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The Female Journalist in Bollywood Middle-class Career Woman or Problematic National Heroine?
On the screen as in reality, female journalists in India have historically struggled to gain equality with their male peers. But a slew of recent Bollywood films depicting female reporters indicate that change may be afoot, as Sukhmani Khorana discusses.
Growing up during India’s economic and communications ‘revolution’, my young mind revelled in the promise of a career in journalism that would serve both the aspirational self and the modernising nation. A role model emerged in Barkha Dutt, the Lakshya independent yet feminine reporter at the still-credible New Delhi Television (NDTV). I recall her fearless stint in the trenches during difficulty for career-minded women in the occasionally surface as updates on social India’s war with Pakistan in the mountains liberal West, subsequent internships at com- media, there still appears to be a plethora of Kargil (in the militancy-affected territory of mercial stations confirmed Schwartz’s views. of work opportunities in India, especially Kashmir). To my fifteen-year-old eyes, this Add to that the lack of visibility of ‘women vis-a-vis the media of the developed world. was not the beginning of embedded journal- of colour’ on Australian free-to-air televi- Moreover, as Hinglish (a mix of Hindi and ism in India. Rather, it was a milestone for sion news (barring SBS) and my journalism English) and vernacular language channels aspiring and working Indian female journal- dream was ready to shift gears and venture grow in number and importance, it is not just ists with a serious interest in hard news. into more scholastic territory. English-educated elite middle-class women No longer were we to be confined to the being hired as newsreaders and correspond- pages of Femina (a women’s magazine) or a As a media studies tutor for several years, ents. This shift is evident in the very attire Doordarshan (India’s national broadcaster) I frequently encountered starry-eyed young worn by Indian female journalists, which news studio. women in their first-ever university tuto- has changed from the elegantly expensive rial declaring that they were undertaking silk sari of the Doordarshan days to the In the early 2000s, I moved to Australia the degree with the sole aim of becom- casual ethnic chic (often consisting of denim to pursue a media degree at a sandstone ing television presenters or journalists. By teamed with a kaftan and silver jewellery) of university where journalism had only recently this time, online news portals were already the present. been deemed a subject worthy of academic causing upheaval in traditional journalism in study. One of our foremost guest lecturers the West, with mass redundancies and very Indian film scholarship and the was Dominique Schwartz, who was then limited cadet positions. Meanwhile, on my journalism genre newsreader at ABC TV’s Adelaide studio, trips back to India as well as via Facebook, but who had also done formidable work as I saw a litany of school friends begin work The shift in wardrobe is but one signifier of a foreign correspondent. Not only were we as producers or reporters for the umpteen both the rising ascendancy of the female told that studying to be media workers and television channels that had mushroomed journalist in the Indian media sphere and journalists at a university was a privilege, there as the communications revolution took the complexity of her role in a changing but also that it was a difficult career choice hold. While vague references to the long society. Similar to her Western counterpart, for women. Although I hadn’t expected such hours, low pay and poor job satisfaction the contemporary Indian woman journalist
102 • Metro Magazine 171 | © ATOM is frequently refracted through the medium Journalism in Hollywood of cinema. Rather than simply a representa- tion of her role in the media, it is a refraction While journalism has been used as an ambi- in that it gives us a sense of how society ent setting or the primary narrative in many a (and especially the assumed audience for Hollywood film since the silent era, there has such films) views and relates to her. It also been renewed scholarly interest in the study helps us draw broader conclusions about of the journalism genre in the past decade. the changing representation of women in One such endeavour is Brian McNair’s book mainstream Bollywood cinema, and the Journalists in Film: Heroes and Villains.2 At growing power of news television in that it is the very beginning of his extensive ex- becoming a frequent backdrop for contem- amination of journalist characters in films, porary multiplex films. McNair acknowledges the long history of crossovers between media and film con- Hindi-language feature films from 2000 to No One Killed Jessica tent.3 Significantly, it appears that cinema 2011 examined here include Phir Bhi Dil is regarded as a crucial lens through which Hai Hindustani (Aziz Mirza, 2000), Lakshya societal shifts (including changes in both the (Farhan Akhtar, 2004), Page 3 (Madhur journalism profession and public perception Bhandarkar, 2005), A Wednesday! (Neeraj of the news media) can be viewed. Pandey, 2008), Peepli (Live) (Anusha Rizvi, 2010) and No One Killed Jessica (Raj Kumar According to Matthew Ehrlich’s research Gupta, 2011). These films have been se- on the representation of journalism in lected not only because they feature female Hollywood, the figure of the journalist has journalists as protagonists or catalysts, but been refracted through a particularly com- also because their narratives comment on plex cultural lens, being depicted as both ‘a the politics of the gendered nation-state. hero and a scoundrel’, with the press itself One of the most notable films that has been being seen as both the ‘defender of the excluded is Love, Sex aur Dhokha (Dibakar common man and the corrupt instrument Banerjee, 2010), which, although ground- of power-hungry machines’.4 Despite these breaking, does not explicitly link its female Peepli (Live) conflicting myths regarding the journalist as television boss to the (en)gendering of an a person and as a public service profes- exposé-obsessed society. sional, there appears to be no doubt regard- ing the mediating role of the news media While there has been a marked increase in or its position as the fourth estate. This is a films featuring career-oriented women in crucial observation for the purpose of this general, and working journalists in particular, article in that the Bollywood film industry, during the past decade, film scholarship in especially in its representation of journalism India is yet to undertake a detailed analysis over the past decade, seems to have taken of the ‘journalism genre’, let alone examine its cue from Hollywood. While the spectacle the on-screen female journalist. Blogger of television journalism and the celebrity- Saswat Pattanayak does a commend- centred narrative of lifestyle journalism able job of summing up the above gaps in are critiqued in Peepli (Live) and Page 3 scholarship: respectively, the utopian potential of the news media to uncover the ‘truth’ remains although there have been dozens of well- No One Killed Jessica unquestioned. made films on women as journalists, there has been almost no discussions on how The real-life female journalist may Hollywood representations of the female they have worked as scribes, under what journalist also appear to be reflecting wider have been allowed entry into the working conditions, the political-economy social concerns about the shifting role of situation and the probable systematic world of hard, patriarchal journalism, of women in the public sphere. In addi- exploitation.1 but this is reinforcing rather than tion to being subject to the long-standing undermining nationalist ideology. concern of balancing work and family, the In addition to the gaps Pattanayak identi- female journalist has also conventionally fies, it appears that the very characterisation been assigned ‘soft’ stories in both her of the female journalist, in a film industry this analysis, I will endeavour to tie in the real and Hollywood roles. But this may be with a history of casting women in subordi- changing characterisation of the Indian shifting with films such as The Devil Wears nate roles, has been neglected. This article woman journalist with the shifting audience Prada (David Frankel, 2006) and the Sex is an attempt to begin to address some demographic for certain kinds of film and and the City franchise accruing greater of these absences. Beginning with a brief television programming in India. This will cultural capital for style journalism, as well overview of the representation of journalism help draw conclusions about the changing as giving post-feminist agency to the figure in Western cinema, I will then explore the representation of career women in general of the female journalist. McNair’s research Indian context in relation to the historical (and journalists in particular) in contem- reinforces this view: ‘It is nonetheless strik- depiction of women in general, followed porary Bollywood, and about the increas- ing that in the cinema of the 1997–2008 by the refraction of the female journalist ing sociopolitical importance of television period so many of the lead journalistic roles in more recent Bollywood films. Following journalism in Indian society. were occupied by women, and that these
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Her outlook is global, but her values would make her grandma proud.”’9 As the follow- ing section explores in detail, this certainly appears to be the case in the journalism films from 2000 to 2005, with a virginal yet professional female journalist in the lead. Such a refraction of the modern Indian woman suggests the ideological continu- ation of the status quo in the traditional extended Indian family and the patriarchal nation-state. Indian female journalists, real and refracted
In her comprehensive study of the everyday activities of contemporary Indian women working in the print media, Ammu Joseph observes that, as in the West, work-life balance and being assigned soft stories are ongoing concerns.10 In the Indian context this is compounded by the fact that female journalists were not allowed to work the night shift until the 1980s, which was ‘part NO One Killed Jessica of the larger battle to be recognized as full-fledged journalists’.11 While there is yet women were neither the “sob sisters” nor Films made in the 1990s depict a more to be a similarly wide-ranging and in-depth the “superbitches” of past celluloid conven- modern version of the Indian woman to study of the growing number of female tion.’5 It now remains to be discussed how the extent that she embraces Western journalists working in India’s television news Bollywood has refracted the role of the attire and is more willing to challenge media, some key figures such as Barkha modernising women in India’s transitioning the authority of parental figures. This is Dutt have come to symbolise the potential society, and particularly what the function certainly the case in Dilwale Dulhania of both the medium and its opportunities of the female journalist is in relation to the Le Jayenge (Aditya Chopra, 1995), for women. Dutt’s ascendancy may not be nation-state. where London resident Simran (Kajol) representative of the career trajectory of, or is independent enough to travel across the stories assigned to, the average female Indian women in Bollywood Europe with her friends and surreptitiously television journalist, but it is significant carry on a relationship with Raj (Shah because of her ability to enter and hold her Bollywood cinema, especially the strand Rukh Khan) in her family’s conservative own in the ‘masculine’ terrain of war and known as masala films (named as such due India-based home where her wedding is political reporting. As Uma Chakravarti puts to their amalgamation of comedy, action and being arranged. At the same time, Jenny it with regards to Dutt’s reporting during the melodrama, and their presumed appeal to Sharpe argues, ‘the message of DDLJ is Kargil war: the so-called ‘masses’), has been associ- that, although the hero and heroine wear ated with clearly segregated gender roles Western clothing and embrace youth Only one set of images of Kargil returned and the absence of women in the profes- culture, they have maintained their Indian agency to women and this was the powerful sional world. While this may have been the values, particularly around questions of statement made by the presence of Barkha consequence of both a patriarchal society sexual morality’.8 In addition, it appears Dutt on the war front … While women are and commercial cinematic conventions, it that the modern Indian woman’s independ- not yet ‘actively’ fighting for the nation they might be argued that such representations ence, however tempered by sexual mores, are providing the much needed consent for have undergone only marginal change in is confined to the personal realm and does war as epitomised in the presence of Barkha the wake of the women’s movement and not carry forth to a role in the public or on the battle field.12 India’s economic liberalisation. In his study professional sphere. of Bollywood’s historical treatment of the The real-life female journalist may have been female figure, Chris Barker concludes that ‘It The above 1990s phenomenon begins to allowed entry into the world of hard, patriar- is not that popular Hindi films have not tried undergo a change at the turn of the cen- chal journalism, but this is reinforcing rather to represent more independent and asser- tury, although notions of ‘Indian femininity’ than undermining nationalist ideology. Is tive women, but rather, that such women are and chastity persist alongside emerging the refraction of this female journalist figure frequently depicted as coming to undesir- representations of the career-oriented through the medium of mainstream cinema able ends.’6 This has also been the case for woman. Leela Fernandes refers to this telling a similar tale? career-minded women, especially journalists gendered blending of tradition and moder- shown on the mainstream Hindi cinematic nity as ‘the new Indian woman’ who, ‘as The characters of Romi (Preity Zinta) in screen; desirable ends befall those who are the publicity release for a contemporary Lakshya and Meera (Rani Mukherji) in No willing to ‘reform’ or tone down their modern women’s magazine puts it, “is the tough One Killed Jessica cover the Kargil conflict ways to the extent that it toes the line of the as nails career woman who finds it easy within the film narrative, and are widely patriarchal nation-state and family.7 to indulge in the occasional superstition. believed to be based on Dutt. However,
104 • Metro Magazine 171 | © ATOM there are significant differences in the Similarly, Romi in Lakshya is the daughter films’ discourses on nationalism, and of an academic mother and a journalist thereby in their treatment of the war- father, lives in her parents’ tasteful Delhi reporting female journalist. The nationalist home, and both her college activism and narrative of a justifiable war that reforms her professional journalism appear to the aimless urban male lead (Hrithik be borne out of her liberal middle-class Roshan) by turning him into a brave fron- upbringing. Although her boyfriend visits tier soldier lies at the heart of Lakshya. On the parental home, their relationship is the other hand, No One Killed Jessica is never sexualised, and her chastity is significant for the marked absence of male implicit, and part of her overall virtue. protagonists, and for spotlighting a tale of Ria in Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani does legal injustice (witnesses turning hostile in not start off as a virtuous journalist and the real-life case of model Jessica Lall’s fends off her mother’s attempt to arrange murder) over a military conflict. Therefore, Barkha Dutt her wedding. However, she does event- it appears that the former film positions ually come around to the journalistic (and the well-meaning female journalist as the marital) mission under the leader- peripheral to the central concern of ship of the erstwhile rival male journalist. providing professional and personal Again, it is Meera in No One Killed Jessica direction to the young middle-class man. that proves the exception. Meera has a This man also incidentally stands in for middle-class lifestyle yet lives on her own, the militaristic future of the nation-state. uses foul language, and chastises her male His girlfriend Romi was an activist in bosses and lovers. She has both personal her college days and brings the same and professional agency, and does not ap- enthusiasm to her profession, but she pear to adhere to the mores of her gender, is rebuked by a soldier for questioning class or nation. the war when on duty in Kargil. Not only is this rebuke meant to bring the peace Despite Meera’s apparent lack of feminine advocate-cum-journalist in line with the middle-class virtue, her professional ac- more important mission of the armed Lakshya tions perform and uphold an unquestioned forces, but it also serves the purpose of civil morality. By bending journalistic ethics undermining the career woman. In No through the use of hidden cameras, and mo- One Killed Jessica, on the other hand, bilising the urban proletariat to oust hostile Meera actively challenges the status quo, witnesses in the Jessica Lall murder case, interviewing a soldier on the necessity of she ultimately serves the virtuous cause of war and later scolding a fellow (male) pas- middle-class justice (which masquerades as senger on her flight back to Delhi when national justice in the film). Additionally, the he compares coverage of the war zone to film seems to paper over the increasing cor- an action film. While her masculinisation poratisation of the television media in India is not entirely unproblematic in regards to since 1991, which would have lent greater the gendered nation-state, it is certainly prominence to a story about the alleged a departure from previous Bollywood killing of an aspiring model by a politician’s depictions of the modern yet demure son at a Delhi socialite’s party. The narra- female journalist. tives of Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani, Page 3, No One Killed Jessica A Wednesday! and Peepli (Live) incorporate The modern yet demure journalist is a more direct critique of commercialisation’s manifested in the characters of Ria impact on the assumed public service role In No One Killed Jessica, Meera (played by Juhi Chawla in Phir Bhi Dil Hai of the media. At the same time, the nature Hindustani), Romi (Lakshya) and Madhavi actively challenges the status quo. of this critique is worth examining for its (played by Konkona Sen Sharma in Page While her masculinisation is not effect on the representation of the female 3), who are university-educated middle- or entirely unproblematic in regards journalist. It is indeed the soft and human upper-middle-class women with serious to the gendered nation-state, it is interest journalism of all three films, itself a journalistic ambitions. Their class roots consequence of greater reliance on advertis- are crucial to the performance of their certainly a departure from previous ing revenue and television ratings, that is personal and professional selves in that Bollywood depictions of the modern demarcated as the unquestioned domain of both are bound by virtue and in service yet demure female journalist. the female reporter. of the nation’s socio-political order. In the case of Page 3, although Madhavi aspires As employees of commercial television to be more than a lifestyle journalist, is The film’s seemingly positive fabrication of networks, both Anu (Seema Malik) in A in a relationship with a model and lives the female reporter’s gender identity sets Wednesday! and Nandita (Malaika Shenoy) independently of her parents, she is hers apart from the seamy world of soft in Peepli (Live) are ruthless in their pur- nonetheless put on a higher moral ped- journalism, but it also returns ideal Indian suit of a good story. The serious work of estal than her less respectable and more femininity to nationalism’s constrained and critiquing or bettering the nation-state is sexualised female flatmates. According to essentialized models of virginal and pure the domain of cops and middle-class men Radhika Parameswaran, womanhood.13 in the former film and a village-based male
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print journalist in the latter. Similarly, in Endnotes Page 3, it is the seasoned male crime 1 Saswat Pattanayak, ‘Women Journalists in Rated G reporter Vinayak (Atul Kulkarni) who Hindi Films: Stereotyping the Stereotypes’, ‘stands in for journalism’s vigorous and Saswat.com,