নেই।
I saw a post the other day. It was probably a Tumblr post – never having used these platforms, I cannot be very sure. The post was pointing out that Scarlet Witch (aka Wanda Maximoff, portrayed by Elizabeth Olsen) is referred to as a ‘kid’ by Captain America (aka Steve Rogers, portrayed by Chris Evans), and at the same time, Scarlet Witch has a costume that shows her breast cleavage. The post was arguing that this was highly hypocritical and depraved of the production house: they were practically sexualizing children.
What the post said is only half the story. Underneath the OP (babyspeak for Original Post) there was a comment that said that this was not the only instance where children were sexualized in Marvel movies; Peter Parker (portrayed by Tom Holland) appearing in a shirtless scene in No Way Home was also a prime example.
Let us start from here, and understand how we might be in the middle of a Neo-Victorian morality wave that is flooding our social culture.
There are three or four different ways that the OP is wrong.
- Steve Rogers is a hundred years old. Even Nick Fury counts as a kid to him.
- Americans use the word ‘kid’ for any person who is younger and/or youthful. What’s more, ‘just a kid’ is an expression that is used to imply inexperience, not youth. In this particular instance, Steve Rogers is trying to shield Wanda Maximoff from some undeserved guilt.
- Girls have breasts, and breasts have cleavage, and a very wide range of female clothing reveals the cleavage to a certain degree, with no overtly sexual purposes attached to it. We are not, of course, delving into the sexuality latent in everyday items – like the redness of lipsticks, or the high heels of shoes; if we start marking those items as instruments of sexualization, then almost all women around us would have to be marked as wannabe whores.
- Wanda is an adult person who can, very appropriately, dress as priggishly or as provocatively as she likes. She is on the verge of a romantic (and not merely platonic) relationship with a male (Vision the super-android). If her cleavage being bare is sexualization, then so is Thor having bare arms.
There is yet another point that is rather harder to swallow. Elizabeth Olsen, the actress in question, has good breasts; so when she dresses in a costume that reveals cleavage, the reveal is quite conspicuous and attractive. Not that anyone is paying attention to cleavages during the high-octane sequences in the movies, but a screenshot might draw the attention. And this is where the shoe pinches. The point is not the bared cleavage. The point is the sexual pleasure generated by it in a viewer’s mind. The OP wouldn’t mind entire armies of bare-breasted women gallivanting on the screen – as long as they didn’t appear sexy.
The Tom Holland question is similar. Would there’ve been such an issue if there’d been a shirtless Ned? Tom Holland is a teen idol, and in the film in question, he has a muscular physique befitting Spider-man. A muscular teen idol is sexually attractive to half the target audience of the film. We can guess the steps: the commentator felt a pang of sexual pull when the shirtless scene came on, felt guilty about it immediately afterwards, and then went to war with their keyboard on social media, woke guns blazing.
So, are we in the middle of a Neo-Victorian deluge? Is cultural puritanism making a comeback?
It definitely appears so. It is not doing it in the garb of religion this time, – this time the wooden horse is called Social Justice. Many have written on the subject – studies have been made, surveys conducted, and research done. It is strange to think that only fifteen years ago, newspaper columns were critiquing the opened floodgates of nudity and lasciviousness on the internet; there were fears of sex rampaging loose, youngsters turning to porno-zombies, structures of orthodox morality collapsing under the immoral tide. Fifteen years later, we have a world where looks, or even words, can amount to sexual molestation and land a person in prison.
“The value of nuanced opinions is decreasing day by day,” a friend was saying the other day. He couldn’t be more right. Nuance is almost a lost concept. There are layers and levels to complex social movements. Consider this,
- Raam sees Sita in the garden and takes a second, and maybe a third, look.
- Raam sees Sita in the garden and spends the better part of the afternoon stealing glances at her.
- Raam sees Sita in the garden and looks at her with a steady, pointed gaze, for minutes. Sita doesn’t notice.
- Raam sees Sita in the garden and looks at her with a steady, pointed gaze, for minutes. Sita notices. Raam looks away.
- Raam sees Sita in the garden and looks at her with a steady, pointed gaze, for minutes. Sita notices. Raam does not look away.
- Raam sees Sita in the garden. He has a crush on her and spends several days at school stealing glances at her and taking every chance to be in the room if she’s in it too.
- Raam sees Sita in the garden, has a huge crush on her, and spends several days at school stalking her and following her around, to the point that people take notice.
- Raam sees Sita in the garden, has a huge crush on her, and sends her a message on the phone asking to make her acquaintance. She responds and he continues, albeit timidly.
- Raam sees Sita in the garden, has a huge crush on her, and sends her a message on the phone asking to make her acquaintance. She asks her to get lost and he stops, but it will be months before he can get over her.
- Raam sees Sita in the garden, has a huge crush on her, and sends her a message on the phone asking to make her acquaintance. She asks him to get lost, but he keeps sending pitiful, whiny messages, which is a nuisance.
- Raam sees Sita in the garden, has a huge crush on her, and sends her a message on the phone asking to make her acquaintance. She asks him to get lost, but he keeps sending messages, which get more and more bitter, ruder and ruder, eventually turning into verbal abuse.
We will pause here because the list can potentially get to a hundred points and still be incomplete. It must be clear how nuance works. Out of all these, only 5, 7, 10 and 11 describe unacceptable behaviour, and only 11 amounts to abuse – verbal abuse, not sexual; and that is just me and my opinion. Each reader is entitled to their own. Some will be overly sensitive and finicky, some will be extremely liberal. The point remains that nuances exist – these eleven scenarios are, each one of them, unlike any other. It is a problem if we lump all of them into one category and deal out the same measure for each.
(contd.)