Revisiting The Dirty Picture: Did Vidya Balan, Milan Luthria’s drama push the boundaries far enough?

During an interaction last year, Vidya Balan had divulged how she was dubbed ‘mad’ for having signed Milan Luthria’s 2011 Silk Smitha biographical drama, The Dirty Picture. After all, until then, Vidya had either been depicted as the chaste woman of the house (in Parineeta) or the lovable girl-next-door (Lage Raho Munna Bhai, Salaam-e-Ishq, Heyy Babyy). Krishna Verma, her character in Abhishek Chaubey’s brilliant 2010 thriller Ishqiya, was perhaps her first role that celebrated female sexual agency with much aplomb. However, The Dirty Picture was not just about a woman with a sexual agency — it was about a woman objectified, hypersexualised and scorned.

The tragic life of vamps

Reshma, played by Balan, is heavily inspired by the life of Silk Smitha. But Luthria said the film was not a biopic on the 1980s South Indian actress, but an amalgamation of the stories of clutter-breaking women who managed to own their sexuality in the male-dominated world of showbiz. The film, however, is not just about their professional struggles; it attempted to lend a peek into these enigmatic figures behind closed doors. And as expected, the lives are heartbreakingly tragic, because despite them dominating the screens, these women were still marginalised. They are looked down upon by men and women alike, because they threaten to topple the patriarchal status quo.

So the film follows Reshma (essayed by Vidya Balan), a girl from a Tamil Nadu village, who elopes to Chennai to try her hand at acting. Her dusky skin becomes a major deterrent in her getting cinema roles. She thus chooses to revolt by revealing the same skin colour that makes her an outcast. In a rampantly exploitative society, she uses her body to titillate her target audience and uses the same male gaze to amass an enviable fortune

“Jab sharafat ke kapde utarte hai ... tab sabse zyada mazaa sharifon ko hi aata hai.”

In possibly the most iconic scene of the movie, Reshma is presented an award by her former lover Suryakant (a deliciously evil Naseeruddin Shah), who reminds her that she is “the dirty little secret” in the world steered by men. Reshma shudders, her voice quivers a little, but then she proceeds to light up a cigarette on the podium as audience members audibly gasp at her audaciousness. In a fairly direct speech, Reshma points out the double standards of the male society. She is the one labelled disgusting and dirty, and yet, it is her item numbers that draws people to theatres. She says that no one ever noticed the hard work that went behind becoming a sex symbol, because most were “looking somewhere else.” Finally, she declares that even if the “shareef” shun her, she will continue to make her “dirty”, “indecent” films.

“Can the subaltern really speak?”

The Dirty Picture painstakingly charted the meteoric rise and fall of a star, and her relentless pursuit for validation from society at large, represented by her male paramours. However, both her lovers reject her, because she is only an object to be desired, not married to. Like her vamp characters in films, whose lives were unceremoniously brought to an end in films of the 70s and 80s, Reshma is also as dispensable. When she decides to take her life, she dons a red sari and a bindi, symbols of marriage in Hindu tradition. It is as heartbreaking as it is relevant. That Vidya Balan herself was questioned about signing the movie in 2008 was a testament to how women are still treated in a male-dominated industry.

While The Dirty Picture has been often celebrated as a blueprint for feminist narrative in Hindi cinema that underlines male hypocrisy, what the Milan Luthria directorial blithely ignored was its protagonist’s caste. Scholars have traced back the intersection between caste and gender in Hinduism as far back as in Ramayana by contrasting Sita and Soorpanakha. Since time immemorial society has routinely oppressed the lower castes while hailing their upper-caste women as goddesses. By contrasting Reshma with Suryakant’s wife, who happens to be an upper caste woman, the film perpetuates the Brahminical binary that while sexually desirable, a Dalit woman can never break out of the caste barriers. Hence, despite having carved a niche for herself on celluloid, she doesn’t really have any agency beyond it. She is overnight replaced by a younger woman in the framework of the seductress and cast off as a “dirty”, worthless person.

Why is The Dirty Picture important, then?

Nonetheless, the film not only gained favours from critics, but also proved to be a box office darling. Further, Vidya Balan was feted with a Nationa Award for her turn as Silk Smitha. If not anything, the critical and commercial success of The Dirty Picture established that the Hindi cinema audience was ready for a no-holds-barred narrative led by a woman. Despite the presence of veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah and Emraan Hashmi, they are just cogs in the wheel of a Vidya Balan film. And for now, that should count for something.

Watch The Dirty Picture here