"My Choice" - a brilliant piece of art directed by Homi Adajania, scripted by Kersi Khambatta, narrated by Deepika Padukone, and choreographed with Deepika and 98 other women.
Millions of views of this video in a couple of days, and lots of dissenting opinions. A lot of the backlash is crass, coming from confirmed male chauvinists who have definitely been shaken out of their comfort zones - typical aggressive pretense from the deeply insecure. Some of them have taken recourse to religious and societal norms to hide behind - forgetting the fact that the video seeks to destroy the very irrational norms from which the feedback emanates. "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking you used when you created them," said Albert Einstein. How true and relevant!
And then, there are criticisms of insufficiency of this video to solve the problem addressed. Agreed. The judgment of insufficiency implicitly accepts that this is a step in the right direction. Agreed, that some members of a certain societal slice have more choices than those in others. Agreed, that there exist societal slices where a woman's "choice" is subordinate to life's minimal existence requirements such as food and shelter. But, it is always the emancipated that can emancipate others, and if the first emancipation has to come from a certain slice of society, so be it!
Some have interpreted "choice" as anarchy. A convenient, but inaccurate interpretation. The video does exaggerate, for theatrical effect, that the protagonist wants to behave with extreme freedom. This needs to be interpreted in its spirit more than the letter. The ad also deliberately leaves out other discriminatory factors such as the career front. This message is on a personal front. The freedom to choose. Freedom against oppression. Freedom to be oneself!
Millions of views of this video in a couple of days, and lots of dissenting opinions. A lot of the backlash is crass, coming from confirmed male chauvinists who have definitely been shaken out of their comfort zones - typical aggressive pretense from the deeply insecure. Some of them have taken recourse to religious and societal norms to hide behind - forgetting the fact that the video seeks to destroy the very irrational norms from which the feedback emanates. "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking you used when you created them," said Albert Einstein. How true and relevant!
And then, there are criticisms of insufficiency of this video to solve the problem addressed. Agreed. The judgment of insufficiency implicitly accepts that this is a step in the right direction. Agreed, that some members of a certain societal slice have more choices than those in others. Agreed, that there exist societal slices where a woman's "choice" is subordinate to life's minimal existence requirements such as food and shelter. But, it is always the emancipated that can emancipate others, and if the first emancipation has to come from a certain slice of society, so be it!
Some have interpreted "choice" as anarchy. A convenient, but inaccurate interpretation. The video does exaggerate, for theatrical effect, that the protagonist wants to behave with extreme freedom. This needs to be interpreted in its spirit more than the letter. The ad also deliberately leaves out other discriminatory factors such as the career front. This message is on a personal front. The freedom to choose. Freedom against oppression. Freedom to be oneself!
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