Matrubhoomi A Nation without Women (original) (raw)
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Offering audiences a romanticized interpretation of Indian life, the images in Bollywood films present the viewer with loving and supportive families, beautiful wedding rituals and a "happily ever after" point of view that does not quite measure up to the societal realities of life for millions of Indian women. Juxtaposing themes and images from three popular Bollywood films against current attitudes towards women in Indian society, this paper will analyze the issues surrounding women's choice of marriage partners, the high cost of weddings and dowries, female infanticide, and the violence too often suffered by women and girls in India through dowry-related abuse or murder. This paper will also examine the question of whether the Bollywood film industry and its highly revered actors are attempting to alter awareness regarding these issues in the larger Indian society. . B o l l y w o o d I m a g e s | 2
Offering audiences a romanticized interpretation of Indian life, the images in Bollywood films present the viewer with loving and supportive families, beautiful wedding rituals and a “happily ever after” point of view that does not quite measure up to the societal realities of life for millions of Indian women. Juxtaposing themes and images from three popular Bollywood films against current attitudes towards women in Indian society, this paper will analyze the issues surrounding women’s choice of marriage partners, the high cost of weddings and dowries, female infanticide, and the violence too often suffered by women and girls in India through dowry-related abuse or murder. This paper will also examine the question of whether the Bollywood film industry and its highly esteemed actors are attempting to improve awareness through films and public remarks, which address these issues present in the greater Indian society.
On Screen Forbidden Relationships: The Depiction of Extramarital Affairs in New Wave Malayalam Films
Communication & Journalism Research, 2014
Movies often duplicate changes in the society and they sometimes persuade changes as well. Recently, controversy on new wave films became the disputed subject of the Malayalam film industry. The issues which were formerly treated as proscribed by the societal order are now boldly exposed before the Malayali viewers with the help of these new experimental movies. Extramarital affairs are always there in our society, but now, it's become common enough that we find examples from our neighbouring circles. A prejudiced society supports men to be a polygamist, but today's independent and bold woman also says she too is capable of all this. The pretence inbuilt in our fascination with stories of affairs in novels, Television and movies where we idolize the experiences of people having affairs, while at the same time pass judgment on people in real life who engage in the same behaviour. On one hand, we go into raptures over monogamy, but on the other, we unintentionally make a payment to a milieu that supports affairs. The present study analyzes how extramarital affairs have been portrayed in three new wave Malayalam movies-Beautiful, Cocktail and Traffic through narrative analysis.
Gender, Cinema, Streaming Platforms. Chakraborty Paunksnis, R., Paunksnis, Š. (eds) , 2023
Indian Cinema has as a ‘key arbiter’ of popular culture in the subcontinent corroborated notions of identity, values and gender. The Hindi film heroine as a protagonist in Bollywood or ‘mainstream’ hindi narratology post 2010, is a distinct extrapolation of a country’s changing socio-cultural, economic and political inflections. The ‘female led’ cine-narratives while redefining gender roles and responsibilities, question and explore desire in a patriarchal society struggling with layers of power renegotiations. The success of women-led commercial Hindi films has also revealed the potency of the multiplex to host alternate narratives and the vibrancy of global Indian audiences. The twin entanglement of a ‘neoliberal governmentality’ and instrumentality in appropriating this new form of feminism as discussed by Gill & Scharff, (2013) along with ‘post feminist’ influx from the west as daily engagement with brands, products and celebrity rhetoric has endowed contemporary directors to boldly interpret desire and sexual fulfillment in cinema for an aspirational youth emboldened with the neoliberal narrative. Simultaneously, Video on Demand (VOD) platforms like Amazon Prime and Netflix are extending portrayal of desire with the advantage of an uncensored yet formidable space of the aspirational middle class with access to technology. Representation has moved beyond challenging stereotypes to recast the young techno-savvy urban female as liberated, open to satisfying desire and hugely skeptical of marriage. Located within these new feminist realities is sisterhood and the female buddy film. These narratives explore the intertextuality of patriarchal repression with the conventional coded and un-coded messages as well as bold, blatant and unseen private moments, which were if at all depicted, in independent cinema. Sisterhood within heterosexuality is being reinterpreted as a symbol of empathy within an unvoiced constituency. Specific films juxtapose the metropolitan global woman with invested agency and attempt to represent diversity of the ‘other’ as she extrapolates the meaning of freedom in a hybrid post feminist space. This paper examines the portrayal of desire and self-fulfillment in context of marriage in the mainstream Bollywood film, Veere di Wedding (2018) in context of feminist film criticism, auteurship, reversal of the gaze, and ‘competitive femininity, perfection and imperfection’ (McRobbie, 2015). It also delves into the dynamics of production ideology of Hindi mainstream cinema, distribution and spectatorship vis a vis the millennial.
Indian Cinema: Making Departure from the Stereotypical Presentation of Women in Nuptial
The Creative Launcher
In the late 20th and 21st century various movements took place which challenged the stereotypical notions of gender in society. #MeToo movement gave a momentum to the society where people started talking about any kind of violence, sexual assault and harassment against women. Many government policies and laws were framed and implemented to provide equal opportunities to women in every field. Vishakha Guidelines and Internal Complains Committee are made mandatory at work place and education institutions to assure a safe and healthy environment for females. Now the issues brushed under the carpet for long have been brought into light. Issues which were considered taboo even to talk about are now discussed on public forums and academia, penned down in literature and projected in media and cinema. Women and their concerns and point of views found space in popular cinema and were acclaimed too by the critics as well as spectators. Bollywood has made deviations from the stereotypical port...
Between Tradition and Progress: A Comparative Perspective on Polygamy in the United States and India
Social Science Research Network, 2012
Both the United States and India have had longstanding experiences with polygamy and its regulation. In the United States, the dominant Protestant majority has sought to abolish Mormon practices of polygamy through criminalization. Moreover, a public policy exception has been used to deny recognition of plural marriages conducted legally elsewhere. India's approach to polygamy regulation and criminalization has been both similar to and different from that of the United States. With a sizable Muslim minority and a legal framework that recognizes religious law as family law, India recognizes polygamy in the Muslim minority community. However, it has criminalized it in the Hindu majority community. Despite the existence of criminal sanctions for Hindus, the incidence of polygamy among the majority community is roughly equivalent to that of Muslims for whom it is permitted. In the United States, despite harsh measures to abolish the practice, it continues and might even be growing in urban communities. This Article takes seriously the feminist critique of traditional polygamy as distributionally unfair to women. However, it also acknowledges that polygamy may be an attractive alternative and an acceptable family form. This is