The other day I was watching the rerun of a popular comedy show on TV with my wife. I found that out of the six main characters in the show- a man and his wife, a grandmother and an aunt with two women from the neighbourhood- as many as three female characters were being played by men. In fact, one of the neighbours got the largest squeals of mirth from my wife who informed me that the actor playing that character had hit the jackpot so hard that he had now been kicked out of the show; to start another show- where he plays a woman yet again.
It suddenly struck me that men playing women invariably seem to be comic characters. I was not able to recall a single equivalent from the other side of the gender divide for all the Mrs Doubtfires, Tootsies and Chachies 420. Great actors like Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman or Kamal Haasan played women straight and not like men in drag. Kamal’s Chachi could well have been played by a real matron. I could just see my late grandmother, God rest her soul, making those wisecracks. However, most actors playing women just caricature feminine body language and come across as slightly malodorous versions of the stereotypical limp wristed gay.
Women playing male characters are rare and invariably of characters who need to run away or hide themselves in disguise for achieving something or taking revenge. If anything, there is an air of the heroic in such characters and nothing remotely comic. I cannot imagine automatic peals of laughter for a woman who walks up as a man, on any stage. The contrast is so stark- see the treatment of the character of Arjun playing sister to Krishna’s milkman as against the portrayal of Shikhandi in the latest version of the Mahabharat on TV.
So, why is it that we find it so funny when men play women but not when women play men? Could it be because of the way we perceive women? Would these comedies be equally comic in matriarchic societies? Changes in language due to compulsion of political correctness indicate not only the winds of fashion in public discourse but also point towards hidden social mores. Why did it become necessary to delete “actresses” in favour of “actors”? In more ways than one?
Umesh Sharraf is an itinerant who is presently a government servant. He has taken up writing recently after having been at the receiving end from other writers all his life.
Oh!This is a brilliant observation!
interesting observation 🙂
good observation. I would have liked to see my late grandmother dressed as a man. Nothing tragic or heroic about that, it would have been scary.