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. These texts 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”. 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 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 academics and scholars (and people  because absolutely no one else is willing to read 8,139 words and on top of that, it is in an academic journal. However, to become 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. Traditionally women have been reduced to a mere spectacle in the movies, pretty faces objectified for their beauty. In Indian cinema, women have been relegated to the passive position in film after film, as ‘bearer, not the maker of meaning’, merely an appendage to the man, the wielder of power”, 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, but neither does it paint Bollywood as the film industry equivalent of Gloria Steinem. 

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 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” (BBC). 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 end 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, especially when at one point, the author writes. 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.  The purpose here isn’t to analyze the issue at length and with depth: more than anything, the purpose here is simply to just inform, as newspapers typically do. It’s also worth noting the author in this case. The author is Shubhra Gupta, who apparently comes from Delhi. This gives her a much more informed and genuine view of Bollywood since she isn’t looking at it through the lens of someone who grew up in the West watching movies that (more often than not) treat women with (a minimal amount of) respect, but rather, someone who grew up watching and being surrounded by the very same kind of movies that she is writing about here. 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.’” (I want to say something real quick before getting back to the paper: Dangal is the highest grossing Indian movie of all time and won numerous Filmfare Awards and Pink won a National Film Award and was screened for the Rajasthan Police so they could learn handle sexual assault cases better. The author however is right about the other two movies.) It’s stance is clear, Bollywood needs more women filmmakers. The purpose of the article however is to make a case or argument for it. It’s like an argumentative article in that way. It makes its case by comparing Bollywood feminist films by men, like Pink written by Shoojit Sircar and Ritesh Shah and directed by Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, all men, to Bollywood feminist films made by women, like Dil Dhadakne Do, which was both written and directed by Zoya Akhtar, 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 treats its female characters better and with more respect, and although isn’t even branded as a feminist film, is more successful in terms of having a good, honest portrayal of 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 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. 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. 

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.

Ahmed, Fatima. “Feminism in Bollywood: Where Are the Women Behind the Camera?” Brown Girl Magazine, 28 June 2017, https://www.browngirlmagazine.com/2017/06/bollywood-feminism-women-directors/.

“🇮🇳 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