The first source I’d like to analyze in this essay is an article from the academic journal “Madhya Pradesh Journal of Social Sciences”. It’s an Indian academic journal that apparently, has a focus on social sciences, economic development, and economics. The article I want to analyze is titled “Hindi Cinema: Changing Portrayal of Female Characters”. Now, the genre of this is obviously an article, however, it’s not a regular informative article like from a newspaper or magazine. It’s an analytical article, with an intent to analyze how female characters and their portrayal have changed in Bollywood over the years. The audience, in this case, are academics and scholars because absolutely no one else is willing to read 8,139 words and on top of that, it’s in an academic journal. Additionally, it breaks itself down into several sections in which different kinds of archetypes are explored. The stance of this seems to be that although Bollywood has done a great job going against stereotypes in contemporary films, it also still holds on to the traditional Indian customs a lot of times. It seems to have a very neutral tone since it never quite makes its opinion completely clear, fitting for an academic journal.

Another article on Bollywood and women I found was on BBC News titled “Bollywood’s troubled relationship with women”. Now, this was much shorter, which makes sense seeing as to how not only is this a news article, it’s an article that doesn’t concern itself with any sort of deep analysis of anything and instead, just tells us about the issue. The tone is here is much harsher, as evidenced by the title. It spends almost all of its time talking about how Bollywood treats its women awfully, but it doesn’t do much more than that. Yes, towards the ending it does mention how in 2017, there were some great Bollywood movies that treated women with respect, but it clearly has a problem with Bollywood. The author’s stance here is different than the author’s stance in the academic article in that here, the author believes that Bollywood has an awful problem regarding women and that when a Bollywood film comes out that doesn’t have a problem, it’s a miracle of sorts.

Works Cited

Khan, Afreen. “Hindi Cinema: Changing Portrayal of Female Characters.” Madhya Pradesh Journal of Social Sciences, vol. 21, no. 2, 2016, p. 46+. Gale Academic Onefile, https://link-gale-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/apps/doc/A558368334/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=6a3250e8. Accessed 22 Sept. 2019.

Gupta, Shubhra. “Bollywood’s Troubled Relationship with Women.” BBC News, BBC, 31 Jan. 2018, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-42743558.