As the festive season comes around, brands try to be clever and innovative. But an ignorant bigot somewhere invariably gets “offended” and the ads are withdrawn. Not because the criticism is widespread but because the bigots have goon armies who can unleash violence on shops and salespersons with impunity.
This year it was Fabindia and Fem’s turn. The former merely used a faux Urdu phrase, which apparently would have ended Diwali as we know it, never mind that the festival has thrived and survived 500 years of non-Hindu government. But bigots don’t care for facts.
As for Fem, one can fault the ad for limited imagination but at least it tried. How to please sensibilities that are determined to be offended? Ideally, one should stand up to such voices, but for that the state should stand up for the rights of its citizens. Right now, the state — all three arms of it — has shown little interest in doing so. Which pretty much means the scorecard reads Bigots 10, India 0.
So let’s turn instead to Fem’s ad and examine why it was not so much inventive as inane.
First, look at what the brand sells — skin bleach and fairness creams. Instead of drawing a discreet curtain on its regressive product line, it decided to give itself a rainbow makeover. And what occasion did it choose to announce its rad cred? Karva Chauth, the very quintessence of patriarchy, when wives fast for the continued well-being of their well-fed husbands.
The brand’s ‘radical’ move was to feature a same-sex couple, two women, fasting for each other on Karva Chauth, complete with sari-jewellery-moon-sieve. The folly of the construct didn’t irk the bigots, but the featuring of lesbians did. The rest of us were stumped.
Here you are with a homosexual relationship that defies the social taboos constructed around gender and sex and what do you do? You co-opt it into your religious and traditionalist belief system and box it inside the same patriarchal structure that those two women might possibly be trying to tear down in real life. Sadly, you still couldn’t please the patriarchy.
Now, showing two men fasting for each other might have been a teeny-tiny blow to chauvinism, but how to market face bleach then? Men don’t have to whiten and depilate, so let’s stick with women but make them lesbians, because ‘progressive’.
Boldness isn’t about bunging queer people into existing stereotypical social scenarios. It means having the imagination to envisage a different society altogether, with different rules, different values.
In fact, I would rather see gay people reject altogether the deeply patriarchal institution of marriage in an unequal society than fight for marriage rights. How limiting to drag same-sex couples too into an institution that’s historically been violent, exploitative and hierarchical. That’s why this ad was doubly disappointing — it not only slots a lesbian couple into a traditional marriage but subsumes them within its disturbing customs. As sociologist Angela Jones once said, “It is queer liberation, not homonormative marriage that will cause radical changes to how we form, live, and find joy…”
The fight for same-sex marriage is to give them the same rights as hetero couples — government aid, social benefits, legal rights. But why not go further and demand that marriage be abolished altogether, replaced by what feminists like Marjorie Shultz called relationship contracts, which can protect and provide for welfare rights, property rights, inheritance, and child-rearing functions? In the UK, for example, hetero couples have fought to enter civil partnerships like same-sex couples rather than marry.
Of course, some couples might still want a socio-religious jamboree, which seems utterly pointless to me, but one understands its seductive power. Then at least defang rituals of hierarchies — the father “giving away” the bride, the “bride price”, the “horse”, the “veil” and, of course, Karva Chauth.
Imagining such a world seems pretty far-fetched when even an inter-caste / inter-communal marriage attracts hired assassins today. And just in case you thought of putting it in a movie instead, Madhya Pradesh has demanded that all film scripts be cleared by it. But why stop there? The government should scrutinise song lyrics, storyboards, book drafts, newspaper articles — heck, it should write all of these itself. The jobs crisis will end and, Mercury be praised, nothing need ever be withdrawn or banned again.
Where the writer tries to make sense of society with seven hundred words and a bit of snark.
