Recently, a film named “365 dni”  translated as “365 days in English has been released and it has been getting much popularity among Pakistani audience as well. The film is originally in Polish Italian language and it was originally released in Poland. For the past few days, I have been seeing different posts, memes and tweets on social media platforms about this film.  The reason behind this film’s popularity might surprise you. The film’s storyline is based on a rich and handsome man belonging to a Sicilian mafia family who kidnaps a beautiful young woman and keeps her in his custody and gives her 365 days to fall in love with him.

I have been seeing posts and tweets of women fantasizing about getting a guy like him. The film is considered to be a romantic movie. I watched it myself and I could not find anything romantic in the film but rather a powerful patriarchal figure imposing himself on a stereotypical weaker subject. I wouldn’t call that love, I would call it violence. I would consider 365 days a film based on violence and sexual abuse against women. But what’s more ironical is that women are the ones who are falling in love with this image of romance.

Women are the ones who are fantasizing about such a man in their life. I asked a couple of my friends that why would you want such kind of a partner and their reply was the same. They want someone who would go to such lengths to keep his woman close to him. Or to keep their women caged as I would call it, just like we keep beautiful birds in cages to keep them with us.

I saw many online articles and posts praising the film and I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that how violence and sexual abuse have been romanticized through cinematic world. I couldn’t stop wondering how they have romanticized this idea of men capturing women for their pleasure and label it as love. The idea of love that has been presented in this film and in many others is not what love actually is. What is more devastating is that we as viewers have been encouraging it for so long that it doesn’t bother us anymore.

We have become used to of seeing this kind of toxicity on our screens for ages. Being Pakistani, most of us have been watching Bollywood films since childhood. What kind of love stories does Bollywood presents? Mostly films show the kinds of stories where a guy or so called hero follows a girl, tries to impress her with cheap tricks and dialogues. Remember Salman Khan’s “Dabang” film’s famous dialogue? ”Rkh lo wrna thappar maar k bhi dy skty hain”(keep the money or else I can slap you to make you accept it) This dialogue is famous till date and most of us have never realized it’s toxicity. In many films there is always a scene with the guy holding a girl’s hand without her permission and she mildly resisting by saying “hath choro mera”( leave my hand) and they end up falling in love based on these accounts which are considered ‘romantic’.

My point here is that we have started to idealize such men who are controlling and dominating and the on screen world has a huge role to play in it. Such films have romanticized the idea of violence against women. They have romanticized the idea of physically touching an individual without permission. We have been watching these things for so long that this stuff seems normal to us. We don’t think about how badly it can influence our society. Why do you think so many women gets harassed on daily basis in streets by men passing humiliating comments on them? And let me tell you that most of those lines are dialogues from some film.

We have never blamed movies for harassment, have we? We have never thought about how badly such movies can influence young minds. Films, dramas and TV shows always affect its viewers in one way or the other. Do not think that when we are conscious that these things are not real, we wouldn’t be affected by it. Just like we adopt fashion trends, hair styles and make up trends from films, the same way these films inculcate different kinds of behaviors and mindset in us.

If the leading character in a film is kidnapping a woman in the name of love and then he is being praised and liked for doing it. Many young minds would think it is okay for them to do such things if they have  good intentions such as love behind it. Let me remind you that there can never be any good intention that can justify kidnapping or accentual physical touch or verbal abuse.

I remember another very famous Bollywood hit film “Kabir Singh” which was an intense  love story. The movie got huge recognition among youngsters. The male protagonist was shown as a drug addict, slapping his girlfriend, shouting on her and it was supposed to look romantic. Don’t you think that when we as audience see such stuff, it can destroy our society in so many ways?  If this mindset of having such kind of love stories prevails in our society, can you imagine how disastrous it can be? What would be the consequences of having such ideas getting prevailed in the society? I don’t think there would be any positive outcome of producing and watching such content on our screens.

We as audience should be able to identify the things which can be harmful for our minds and society on a larger scale. We need to stop idealizing such characters which wouldn’t be acceptable in real world. We as women need to stop fantasizing about getting such kind of dominating and violent partner. We as audience need to stop appreciating and admiring such films which spread nothing but toxicity.

Author: Hiba Hussain