How Objectification Of Women Becomes A Chartbuster: The Peddi Debate
And still, we hesitate to name it. Every time a film sparks a debate about the portrayal of women, the conversation follows a familiar script. Some viewers raise concerns, while others dismiss them as overreactions. Defenders appeal to artistic freedom, critics point to recurring patterns, and before long the controversy fades from public attention ; only to return when the next film reignites the same debate.
The conversation surrounding Peddi feels familiar precisely because it is. At the centre of the debate is Janhvi Kapoor’s character, Achiyamma, and the uncomfortable question her portrayal forces us to confront: why does Indian cinema continue to reward the objectification of women?
The debate is bigger than one actress, one director, or one film. Peddi has simply become the latest flashpoint in an industry that has spent decades turning the female body into a commercial strategy.
Cinema has always engaged with beauty, romance, desire, and sexuality. The concern arises when a character’s identity becomes secondary to their physical appearance, when narrative agency gives way to visual consumption, and when a woman’s presence on screen is repeatedly filtered through the gaze of male characters.
This pattern did not begin with Peddi. It is embedded in the architecture of mainstream entertainment. For decades, popular cinema has relied on a formula in which women are introduced through fragmented shots of body parts, suggestive lyrics, double entendres, choreographed desirability, and scenes designed less to reveal character than to generate spectacle. The commercial logic is simple: sex sells. The cultural consequences are far more complicated.
Perhaps the most striking contradiction in Indian popular culture is that some of the most celebrated songs in cinematic history have built their appeal around the objectification of women. Tracks that reduce women to fantasies, body parts, or spectacles routinely become chartbusters. They dominate playlists, weddings, festivals, social media trends, and public celebrations. Their popularity often obscures the assumptions embedded within them. The language may change, yet the underlying formula frequently remains intact.
The issue extends beyond item numbers and so-called “mass” entertainers. It appears in romantic narratives that confuse persistence with affection, and stories that grant male characters complexity while relegating women to decorative functions. Even when the industry claims to be evolving, traces of these conventions continue to survive beneath the surface.
At this point, the debate extends far beyond the merits or flaws of any single film. What deserves closer examination is the persistence of a pattern. Despite increasingly frequent conversations about representation, equality, and progress, mainstream cinema continues to return to familiar visual and narrative conventions. Women are still too often valued for their marketability rather than their complexity, and portrayals built around objectification continue to find enormous commercial success. The real challenge, then, is understanding why these conventions remain so deeply embedded in an industry that frequently claims to be evolving.
The answer may be uncomfortable. The industry did not stumble into objectification by accident, nor did these portrayals persist despite audience preferences. They endured because they worked. They sold tickets, generated views, topped music charts, and became deeply embedded in popular culture. Commercial success did not merely tolerate these representations; it actively rewarded them.
This raises a possibility that is often overlooked. The continued popularity of these portrayals cannot be explained by industry practices alone. Their massive success also depends on the ways audiences consume, celebrate, and normalise them.The jokes we laugh at, the songs we dance to, and the characters we cheer for gradually influence our understanding of what is acceptable.
That is why debates like the one surrounding Peddi matter. They force audiences to look beyond the immediate controversy and examine the broader ecosystem that made it possible. They invite us to question not only what appears on screen, but also why certain portrayals continue to generate applause.
Until those questions are addressed, every new controversy will feel less like an exception and more like a reminder of an unresolved problem.
