Female body, femininity and authority in Bollywood: The “new” woman in Dangal and Queen

ABSTRACT

Bollywood’s departure from its earlier constructions of women as sex objects, victims of male violence, dependent, obedient and peripheral, is partly due to global/transnational cultural and economic flows that have influence in Indian society. What needs to be charted out is how patriarchal anxieties continue to emerge in recent Bollywood movies where women otherwise appear to assume assertive screen presence and play dominant roles. This study seeks to disentangle notions of “national” and “local,” in particular, because the former does not explain India’s family or local community settings that exercise substantial control over women. Through an analysis of two films, Dangal (2016) and Queen (2014), this study shows how present-day Bollywood appropriates opposing ideals of Hinduism and liberal ideology; therefore, the stories remain rooted in contemporary social discourse. It will be seen that the somewhat masculine woman in Dangal, who is divested of erotic and reproductive attributes, bears the double-burden of subordination by a family patriarch and becoming a national symbol. Through its scrutiny of Queen, the study also demonstrates how a new Indian femininity, “assertive” and “confident,” is mediated by the dominant male cultural gaze. The films offer useful models for comparison of varying forms of femininities.

ABSTRACT IN HINDI

बॉलीवुड ने महिलाओं की इच्छा, पुरुष हिंसा, आश्रित, आज्ञाकारी और परिधीय की वस्तुओं के रूप में अपने पिछले प्रतिनिधित्व को पीछे छोड़ दिया है।. इस प्रस्थान को भारतीय समाज को प्रभावित करने वाले वैश्विक / अंतरराष्ट्रीय सांस्कृतिक और आर्थिक प्रवाह के उत्पाद के रूप में व्यक्त किया गया है। इस बात की आवश्यकता है कि हाल की बॉलीवुड फिल्मों में जहां महिलाएं मुखर स्क्रीन उपस्थिति और प्रमुख भूमिका निभाती हैं। पितृसत्तात्मक चिंताएँ किस तरह उभरती रहें। यह अध्ययन "राष्ट्रीय" और "स्थानीय" की धारणाओं को समझना चाहता है। "राष्ट्रीय" भारत के परिवार या स्थानीय सामुदायिक सेटिंग्स की व्याख्या नहीं करता है जो महिलाओं पर पर्याप्त नियंत्रण रखते हैं। दो फिल्मों, कुश्ती (2016) और क्वीन (2014) के विश्लेषण के माध्यम से, यह अध्ययन बताता है कि वर्तमान समय में बॉलीवुड हिंदू धर्म और उदारवादी विचारधारा के विरोधी आदर्शों को कैसे लागू करता है, फिर भी कहानियां सामाजिक प्रवचन में निहित हैं। यह दिखाया जाएगा कि दंगल में "मर्दाना" महिला जो कामुक और प्रजनन विशेषताओं से विभाजित है। एक परिवार के संरक्षक और राष्ट्रीय प्रतीकवाद के बोझ से अधीनता का भार उठाती है। क्वीन के विश्लेषण के माध्यम से, अध्ययन यह भी दर्शाता है कि नई भारतीय नारीत्व, "मुखर" और "आत्मविश्वास", एक प्रमुख पुरुष सांस्कृतिक टकटकी द्वारा कैसे मध्यस्थता की जाती है। फ़िल्में नारीवाद के विभिन्न रूपों की तुलना के लिए उपयोगी मॉडल पेश करती हैं।

KEYWORDS:

• Bollywood
• female sexuality
• Hinduism
• nation
• patriarchy

KEYWORDS:

• बॉलीवुड
• महिला कामुकता
• हिंदू धर्म
• पितृसत्ता
• राष्ट्र।

Notes on contributors

Waseem AHAD was born and brought up in Jammu and Kashmir, India. He did his BA and MA in Mass Communication and Journalism from University of Kashmir, Srinagar. Currently, he is a Turkiye Burslari scholar, doing a PhD from the Faculty of Communication, Kocaeli University, Turkey. His main research interests are subaltern identities, discourse and cinema. His PHD research topic is related to “The Ideological Apparatus of Indian Cinema and Kashmir.”

Selma KOÇ AKGÜL is an Associate Professor, teaching at the Faculty of Communication in Kocaeli University, Turkey. She has done her Masters and PhD from Istanbul University, Turkey. The focus of her study has been women, discourse, culture, and political communication.

Notes

1 Mandhai and Gautam (2018) in an Aljazeera article argue that the glorification of rape continues in Bollywood.

2 Specifically on gender, which is constructed through cultural practices and codes, similar discussion appears in Lorber (2018).

3 Mushtaq and Amin (2018) underline the convergence of woman’s honor and nation, and argue that nationalist violence is inflicted on women’s bodies to defeat the “other” (para. 7).

4 The on-screen viewers’ lustful comments and gestures are not complemented by the visual structure of the scene. That is, many works following Mulvey (1989), have shown how the alliance between camera, onscreen male-gaze and off-screen male-gaze objectify women’s body. However, in the case of Dangal we see the camera breaking that alliance. Therefore, while onscreen men are engaged in a commentary, the camera takes the off-screen viewers’ attention to other things that are more important according to the context built prior to that scene. For a relevant discussion see Ramasubramanian and Oliver (2003), and Derné and Jadwin (2000).

5 The scenes that go back and forth in time to recall moments of the past that have resemblance with present action in the film. For a broader discussion see Shaul (2012, pp. 121–133).

6 The women protagonists of Dil Bole Hadippa and English Vinglish are also represented as national symbols.