Girlfriend Song From Boys Draws Renewed Criticism for Normalising Sexual Harassment

Boys, the 2003 Tamil coming of age teen drama, has suddenly come under fire for the portrayal of sexual assault as a mere teenage boy behavior.

The movie, written and directed by Shankar, tells the story of five college boys in Tamil Nadu going through certain hardships in life as one of them gets married against his parents’ wishes. The movie stars newcomers Siddharth and Genelia and had scores given by AR Rahman.

At its time of release, despite the movie underperforming at the box office, the music received great reception and was loved by the audience, especially among the youth. The album became the best selling Tamil film music album of the year.

However, one of the songs, Girlfriend, has caused widespread controversy and backlash recently, mainly for the glorifying tone regarding eve-teasing and sexual harassment.

The video shows the main leads of the film Munna, Babu, Juju , Krishna and Kumar singing about their youth and desires, and the desperation of wanting a girlfriend. There literally is a CGI girl that they imagine and romance with as well. The following parts of the song, showing the leads physically harassing and assaulting women around them have become controversial now.

One of the characters walks into a busy market and physically assaults two women walking past him. The same characters are shown to visit saree shops and even a temple and assault and inappropriately touch multiple women, even elderly women.

Throughout the song, the main characters are stalking and eve-teasing women around them.

During the time of release director Shankar said that he had told his crew and associates in the beginning itself that they “had to think like an 18-year-old” as the film is about youth and their desires. “At 18, every boy dreams of having a girlfriend,” he reportedly said, adding that Rahman came up with a perfect fast paced peppy tune and Vijayan's lyrics fell into place as it establishes the yearning for a girlfriend.

A four year old Reddit post recently went viral, with comments showcasing the regret of many millennials who once called this their favourite song.

"So I know it's a super old movie but somehow I never watched the Shankar movie 'Boys' but I have always loved the songs and listened to it million times. And I have only seen Ale Ale music video.

So during a friends group get together, we had put YouTube videos and drinking and I put Ale Ale and everyone seemed to love it. Next came the song Girlfriend and it literally shows the boys being super perverts and molesting random aunties and women and its shown as a cool boys thing. Everyone suddenly felt awkward watching this. We did get into a small debate on whether the movie is just portraying reality or glorifying it. But I was kinda shocked to see one of my favorite songs of 2 decades has such a creepy video."

Even in Youtube video comments, people are commenting that harassment was normalized in this song. Some are even surprised that this was approved.

Misogyny in cinema is nothing new, or old, for that matter. Conversations around gender politics in cinema are in constant flux, and will continue so well into the future.

This article is written by Satvik AVP, a student of Loyola Academy, Secunderabad, interning with Deccan Chronicle.