The Bechdel in India: gendered depictions in contemporary Hindi cinema

Abstract

The Bechdel test is a popular measure used to examine the adequacy of representation of women in movies, and other media. Although often applied to Hollywood movies, the test has rarely, if ever, been used to assess Hindi cinema. This paper adopts, adapts, and extends the original Bechdel test to scrutinise stereotypical, non-stereotypical, and typical dialogic content of same-sex conversations in three genres of Hindi cinema – top-grossing blockbuster films, women-centric movies, and parallel cinema. Using a qualitative approach to code dialogues, and quantifying subsequent frequencies, the current work highlights the underrepresentation and misrepresentation of female characters in contemporary Hindi cinema. The time taken for men to speak to men and women to speak to women was also quantified. While women-centric and parallel films depict a more balanced portrayal of male and female characters, top-grossing films are heavily lopsided, with some being devoid of a second female lead, and hence of female-to-female dialogues. Male characters spoke of more varied areas, both stereotypical and non-stereotypical, than women particularly in top-grossing content. The implications of such depictions in cinema, and their subsequent effect on perceptions of men and women in society, is discussed.

Keywords:

• Bechdel test
• Hindi cinema
• stereotypes
• women-centric
• conversational analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Acknowledgements

We thank Pooja Gala and Saloni Dikshit for assistance in qualitative analyses. We thank Nidhi Shendurnikar Tere and two anonymous reviewers for useful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.