CRITICALviews CRITICALviews 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 © ATOM | Metro Magazine 171 • 103 CRITICALviews 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.