Fair Heroes and Heroines, Dark Commoners-Colorism in Bangla Films

In human society there exists colorism.In many ethnicities,colorism is associated with beauty and attractiveness.In dominant endogamous societies within an ethnicity,these characteristics are preserved and highly prioritized as markers of physical attractiveness.Such dominant groups within an ethnicity dominate others,among other things,in terms of public portrayal,places,spaces and various opportunities on the basis of characteristics largely possessed and hence prized by dominant groups and are held up as aspiration goals to the rest.People who have fairer skin tone as compared to the darker skin tone tries to dominate others in terms of public portrayal.This paper explores whether such skin tone bias exists in case of Bangali ethnicity.The skin tone of heroes and heroines of popular Bangla films produced in West Bengal was taken as a proxy to explore the nature of skin colour tone based bias (if any),in case of the Bangla mother tongue population,the 5th largest mother tongue population in the world.