The Invisible on Screens - Representations of Indian Rural Women in Bollywood

Bollywood both shapes and is shaped by Indian society and its ideas on gender and nationhood. As such, it engages in the politics of representation as theorised by feminist film scholars. While extensive literature on the representation of women in Bollywood has arisen in the last two decades, less attention has been put on how rural populations or, more particularly, rural women are represented. This thesis attempts to fill this gap, recognising the invisibilization of rural women in India, especially the agrarian female workers who make up a major part of the national economy and around a fourth of the Indian population. I have used content and discourse analysis techniques on the Bollywood films Lagaan (2001) and Parched (2016) to investigate, firstly, the representation of Indian rural women in Bollywood, secondly the applicability of the theories developed through the literature on Indian women in Bollywood, and lastly, the possible implications of such representations on the...Show moreBollywood both shapes and is shaped by Indian society and its ideas on gender and nationhood. As such, it engages in the politics of representation as theorised by feminist film scholars. While extensive literature on the representation of women in Bollywood has arisen in the last two decades, less attention has been put on how rural populations or, more particularly, rural women are represented. This thesis attempts to fill this gap, recognising the invisibilization of rural women in India, especially the agrarian female workers who make up a major part of the national economy and around a fourth of the Indian population. I have used content and discourse analysis techniques on the Bollywood films Lagaan (2001) and Parched (2016) to investigate, firstly, the representation of Indian rural women in Bollywood, secondly the applicability of the theories developed through the literature on Indian women in Bollywood, and lastly, the possible implications of such representations on the visibility of Indian rural women, considering both the content and the reach of the films in the context of contemporary Bollywood. There is a multiplicity of representations of Indian women across Bollywood films, and this also applies for the representation of Indian rural women. In Lagaan, women play side-roles and are defined by their relation to the male characters; they are dedicated daughters, mothers and lovers. In Parched, the rural women are nuanced characters with desires, struggles and the will to fight for their agency in a patriarchal society. Even though the representations in Parched challenge notions of patriarchal and upper-class nationhood, its viewership and therefore the impact of the visibilization Indian rural women is limited to an elite and largely foreign audience, whereas the more patriarchal, but subaltern-perspective film Lagaan has reached Indian masses. Although women centric Bollywood films have been on the rise, a low number of films portray rural Indians and of those only few depict female characters in nuanced ways like done in Parched. This implies that Indian rural women remain largely invisibilized and stigmatized in Bollywood and in the imagination of the nation by the Bollywood audiences. Going forward, middle cinema offers a promising space for critical but still influential films, stimulating larger discussions on class and gender.Show less

Leiden University Student Repository

Documents

In Collections

The Invisible on Screens - Representations of Indian Rural Women in Bollywood