Bollywood, one of the biggest film industries in the World, is the Hindi language film industry (not the Indian film industry, just the Hindi portion of it). It is a huge part of not just Indian culture, but South Asian culture as well (believe me, I’m Bengali). But as a feminist, In feel like Bollywood is really not doing the best it could be. I feel like Bollywood has a tendency to reduce women to a few roles; the love interest, the mother, a victim, or just someone that’s quiet and pushed off to the side, and these texts not only agree. 

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”. It’s a scholarly article with an intent to analyze how female characters and their portrayal has changed in Bollywood over the years. The audience, in this case, are obviously academics and scholars, however, to be more specific, the audience they really had in mind here were film studies scholars or women’s studies scholars. Additionally, it breaks itself down into several sections in which different kinds of archetypes are explored. The stance of this is that although Bollywood has done a great job going against stereotypes in contemporary films and having a good, strong, honest portrayal of them, it also still holds on to the traditional Indian customs a lot of times. It seems to have a cautiously critical tone and I mean this to say that although it does shine a light upon the issue of poor female representation in Bollywood by saying things like “The Hindi movies have essentially been male-centric, leaving little space for the women to evolve as an independent character” (49), it doesn’t try to offend Bollywood too much as in, it never comes across as a harsh critic of Bollywood and its’ sexist tendencies and even praises contemporary Bollywood by saying things like “However, some recent movies broke this mindset and portrayed some strong women characters that represent the modern independent Indian women” (57). 

 Another article on Bollywood and women I found was on BBC News titled “Bollywood’s troubled relationship with women” by Shubrha Gupta. Now, this was much shorter, which makes sense seeing as to how not only is this a news article that doesn’t concern itself with any sort of deep analysis of anything and instead, just tells us about the issue. The tone here is more critical, as evidenced not just by the title, but also by the author writing things such as “Getting female actors to wear sheer white and putting them under waterfalls may no longer be in vogue, but they are still, for the most part, costumed, not clothed. Cameras gliding down swaying body parts, and vulgar, double-meaning lyrics, are still an integral part of mainstream Bollywood” (Gupta). It spends almost all of its time talking about how Bollywood treats its women awfully, but it doesn’t do much more than that. However, towards the end it does mention how in 2017, there were some great Bollywood movies that treated women with respect, showing that even though the author is clearly very critical of Bollywood, even she acknowledges that it is capable of respect. It’s also worth noting that the author, Shubhra Gupta, is from Delhi, which likely means that she has a more experienced view of Bollywood, However the audience in this case is a British one, so it’s entirely possible that she shifted her perspective just a little bit in order to make it more “Brit-friendly” AKA more optimistic about the future and less practical.

A magazine article I found relating to the matter was from Brown Girl Magazine titled “Feminism in Bollywood: Where are the Women Behind the Camera?” Written by Fatima Ahmed focuses on the importance of a female crew (or women in the crew) rather than the significance of what the characters are doing on the screen. Now, the tone can’t necessarily be called “angry” per se, but it is more frustrated than the previous two articles. For example, the author writes in the article when talking about the films Dangal, Pink, Begum Jaan, and Gulaab Gang,  “With one-dimensional portrayals of women, watered down messages of gender equality, and preachy speeches, the films failed to make an impact. Not like, say the huge, recent success of the Hollywood film ‘Wonder Woman.’” Now, before I go into the rest of this analysis, I just want to clear something up real quick. Dangal is the highest grossing Indian movie of all time and won numerous Filmfare Awards (let’s consider them the Bollywood equivalent of the Golden Globes) and Pink won a National Film Award (the Indian equivalent of Oscar) and was screened for the Rajasthan Police so they could learn handle sexual assault cases better. This does raise doubts about the credibility of the article because this claim is just so off, and its’ criticism of Pink comes up very often in the film, but at the same time, I do feel as if the article has very valid points. It’s stance is clear, Bollywood needs more women filmmakers. The purpose of the article however is to make a case for it. It’s almost like an argumentative essay in that way. It makes its case by comparing Bollywood feminist films made by all men, like Pink, to Bollywood feminist films made by women, like Dil Dhadakne Do, which was both written and directed a woman. It compares the victimizing nature of Pink and its tendency to focus on the male character, Deepak (portrayed by Amitabh Bacchan) for feminist quotes and moments, to the way Dil Dhadakne Do does not revolve around men and keeps its focus on the female characters for empowering moments, and although isn’t even branded as a feminist film, is more successful in terms of having a good, honest portrayal of women. In doing this, the author proves her point that if we want a feminist film to come out of Bollywood, it has to be made by women.

A fourth source I’d like to analyze is actually a Youtube video uploaded by Al Jazeera English titled “🇮🇳 Does Bollywood have a woman problem? | बॉलीवुड में महिलाओं का समस्यात्मक चित्रण. ” The video features multiple people, as in Indian women (feminists, filmmakers, and authors) as well as a reporter for Al Jazeera trying to fulfill the purpose, which is answering the question “does Bollywood have a problem with women?” To which they decide, yes. It does. The reporter notes that the #MeToo Movement hasn’t quite reached India and one of the women talk about how film is dependent on society and society is influenced by film, and how society and film are very co-dependent on each other. This codependency means that if one thing doesn’t change, then neither will the other so either Bollywood has to change and make its’ portrayal of women (or situations involving women) more appropriate and respectful, or Indian men have to treat women with more respect. If one happens, the other will as well. The tone here is a more concerned one — as in they’re not angry or frustrated, but they’re concerned about the fact that Bollywood has this problem. This becomes apparent when they bring up the case of an Indian man in Australia who was stalking two women, and how his behavior was influenced by Bollywood films, an example of how the impact of Bollywood can even reach outside of India.

 

Works Cited

Khan, Afreen. “Hindi Cinema: Changing Portrayal of Female Characters.” Madhya Pradesh Journal of Social Sciences, vol. 21, no. 2, 2016, p.p. 4664. 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, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-42743558. Accessed 22 September, 2019.

Ahmed, Fatima. “Feminism in Bollywood: Where Are the Women Behind the Camera?” Brown Girl Magazine, https://www.browngirlmagazine.com/2017/06/bollywood-feminism-women-directors/. Accessed 25 October, 2019

“🇮🇳 Does Bollywood have a woman problem? | बॉलीवुड में महिलाओं का समस्यात्मक चित्रण” YouTube, uploaded by Al Jazeera English, 26 March 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwvJVecgrNo