Feminine Filmy Story by Anuj Gadre

Feminine Filmy Story PRO FEMINIST BOLLYWOOD

NEW MILLENNIA

Anuj Vijay Gadre Guide: Arun Gupta National Institute of Design, Paldi, Ahmedabad, India. August 2011

The reason behind my taking up this paper is my intimacy to the topic. Being a selfproclaimed-movie-buff, I took the liberty to choose relevant films from the last ten years to be discussed here. This I could do from the basic understanding of the subject. The crucial thing, I would like to point out here is that Bollywood films have matured, at least a bit, to understand the changing times and this reflects in the kind of female roles that are being written these days.

Me, myself and Feminism 1 The findings of this colloquium and the discussion I want to initiate, comes from my in-depth connection to its fundamental philosophy. I can, without any inhibition say that I‟m a pro-feminist2. Of course, there is a reason behind my beliefs. My constant questing and upbringing makes me follow the principles that make me a person who sees things a little differently. As the basis of Feminism is, I strongly believe and accept that men and women are equal and should be treated equally. I strongly condemn all violence based on gender discrimination. I practically hate Sexism3. As far as I believe men are most sexist, and it turns out to be a drawback to the whole system. I also feel against gender discrimination towards women, based on religious and social opinions.

Me, Myself and Bollywood 4 There is something with films and me. Cinema as a medium has always fascinated me. I was exposed to films at a very early age. Not that I had a taste and was exposed to the best of world cinema. No! It was Bollywood right from the beginning. I have grown up on a heavy-duty dose of Bollywood films, across all eras. So, why this? This is because right from the beginning there was this one thing I could notice, that is, why the female lead of the film is never the deciding factor. Apart from few exceptions, Bollywood films of yesteryears, predominantly the time between 60‟s to the 90‟s is stuck by the „formula‟. What happened otherwise was categorised as „art‟ and not considered in the male league of films and actors. Women especially, were shown powerless, in a miserable state of dependence and weakness. The male stereotype was the liberator and the precious one who was also loved by the general audience. On the other hand women were just for the sake of glamour, misery and very bluntly, sex. The female lead was neglected and given restricted screen presence when the male counterparts were dominant and acted as crowd pullers. Women mostly, if popular, were portrayed only as a sex-symbol and to add glamour.

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Many theories explain the reason behind such characterisation of female roles. The basic structure of our society is predominantly patriarchal. In such cases, via different distortions, messages of stereotype role models, soft pornography and male hegemony were let out through the medium of cinema. This in return affected the society by making it more sexist, oppressive and making it an obvious reality that men are greater beings than women. Although, the situation was not that bad. At least not during the 90â&#x20AC;&#x;s when Bollywood saw the change coming; female roles were written in a more powerful way and though they stuck to the stereotypes, actresses started getting recognised for their talent along with the glamour quotient. A few examples of these would be Sridevi and Madhuri Dixit for their roles in Lamhe (1991) and Mrityudand (1997) respectively.

So What Has Changed Now? As far as urban India is concerned, I saw several changes happening in the way our society was shaped, in the last decade, i.e. 2000-2010. Many of these were due to factors that are directly related to the Information and Media boom in the country. Cable television has reached the interiors of India, while urban India is taken over by the World Wide Web. The sudden uproar in Social-networking halfway through the decade, has given people a voice of their own. People now come forward and actively express their views, and that actually matters. Globalization in literal sense has changed the way we think. It has really enhanced the communication and travel sectors. All this leads to a global flow of ideas, and hence improve the human existence. Many issues that were unspeakable till recently are discussed openly and hence people are becoming aware. Globalization has led to economic integration which has led to people travelling and cultural transactions taking place. The effect of mass media growth is tremendous. People are more aware of issues going around them. Gender issues especially are given special attention by the national as well as global media. Social Communication is increasing day by day and the effect is far reaching because of the growth in media resource. Mobiles and televisions are now common in villages as well and that brings all kinds of information available to people. But all this also has its own discrepancies. Another interesting point of view would be to discuss the impact of globalization and view it as liberalization. Globalization may lead to liberalization in economic, social and political forms. It also comes to oneâ&#x20AC;&#x;s mind, does globalisation and moving towards more liberal society add to the equality in gender? When we talk of profeminist society which is a result of liberalization, then it also means that we have to question the co-existence of consumerism, which is another by-product of liberalization. Feminism and Consumerism are antithetical. Consumerism has added to the existence of sexism in many western cultures. In a consumerist world all the genders are expected to act, look, feel, work and behave in a specific way. This is true for both the genders and hence is an undesirable situation. Is gender equality that which feminists are asking for? But does nature recognize this equality? In fact in nature the role of each gender is specific and thus the balance is maintained. Then why do we as humans want to create equality and take away that balance. The reason might be our ability to express. As an intelligent species, humans have been interpreting and expressing, even what other species might feel. If we consider nature the role of each gender is quite specific and clear. But when we talk of civilization and society, these roles collide and mix up. Hence the question of gender equality arises. In point of view, what feminists actually demand is not gender equality but equal opportunity across all genders. No discrimination should be made, and no judgement should be made based on gender. Only ability and skills of a person should be the criteria.

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“Change” All the uproar and awareness in gender issues, equal opportunity for women and positive propaganda of feminism has led to a „Change‟. Change which shows in and has affected almost all sections of society, economy and communication. Films in India especially act as a mirror to these changes. The change happening is reflected back in films, that it may be - through the films, the industry or the technicians. What I will be discussing here is the change happening in the films the positive side of it. My process here is quite simple. I have selected few films after watching and going through a lot of films of this era and I identified a pattern in the people who are taking the change forward. Films are discussed as per the directors, the characters portrayed or the film content itself.

The established ones Many directors having an established audience responded to the coming of change in society with a positive side. This they did by giving the female characters of their films, a strong backup in writing and add to substance to their roles. Also some of them came out and portrayed women‟s issues with their movies. Otherwise the female protagonist in their films portrayed a woman of today: independent, free thinking and essentially urbane. Such Directors are; Mani Rathnam (Yuva 2004, Guru 2007, Raavan 2010), R Balki (Cheeni Kum 2007, Paa 2009), Imtiaz Ali (Jab We Met 2007, Love Aaj Kal 2009), Madhur Bhandarkar (Page 3 2005, Corporate 2006, Fashion 2008), Nagesh Kukunoor (Dor 2006, Ashayein 2010), Shyam Benegal (Zubeidaa 2001, Welcome To Sajjanpur 2008, Well Done Abba 2010), Vishal Bhardwaj (Makdee 2001, Kaminey 2009, 7 Khoon Maaf 2011) etc. Not all of these above movies are around the female protagonist, yet we can see a major difference in the roles that have been written or portrayed in the films. For example Yuva, Welcome To Sajjanpur, Well Done Abba, Kaminey and Ashayein were not principally female centric films but the female roles in the films were strong and powerful and left their own impact. Especially Aishwarya Rai‟s role in Raavan and Minissha Lamba‟s role in Well Done Abba are roles where the story is built around such characters. Minishha‟s portrayal of Muskaan Ali was of a strong, educated village girl, who stands by her father in times of problems and is the one who show him the path to triumph. Apart from these roles, Makdee, 7 Khoon Maaf, Page 3, Corporate, and Zubeidaa were all main stream cinema with female centric plots. Here the protagonists were all women with something eccentric about them. Makadee is all about these two entirely different, twin girls; Chunni – Munni, where one is a caring, naïve girl, the other is a rebellious brat. The high point of the film is how this brat girl, Chunni, fights back an evil witch (imposter) to get her sister back from her clutches. Makdee proved to be one of the finest children films of our times because of its content and treatment. Choosing the protagonist as a girl was again an intentional choice of the director. Vishal Bhardwaj‟s film 7 Khoon Maaf deals with the story of a woman who is in search of true love, but ends with wrong men all the time. The only way for her to be out of that situation is to kill them. Films like Corporate and Page 3 by Madhur Bhandarakar, were not female centric, yet point of view for the narration of the story was of a female protagonist. Zubeidaa‟s central character was of a rebellious, forward thinking Muslim girl. Other films like Imtiaz Ali‟s Jab We Met and Love Aaj Kal portrayed the stereotype roles of heroine, in a not-so-stereotypical way. Kareena‟s Geet and Deepika‟s Meera were contemporary, urban girls, who are ready to move out to find what is important for them, which may be love or career. For Nagesh‟s films, the female protagonist is always the strong type, ready to fight against all odds to get through what one really deserves. Dor, for example, shows a Kashmiri girl, Gul Panag‟s character, travelling all the way from Kashmir to the interiors of Jodhpur to get her husband who is abroad, out of deep trouble. In the process she ends up liberating another young

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village widow (played by Ayesha Takiya) who is surviving and fighting all the social evils she has to face after her husbands‟ death.

The New Breed Many new and debutant directors are showing a lot of promise in this area. These films are fresh, the budgets are low and hence content is rich. Quality and experimentation is given preference and most of the films are slice-of-life kind of films. This new breed provide us, what can be, the new perspective of film making, bringing the social fabric of India into consideration and not showing us candy floss, larger than life, melodramatic and overtly stylized film narration. Their characters, if not real, are more believable and associable. A few among such directors are; Alankrita Shrivastav (Turning 30, 2011), Abhishek Choubey (Ishqiya 2010), Ayan Mukherjee (Wake Up Sid, 2009), Habib Faisal (Do Dooni Chaar, 2010), Kiran Rao (Dhobi Ghat, 2011), Shashant Shah (Chalo Dilli, 2011), Raj Kumar Gupta (No One Killed Jessica, 2011) and Zoya Akhtar (Luck By Chance, 2009). Interestingly, all the above films came about in the end of the decade. Out of these films, ones like Turning 30, Wake Up Sid, Dhobi Ghat, Chalo Dilli and Luck By Chance dealt with urban audience. Their characters played by Gul Panaag, Konkana Sen, Monika Dogra, Lara Dutta and Konkana Sen again respectively, spoke more about the „Change‟ coming in the perspective of how people think these days and what it takes to thrive in urban India. The characters are realistic, young, educated and career oriented girls shown much challenging and competitive than before. There is a certain lack that adds to create a self-identity. No One Killed Jessica, dealt with the (in)famous Jessica Lall murder case and the events following it. The films had two protagonists played by Rani Mukherjee and Vidya Balan, and each of them was shown fighting against crime and for justice, in their own possible ways. Vidya‟s character in Ishqiya, Krishna Verma - femme fatale, small-town girl, mysterious woman and forgotten widow; Krishna is a bundle of contradictions. She was seen as a woman madly in love, as an object of desire, as a vision of purity and engaging herself in a lustful bout with another man. Driven by revenge, she is shown ready to go to any extent to get her way out. Such bold roles are hard to come by and are always a welcome change. Other subtle roles like that of the daughter and mother characters of Do Dooni Chaar, story of a middle class family struggling their way to get a car of their own, played by Aditi and Neetu Singh, are seen as realistic as they can get. They have issues, they are vocal about them as well, but they are also ready to adjust for the sake of family.

Special Mention There are certain films that have a come by in the last decade that created a certain scenario for disclosure, and initiated discussions on the upcoming trends in society and its response and after effects on our films. Chak De India, 2007 by Shimit Amin, was a film that dealt with a lot of national issues but most importantly the film was about a women‟s hockey team which is struggling for acceptance and success. The underlying message in this film was that given the right kind of opportunity, trust, training, and assistance, no sports is difficult to excel, irrespective of gender. Though the focal role of the coach was a male, played by Shah Rukh Khan, it was shown that he himself was driven by the same belief. Kya Kehna, 2000, by Kundan Shah was one of the first film in which a family supports their daughter when she gets pregnant with a love child, and is not ready to

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give away her child. The film‟s argument of both partners being responsible was put through in a very subtle way. 7 Khoon Maaf, 2011 by Vishal Bhardwaj was a film that had many underlying messages. Though the film showed a very strong female protagonist who goes on killing her husbands who don‟t love her, it also metaphorically showed problems that females in the society face. They are misunderstood, objectified and oppressed. Rules, 2003, by Parvati Balgopalan, was a film with a lot of witty content. The grandmother‟s character played by Tanuja, laid down rules for attraction for her grand-daughter to win her a man she likes. In some ways it was quiet a novel scenario where an old age character was involved. Turning 30, 2011, by Alankrita, is a story of cosmopolitan, urban women, dealing with issues like marriage, children, love and career. What is interesting to see is that such characters are been shown more and more in cinema these days.

Male Centric Cinema Many times we see films that are stereotype male driven films. The films are about their male characters and all the attention is hogged by them. What is interesting to see is that although these films are male centric there are female characters which represent the contemporary women and not the stereotype glam-dolls. For example, in R. Balki‟s Paa we see that even though the film is all about this child suffering from Progeria, the film has shown a strong mother who chooses to be a single mother, and her mother is the one supporting her all the time. In Dev D(2007), Anurag Kashyap had a very different treatment to the characters of Devdas originally written by Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay, especially to the leading ladies, Paro and Chandramukhi. They were strong characters that actually set the tone of film towards a pro feminist point of view. Other examples for such cases can be, Sarkar Raj (2008, by Ram Gopal Varma) and Ishqiya.

Breaking The Stereotype The „Change‟ is, hence, evident. And that is seen when the stereotypes for characters of heroines, wifes, mothers and the lovers are broken. For example, the heroine of Ishqiya, 7 Khoon Maaf, Ek Challis Ki Last Local (2007, by Sanjay Khanduri), and Love Sex aur Dhoka (2010, by Dibaker Banerjee) were not the archetype damsel in distress type. They were either the anchor point of the film, or were characters that are wicked, and manipulative to carry the story forward. They also broke the norms of morality and were portrayed in a realistic way. The wives, of Astitva (2000, by Mahesh Manjrekar), Lajja (2000, by Rajkumar Santoshi), Zubeidaa, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, were strong portrayal of a generally weak and oppressed characters. Especially in Astitva, the protagonist wife is shown to confront with the reality of her extra marital affair, in the backdrop of a superficial happy family. Mothers of Paa, RULES, Swades etc. had strong portrayals of the loving and caring stereotype, who would stand up to themselves to support and not being dependent.

Conclusion To conclude, there is definitely a change but there are patterns, quiet easily identifiable. It‟s as if the older stereotypes are broken to create new ones. These stereotypes can be identified in the following ways. First comes the stereotype I-am-

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strong-oh-I-am-not. Here the character is juggling between being strong and then being vulnerable at the same time. An example for such kind of a role would be from Turning 30. Then comes the My-story-is-tragic stereotype. The female character would either go through a tyrannical beginning or past, a progressive intermediate, and an antagonistic end or supposition. Almost all pro-feminist films here, from Kya Kehna to No One Killed Jessica, follow this pattern. I-am-still-woman-need-man is the stereotype which shows that the situation still hasn‟t changed. The female character is never completely independent and need an external male support all the time. This might be a sustaining change because one can always question this on the basis of order of nature, but there is always a scope where this stereotype can be presented differently. For example in Ishqiya, though Vidya‟s character is helped by two male characters, it‟s her who is shown to be the focus of the story. Lastly there is the I-am-city-girl stereotype. There is a clear distinction between the aforementioned films and the rest of the mainstream films. All these above films are focussed and made for the multiplex going urban audience. Mainstream cinema, the kind that reaches the masses via single screen theatres, is still to accept these changes in those kinds of films. For the multiplex genre, the stereotype of the female character is of the urban, educated and upper-middle class women who are more open to ideas and experimentation. And for some weird reason they are also shown to be sexually more boisterous and loud. It‟s not that there is something wrong in being loud but to highlight one particular character all the time is again a new problem. Such a stereotype culminates to another level of anti-feminist arguments, an example of suspension of disbelief5. This is indicative to the amount of public opposition many of the aforementioned films have received from time to time. What one needs is really a subtle version of above all, so that the reality seeps in a more everlasting way. We need more films that are based on women centric issues and are based around a central female protagonist. Nevertheless, the female roles have moved & leaped far ahead from where they were in the previous decade. More and more such films and roles becoming common is also a good and welcome sign signifying the „Change‟.

Scene Analysis For understanding my perspective, I would like to break down and analyze a scene from the film „Paa‟. This scene is the decisive moment where Vidya (Vidya Balan) is in the fix of whether to keep her unborn love-child from Amol (Abhishek Bachchan). It is here when her mother (Arundhati Nag) questions her and makes her realize that to keep the child or not is entirely her decision and she need not worry about the repercussions. She extends her support to whatever the decision may be. The dialogue in this scene are written and delivered in such a way that it appears like a one sided argument where the mother just wants to know the decision of her daughter. The mother is persistent and clear in the head to stand by her daughter in any situation. The scene is brief 1 minute 20 second duration divided into several shots. The first few shots are where Vidya‟s mother is persistent with just the query of whether she wants the child or not. Vidya is afraid of several taboos which her mother just ignores. Her mother argues that if she could raise Vidya being a single mother so could she, with her help. Finally, Vidya breaks down and says yes.

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Very affirmatively the mother‟s character establishes her strength through these shots where she is tolerant and supportive to her daughter in her difficult situation, against all the social and personal taboos. The mother ensures Vidya that she would be there by her side even without saying it, and that Vidya‟s decision would be accepted happily. The crisp editing of the scene defines the tension of the situation yet the actions of the characters are very subtle and there is no place of melodrama. Here, director R. Balki breaks the stereotype of the Indian mother, who is ready to accept her daughter‟s illegitimate love child and stand by her in all conditions. This is very different when compared to earlier films where the mother would go paranoid and may take extreme measures if the daughter is shown pregnant in such way. Here the director also establishes one of the stereotypes as mentioned in the conclusions. The very fact that Vidya was studying abroad, shows that the social status of the character was pretty high. And hence, they were basically an urban family which is ready to accept the hardships due to sound economical backing.

Anuj Gadre|PGGD09|Colloquium Paper|2011