1 Gender Reflections in Mainstream Hindi Cinema

Students’ Research Global Media Journal – Indian Edition/ISSN 2249-5835 Sponsored by the University of Calcutta/ www.caluniv.ac.in Summer Issue / June 2012 Vol. 3/No.1 GENDER REFLECTIONS IN MAINSTREAM HINDI CINEMA Nidhi Shendurnikar Tere Junior Research Scholar Department of Political Science, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Gujarat, India Website: http://www.msubaroda.ac.in Email: [email protected], Blog: www.68pagesofmylife.blospot.com Abstract : Cinema is meant and believed to entertain, to take the viewer to a world that is starkly different from the real one, a world which provides escape from the daily grind of life. Cinema is a popular media of mass consumption which plays a key role in moulding opinions, constructing images and reinforcing dominant cultural values. The paper deals with representations of women characters in mainstream Bollywood movies. It is deemed appropriate to examine this issue because women are a major chunk of the country‟s population and hence their portrayal on screen is crucial in determining the furtherance of already existing stereotypes in the society. The paper begins with a discussion on the field of feminist film criticism and how mainstream Hindi Cinema has restricted itself to defined sketches of womanhood. It also undertakes some glimpses from popular films to analyse this process of stereotyping the „other‟ – considering that reality in mainstream cinema is constructed from the male view point. A section is devoted to discussion on contemporary realistic brand of cinema and its understanding of women. In conclusion, a debate ensues on whether mainstream Hindi cinema has been successful in portraying Indian women of different shades in a society dominated by patriarchal values. Key Words: Cinema, popular, media, women, Bollywood, movies, stereotypes, feminist, mainstream, patriarchal Feminist Film Criticism The issues of media, identity and gender are being discussed all over today. They have become integral to the discipline of media studies. The reason is the popularity and diversity of media as a source of mass consumption and its influence on constructing ideas and generating debate. The media scene in India has expanded in the recent times as there is a plethora of media choices available to the audiences. Media structures and systems have also undergone a sea change with privatization and globalization. Huge corporations with their own profit motives own media houses. Media has been able to transcend borders and look at issues more holistically rather than in the context of nationalism. Hence, these developments are bound to affect the manner in which media scrutinizes and covers any issue – gender being an important one. Women are also major consumers of mass media and thus the way they are represented in media coverage is a major concern for the discipline. Several international forums have recognized the ramifications of such a transformed media environment on women‟s access to media, their role in the media structure and the presentation of their perspective in media coverage.i In this paper, there has been an attempt to examine the relationship between women and popular Hindi cinema. While cinema in India is in itself a diverse strand of expression incorporating mainstream cinema which holds popular appeal, art/parallel cinema that engages with social issues, middle cinema and regional language cinema. The explorations in this paper are limited to mainstream/popular Hindi cinema better known as 1 „Bollywood‟1 because such cinema is seen to exercise widespread influence over people and enjoys mass appeal. Popular cinema and culture derive from each other. Films are believed to be the opium of the Indian masses as people rely on this medium to help them escape to a world of fantasy.ii In a very explicit way, cinema2 has shaped the cultural, social and political values of people of this country. While, the other forms of cinema are also important when it comes to the representation of women, restricting to popular cinema is the core concern of the paper. The interest in films taken by feminists stems from concern about the under-representation and misrepresentation of women in cinema. It adopts a critical approach towards gender bias on celluloid. The feminist approach to cinema asks a few pertinent questions like how women are represented on screen, how women‟s issues are treated in cinema, what does feminism mean to film-makers, how does the feminist agenda manifest on screen, how is the women character positioned vis a vis the male character and what is the role of women film-makers and women writers in depicting women‟s issues through cinema.iii Feminist critique of cinema has helped to view the reality presented by cinema in a different way and thus has contributed significantly to the discipline of media studies as well as film studies. Certain underlying aspects of a popular medium can only be brought to surface by criticism, scrutiny and introspection and feminists have attempted to do it with cinema as well as with other fields of study and practice. The links between Women‟s Studies and Cinema are evident. After the women‟s movement, the field of women‟s studies has allied with almost every discipline to provide an alternative perspective of knowledge and reality as viewed by the practitioners and academia of the discipline. Feminist theory took up a distinct stance in relation to the objectification, exclusion and silence of women in cinematic narratives. It also evaluated the stereotyping of female characters in cinema. For eg: In „Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema‟ (Laura Mulvey, 1975), the male character was identified as the driver of the film‟s narrative, the character followed by the camera. The female character served as a spectacle to provide pleasure to the male spectator, for which Mulvey used the term „gaze‟.iv The theory of „Absences and Presences‟ was concerned with the absence of a certain type of female characters in films and the presence of the other type, which was seen to be influenced by patriarchal values. Thus feminist theory in its critique of films incorporated the valorisation of women‟s experiences thereby posing a challenge to gender hierarchy as well as opening up new realms for a post-gendered future. The paper in its ensuing sections will build an argument about the portrayal of women in Hindi cinema based on various strands of feminist film criticism which have certainly enriched our understanding of women on screen. The Leading Lady’s Sketch Though there exists a body of feminist film making in Hindi cinema, the leading lady of Hindi films has more or less played defined roles which conform to the values upheld by Indian society. Women in Bollywood have been uni-dimensional characters, who are good or bad, white or black. There are no shades of grey. This dichotomy was reinforced in popular films which distinguished between the heroine and the vamp, the wife and the other woman. Films have also been inspired to a large extent from religion and mythology whereby women characters were seen as the epitome of virtue and values, those who could do no wrong. The image of women as „Sita‟ has been repeatedly evoked in many films after independence. Through the ideas of loyalty and obedience to the husband, Hindi cinema successfully institutionalized patriarchal values. Films like „Dahej‟ (1950), „Gauri‟ (1968), „Devi‟ (1970), „Biwi ho to Aisi‟ (1988), „Pati Parmeshwar‟ (1988) depicted women as passive, submissive wives as perfect figures and martyrs for their own families. In these films, though the practices of 1 According to Wikipedia, Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai, Maharashtra. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the total Indian film industry, which includes other production centers producing films in regional languages. It is one of the largest centers of film production in the world. 2 The term ‘Cinema’ henceforth in this paper will signify mainstream/popular Hindi films 2 patriarchy were criticized, they were implicitly being patronized in the sense that the victim wife refuses to leave her husband‟s house despite severe physical and emotional violence by a rationale of leaving the marital house only at the time of her death. This idea has been perpetuated by Indian traditions and symbols like „doli‟(Palanquin) and „arthi‟ (Funeral Bier). How real are the women characters in Hindi films? This is something to debate about because values, ideals, principles; morals have dominated the frame-work in which these films are placed. Thus, women rather than being depicted as normal human beings are elevated to a higher position of being ideal who can commit no wrong. Their grievances, desires, ambitions, feelings, perspectives are completely missing from the scene. They are really portrayed as the „other‟ because they are shown as not belonging to this real and worldly life. For eg: Abhimaan (1973) begins with premise of the wife (Jaya Bachchan) being more talented than the husband (Amitabh Bachchan). This in itself is a defiance of the stereotype. However, the film crumbles from then on when the wife gives up her thriving musical career for satisfying the husband‟s ego culminating to a conventional closure that demands adherence to traditional values of marriage and motherhood. Bollywood heroines have mostly been homely, content to stay happily ever after in the institution of marriage even if educated and keen to carve and identity of one‟s own. Where are the women building careers and working professionally? They have been almost silenced. Shahla Raza (2003) talks about how Hindi cinema in the seventies had women in different working roles (Jaya Bachchan as a knife sharpener in 'Zanjeer' and a singer in 'Abhimaan', Hema Malini as a village tonga (horse carriage) driver in 'Sholay' and the general manager of a company in 'Trishul', Rakhee as corporate secretary in 'Trishul' and a doctor in 'Kala Pathar', Vidya Sinha who works in a private firm in „Chhoti Si Baat‟).v The working woman vanished from the popular blockbusters of the nineties which relegated Indian women to the boundary of the home.

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