Intro Blog Post
Hello Everyone!
My name is Sinchana Keshav and welcome to the first blog post of my Senior Research Project journey. I grew up constantly watching Hindi movies, from singing the songs to laughing at the comedy skits to watching the hero or heroine narrowly survive their missions. While the Hindi film industry produces movies of numerous genres, the Romantic-Comedy genre, known commonly as Rom-Coms, is the most popular. While these movies are entertaining with their flashy title songs to the dramatic plot lines, they are usually ridden with toxic stereotypes and harmful romantic behaviors that are romanticized or normalized within the movie and the genre itself. The toxic behaviors, while seen as romantic, actually propagate harmful interactions within romantic relationships which can impact the audiences and introduce a new normal.
The Social Cognitive Theory advocates that “while devouring media, individuals create desires and set standards for their real lives after observing the social constructions in the media” (Samraat 427). Seeing the dangers of toxic romance in this generation, these films need to portray healthy relationships to their influential audiences. In this project, I will be studying the prevalence of these toxic behaviors in Hindi movies to gain a better understanding of the dependence the plots of these movies have on toxic romantic behaviors. The movies I chose are spread out over a two-year increment over the last 30 years. By doing this, I can analyze if there is a trend in the prevalence of toxic behaviors to better understand how the Hindi Film Industry has evolved in their romantic comedy portrayals. Thank you for reading, and I hope this project interests you as much as the movies do!
Sinchana Keshav