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Social Issues in the Movie Monsoon Wedding

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Monsoon Wedding, a Bollywood film directed by Mira Nair and released in 2001, earned just above $30 million at the box office [1]. The film brilliantly depicts romantic entanglements during a traditional Punjabi wedding in Delhi, while delicately handling sensitive issues such as child-abuse, pre-arranged marital infidelity, growing old and striving to be different as an upper middle class Indian boy, or being a flirtatious, bored but basically settled NRI (non-resident Indian) housewife. The film won the Golden Lion award and received a Golden Globe Award nomination, achieving a total of six wins and ten nominations [2].
An important issue highlighted in the background of Monsoon Wedding is the heinous and inhuman crime of child abuse. …show more content…

This caused much problem between him and Lalit, his father. Although it was never clarified in the movie that the boy was homosexual, his father hinted as such at one point. The boy was never shown to have been abused in the past; still his feminine characteristics are what experts believe to be a sign of child sexual abuse. It is a well documented fact that boys and girls often experience homosexuality in later life when abused by the same gender adults. Although nowadays lawsuits and gay/lesbian rights have made it as such for people to widely discredit this theory. The fact, however, remains (even if it is all hushed up these days) that child sexual abuse can cause homosexuality [6 -7].
A farfetched idea in the film was the confrontation between Ria and her offender. Mostly women, who have been victims of sexual abuse as children, grow up to be reserved and frightened individuals. Especially in India and other such countries the victim never musters up the courage to stand up to their offenders, let alone stand up for someone else. Although exceptional cases might exist, usually women with such pasts tend to develop antisocial and suicidal behaviours.
The director seamlessly weaves five separate plot threads throughout the main story, all involving their own social repercussions and the consequent changes in the lives of all those caught up in the dilemmas they face. The film is filled with a rich

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