Globalisation and Representations of Women in Indian Cinema Author(s): Sangeeta Datta Source: Social Scientist, Vol. 28, No. 3/4, (Mar. - Apr., 2000), pp. 71-82 Published by: Social Scientist Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3518191 Accessed: 16/04/2008 11:29 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=socialscien. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We enable the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected].
http://www.jstor.org
SANGEETADATTA*
Globalisationand Representationsof Women in Indian Cinema
The frameworkof muchof the discussionin thispaperwill be provided by concepts such as the nation state, the public sphereand theories investigating the dynamic between the global and the local. Nationhood or a coherentnation state is a conceptthat exists only in fiction. In these turbulenttimes the conceptof a culturalidentityor a form of personalisednationalityhas evolved as a more portableand useful term. The importance of the media, of film, of film and televisionimagesin fixing or directingthese new identitiesand their implicationson gender,both within and across borders,will be the focus of my paper. With satellite television, proliferationof videotapeand dubbing of Americanfilms - a flood of information,imagesand sounds have openedon the market.Yetthis is in no way the idealdemocratisation of the public sphere. There is increasingconcentration of media ownershipand a few elite gatekeeperscontrol distributionand relay. The question that arises is - is it ever going to be possible to have mutually compatible public spheres and could these global media flows therebyfeed a progressivepolitical process?Academicdebate should move from purely abstract analyses to a more active engagementwith kindsof representation- modalitiesof image,forms of speech and addressto viewers. An imaginarynational identity and sense of belongingemerges with modernityandwith the capitalismthat madepossibleincreasing dissemination of newspapers and the novel form, in a common languagelinkedto nationalidentity.This is the questionof how daily
" Research Fellow, Centre for Culture, Development and Environment, Asian and African Studies, University of Sussex. Social Scientist, Vol. 28, Nos. 3- 4, March-April 2000
72
SOCIALSCIENTIST
routine practices-homogenising cultural elements - so called Americanisationas in shoppingmalls, food chains like Macdonalds and entertainmentsuch as Americanmovies and televisionconfront the deepersenseof belongingto a culturein whichsocialandreligious practices and family relations are central signs of specific kinds of culturalbelonging. I shall examine the process of genderrepresentationsin Indian cinema- and how largerideologicalforcesand marketforcesimpact this process. I shall be looking chiefly at Hindi cinema but also at works of some women filmmakersof Asian origin working outside India. I would arguethat the processof globalisationis not altogether new or belonging entirely to the present. Particularlywith Indian cinema - its historyshows the continuedinfluenceof world cinema, in particularEuropeanandHollywoodcinema.Inthe 1920'san Indian film maker Himanshu Rai made Indo-Germancollaborativefilms. Startingwith silent films and moving on to the talkies, Rai made a number of films based on Indian mythology, history and later on social issues. Like his predecessorPhalkewho was more indigenous and workedwithin the Swadeshiproject,Rai was also respondingto the colonial experienceby constructingself conscious Indianimages and narratives,a senseof Indiannessnot only for the Indianaudience but for the Europeanmarket.The very natureof his collaborations (the earlyhistoricals- Shiraz,PrapanchPash)unavoidablyfell within the discourse of orientalismleading to a certain glamorisationof Indianhistory.Rai used a numberof Eurasianactressesto play the female lead characters.These women were given Hindu names like Sita Devi - and were introducedto the public as "educatedHindu women". This anomaly of Eurasianactresses representingIndian historical/mythologicalcharacters sets up an interestingcolonial I would momentandunderlinesthe problematicsof its representation. in an where this as an moment of forces operation early global pin European technical team, a set of Eurasian actresses, an Indian scriptwriter and director - set about filming Indian narratives. Devika Rani joined this unit as costume designer and upgraded as heroine and later as co-partner of Bombay Talkies - the production company Rai set up in Bombay.In Achyut KanyaDevika Raniintroduced the village belle look (a curiousblendof westernsophisticationand Indian costumes). This representationhas had a lasting impact on how Indian ruralwomen should look on screen, a construct from which later realist directors had to struggle to break away from.
REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMENIN INDIAN CINEMA
73
In later decadesof the historyof cinema one can identify many suchmoments.The nationalistrhetoricof the pre-independence years films the mother Mehboob Khan's Aurat, produced valorising figure. a modestfilmmadein the earlyfortieswas remadein colouras Mother Indiain 1956. The makingof the new nation,the projectionof Indian cultureto the world market,the first InternationalFilm Festivalin Delhi - perhapsall these factors led to the tremendousreceptionof the film both at home and abroad. It was the immediate post independencemoment that led to the phenomenaliconisation and identificationof the mother and nation in popular consciousness. Nationalist discourse constitutes the female body as a privileged signifier and various struggles are waged over the meaning and ownershipof that body.Whatdoes it meanfor women to be explicitly evoked in theories of nation only when their specificitycan serve a particularcause? Viewing nation as narrativeBhabhaputs emphasison how the nation is articulatedin language, signifiers,textuality, rhetoric. It emphasises the difference between the nation state as a set of regulations,policies,institutions,organisationsand nationalidentity - that is nation as culture. Looking at nation as text, as culture, questionsthe totalizationof nationalcultureandopens up the widely disseminatedforms through which subjectsconstruct the 'field of meaningsassociatedwith nationallife'. Bhabhatalksaboutthe spaces in between through which the meanings of cultural and political authorityare negotiated. As thewomen'smovementgainedstrengthin Indiaandhighlighted women'soppressionand a strugglefor an egalitariansociety- a series of women film makersbroughtwomenfromthe marginsto the centre of their texts. An alternateview point and a femalegaze broughta focus on femalesubjectivity.A numberof filmswere madeby Aparna Sen, Sai Paranjpye,VijayaMehta, ArunaRaje and KalpanaLajmiwhich were sensitiveportrayalsof women protagonists,in searchof social and sexual identity,women firmly located in specific sociohistoricalcontexts. The adventof satellitetelevisionin the '80s suddenlychangedthe viewers world view. Foreignimages,MTV culture- becamepart of everydayviewing experience.Narrativecinema was ratherquickly replacedby the dominantimage.I use herethe theoreticalargument that the post moderncan be seenas the resultof the commodification of the image itself. Fundamentallyconsumerismis set to objectify masculineideals.Postmodernstrategiesof parodyandpastichesimply
74
SOCIALSCIENTIST
serve to maintainthe male dominationof representation.In Indian mainstreamcinemawe continueto see a patriarchalversionof female sexuality.Masculinityis defined as the muscularbody and physicl aggression. The visual spectacle and collage have taken over as mandatorysong anddancesequencesthroughconfusinginternational localeswhichdistrupttheviewer'ssenseof timeandspace.Increasingly the pleasureelementis gaining precedenceover any concern vith a narrative.In a recent release, yash Johar's Duplicate the fun and frivolity of the song and dance sequence even sanctions explicitly sexual gestures.In one situationwherethe duplicateshave switched roles, the gangstertries to seduce the heroine and to the tune of a light hearted song, pulls her saree and gropes her. This form of retrogressiverepresentationin a countrywherewomenareconstantly battlingagainstphysicalviolationandsexualharrassment,is seriously alarmingas it trivialisesreal issues which affect women in their day to day lives. Here is instanceof a global (readwestern)image used with a 'mis' readingor 'non' readingof a culturalcontext. To continue with Duplicate the old and successfulidea of the maledoublehas been usedfor the plot. The femalecompanionof the good and the bad hero are feminine polarities. The sophisticated, Englishspeaking, no nonsense banquetmanagerloses her heart to the hotel chef amazinglyquickly.Despiteher apparenturbanpolish, she quicklyturns into a dreamyeyed lovelorngirl, rompingaround foreignlocaleswith herlover(as partof the imaginaryromancedream sequences).The secondactressplaysthe moll to the anti-herogangster. Dancing in the night club she is objectifiedby the collective male gaze evokingfamiliarscenesfromthe sixties and seventies,while she triesto warn herloverthroughthe coded languageof hersong. Many criticshave observedthe collapse of the romanticheroineand vamp in the personaof the heroineof the eightiesand nineties.Duplicateis pastiche,it evokes key scenes from many films from the sixties and seventiesand it polarisesthe feminineinto the romantic lover and the sexual vamp who is on the other side of the law. The narrative uses the space of primeconsumerculture - the internationalbeach hotel, with its influx of touristsand foreigndelegates.This is where the hero preparessumptousbanquetsas he waltzes and sings in the kitchen.Though the narrativeattemptsto appearemancipatedand contemporary, it presents a conservative ideology in valorising the male and objectifying the female. The female avenger genre also raises similar problems. The contradiction with these films is that even though they denounce rape,
REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN IN INDIAN CINEMA
75
scene of female violation figurescentrallyin the narrative.The film Dushmanby a woman producerand a woman director- perpetuates this rhetoric of violence. It is a disconcertingobservation that a languageof cinematicviolenceappropriateswomen film makersand disallows any alternatesubjectivevision to underpinthe narrative. Everyscene of male violence signalsthe consolidationof criminality and vigilantismwith an increasingdisplacementof the state's law and orderrole. Criminalisingrape identifieswith a progressivelegal position but at the same time induces the voyeuristic pleasure promptedin the cinematicrepresentationsof rape. These films force us to reconsiderthe limits and possibilities of equating rape and revengescenes and the masochisticunderpinningof the rape scenes in this genre.Theserevengefilmsretainthe ruleof targettingmodern urbanwomen as victims- fashionmodels,collegeteachers,newlywed wives, policewomen. The metaphor of the city and the criminal/ psychopath lurking in the streets doubly exposes the vulnerability and the threatenedor real violation of these women. Lalitha Gopalan in her essay on "AvengingWomen in Indian Cinema" says visual representationsof rape in Indian cinema also remindsus of the authorityof censorshipregulationsand suggestthe possibilityof sado - masochisticpleasurestructuringtheserapescenes. Even while revenge narratives provide female stars with more dominantroles, women's access to avengingpower in these films is intimatelypredicatedon rape.The avengingwomengenrecan actually be said to be a giddy masculineconcoction. The rape scene provides the narrativeruse for the revengeplan while providingthe spectator with a rangeof scopophilicpleasures. Gopalan writes the interlockingnarrativesof rape and revenge do not sufficientlydislodge or displaceconventionalrepresentation of Indiancinema.the avenginggenreopenstherepresentational circuit for women on the Indianscreen,but this unfetteredpoweris undercut by finallyreelingin the authorityof the stateandrevealingthe avenging women'sown overwhelminginvestmentin therestorationof the social imaginary.Casting women as embodying and sustainingtradition recyclesan old stereotypein Indianfilms. Analysing complex interchangesbetween questions of nation/ location and transnationalcultural practices in specifying sexual politics,we needto incorporatea criticalreadingof globalphenomena in our local, situational thinking about ideology and culture. My reading of Indian films as part of this transnational/localcultural debatelooks at Indianfilms as partof a local industryas well as part
76
SOCIALSCIENTIST
of an increasinglydynamicand influentialculturalmediaaroundthe globe. Indiancinema is today enjoyinga huge internationalmarket. Films are exported to countriesaroundthe world and the audience for it is growing too. The earliergenerationof Indianmigrantssaw these filmsfor the sake of nostalgia.The presentday generationview Hindi films more in termsof an identityissue and has appropriated Hindi film music and danceas a meansof culturalassertionin order to hold on to somethingof their own. Takingone instance,in the UK now there is a vibrantAsian club culture,with undergroundAsian music bands and it is a common sight on these club nights to see a packedroom of people swingingto the tunes of Hindi films remixes. An addition to these has been the recent influx of club dancers young Asian girls, trained in Indian dance who perform a wild rendition of hip hop, belly dance with snatches of Bharatnatyam gesturesand Kathakfootwork. Filmmakerslike YashChopraand SubashGhai are makingfilms with the NRI Indians in mind and images of consumerculture are increasinglyused to negotiatebetweenmodernityand tradition,such negotiations take place over the women's body. In Yash Chopra's latest musical Dil to Pagal Hai - a story of triangular love, the two actresses Madhuri and Karishma are invested with distinctive set of values. Karishma with her 'body is my temple' physique represents the perfect body of the western dancer. She inhabits the space of the gym, the dance studio and the stage. The realm of imagination and romanticism belongs to the other heroine - Madhuri Dixit, who lives with the naive belief that someday she will find her true love. She inhabits the hero's dreams in her translucentcostumes, while Karishma the professional dancer is part of his real life. Karishma is the modern dancer, she runs through green woods in designer clothes and also perform contemporary dance rather effortlessly. She practices classical dance (kathak) and also works out in leotards. Her personal space is an unreal bedroom set where she plays ghazals and cuddle soft toys. Dil to Pagal Hai - offers some of the most contemporary, urbanised images of a dance theatre company. Shiamak Davar's choreography invests a different visual rhetoric yet the two female personae do not articulate a new subjectivity but remain limited as the filmmaker's imaginary feminine.
Who is watching? This film has been an instant hit with the Asian audience abroad, and the audience in India has also identified with it. But it has not done well in the interiors or in small towns as its visual language is still alien to most Indian viewers. A more recent
REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMENIN INDIAN CINEMA
77
market phenomenon in the UK is the featuring of Hindi films (Kuch Kuch Hota Hai) in the top box-offices grossers, the distribution of these films in chain cinemas, redistributed with subtitles. The print and electronic media surrounding the film industry continues to perpetrate the voyeuristic gaze of consumer culture. The Indian female star is continually objectified as photographs and inside stories continually establish her lack of control over her body and her life story. The glamour aspect of the actress is showcased in photo sessions, as she displays different clothes, hairstyles and jewellery even varying colours of contact lenses. The sensational gossip stories override any concern with her professional career and competence. More and more the space in which she is interviewed gains significance, whether it is a certain star's makeup van or drawing room or the hospital room in which she is recuperating. The subjects of these stories are deprived of any agency as their voices are manipulated to fit in designed narratives. The magazines continue to sell by thousands not just in the country but abroad. Three such Bombay based magazines now have offices in the UK and in the Middle East. At least five such magazines are circulated in the UK, either to personal subscribers or sold off the stands. Hindi cinema in this country means good business. In London itself there are six cinema halls programming three to four Hindi films all week. Other theatres have weekend programmes. The viewer is prepared to pay ten pounds for a film. Few months ago the Warner Brothers theatre decided to start regular programming of Hindi films having researched their economic viability. I mention these facts to raise the question of global and local in relation to the cinematic representation of gender and reception of it. In India we have been talking and arguing about the impact of satellite television and global culture and national images. Living in the UK today, I find myself raising similar questions about Indian television channels in that country. Three Asian TV channels beam film based programmes throughout the day - full length features, countdowns, interviews, film functions and award events. A clearly identifiable pattern of glamourising the stars but also making their presence tangible through snippet interviews, close-ups, appear part of consumer culture where glamour is sold as a dream but is also within the consumer's grasp. Viewership is not merely restricted to the Asian community, there exists a considerable native interest in filmi dance. Such images today are part of Michael Jackson's videos as well as Madonna's. Asian artists are featured on MTV, Indian film
78
SOCIALSCIENTIST
seasonsandfestivalshaveenjoyedamazingpopularitylastyear.Films are now being made with an internationalaudiencein mind but the ideologicalvalues investedin narrativeand characterisationremain conservative.So, despite the fact that we cruise through a dozen different foreign locales in every song sequence, the idealizing of concepts like duty and tradition limit the possibilities for any emancipatoryjourneyfor the heroine. At the end of the twentieth century,globalization has come to representthe interests of the free market not free from historical, culturaland economic dominationor self determinationfor all the world's people. As Ghosh and Bose write in the introduction to Interventionsthis paperaddressesthe "needfor feministengagement with global as well as local/situationalideological, economic and political processes,and the urgencyof transnational,cross cultural feministdialoguein buildingan ethicalandegalitarianculturecapable of withstandingthe commodified, exploitative practices of global capital." Womendo not inhabita spaceof the stateas home,womenrather inhabit a space of their family as home, a space of much more local relations.Is cinema in any way able to link women's local concerns with those of others globally?ChandraMohanty (1991) recognised the lack of attentionto ThirdWorldwomen and wrote aboutwomen in differentnationalcontexts and theorisedwesternfeministneglect of women'sstrugglesglobally.InderpalGrewaland CarenKaplan's volume on Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices addressesspecifically"theabsenceof genderissuesin all worldsystem theories".They arguethat just becausemodernity"hasparticipated predominantlywithin discoursesof the formationof nation states" nationalismneeds to be examinedin relationto feministpractice. The use of nation as a family paradigm locates women in subordinatepositions, confined to domestic, motherlyroles, under the sway of husbands.Womenfilmmakerswork throughthe position allocated to them in nationalist discourse, one relegated to the domesticparadigm,but use that position for resistance.The lack of any largerpublicsphereimaginedcommunitywithin whichto locate themselvesmay explain why the questionof identityis importantto women in general and non-white women in particular.There is a reality of lived experience - outside white middleclass images manufacturedby the postmodernnews machine.This reality is the propertyof marginalisedsocial groupssuch as ethnic minoritiesand women. This realitystandstherewaiting to be represented.Filmsby
REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN IN INDIAN CINEMA
79
women filmmaker like Pratibha Parmar and Deepa Mehta may be read as positive imaging of a reality that has previously been deemed unpresentable. The new cinema movement of the 70's and 80's made attempts to explore women's subjectivity, her familial and civic role. Today we may well ask, where is the woman at work? Token attempts to characterise the heroine as a contemporary urban professional - a journalist, a teacher, an artist - are hardly ever developed. Recently Sai Paranjpye's Saaz tried to explore female relationships (sibling relationships, mother-daughterrelationships) as well as sibling rivalry. Over the last few years there has been a lull in the works of women filmmakers, in this context Saaz is significant in offering a narrative is only peripherally touched upon, the examination of the mother's identity and the control of the State over this role is the central issue in Govind Nihalini"s Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa. Shyam Benegal continues his concern with marginalised female narratives - Mammo and SardariBegum. The very concepts of gender socialising and gender categories have been questioned in Amcl Palekar's Daayera and Kalpana Lajmi's Darmiyaan. In regional films Aparna Sen's Yuganta explores a woman's dilemma between her profession and her home; the break down of relationships in a background of increasing social violence. Santana Bordoloi portrays the experience of widowhood through three generations of women in Adyaja. 1997-98 marked the return of several women filmmakers and their gendered interventions to challenge popular rhetoric. Any focus on cultural production begs the question of representation in its two senses: political (who speaks for whom) and aesthetic (what images, genres, and strategies are used). Cultural production is marked by class, race and gender positions. Some women filmmakers and actresses use their voice as representatives of a female collectivity on whose behalf they wage their feminist wars, others are less self reflexive about their position as speaking subject. As Mohanty has said the existence of Third World women narratives in itself is not evidence of decentering hegemonic histories and subjectivities. It is the way in which they are read, understood and located institutionally which is of paramount importance. Given this proliferation of Bollywood films in countries outside India - which perpetrate the glamorisation and objectification of women - it is important to take a look at feminist interventions by filmmakers abroad. Pratibha Parmar was part of an exciting new moment when black artists were finally being given some recognition
80
SOCIALSCIENTIST
by institutionslike the BritishFilm Instituteand television'sChannel Four.Khush takes its title from the Indianword happiness,and it addressesthe dualformof colonialismas patriarchalandhomophobic. Parmarexplains in her essay "Khush...was about the discoveriesof our histories within our cultural traditions of lesbian and gay Parmarrefusedto makea filmthatwouldpathologise representation." lesbians, explain to audiences who did not know about the communities.Shewantedto say "thisis what we are andthis is what we think." Khush mixes documentaryinterviewswith scripted,fantasized and dramatizedscenes.One scenethat is repeatedinvolvestwo Asian women in a sexual context, watching an old black and white film with an Indiandancer.Parmarexplainsin herown words,"Sometimes they havetheir backto the dancerand arejust beingwith each other. That... was a strategy of subvertingthe gaze, of turning the gaze around and saying we are the spectatorsof our own images.We are the spectatorswe want to be." The characterswatch an old Indian film depictinga womandancerpossiblyperformingfor an evil prince. Parmar"justedited out his gaze and left the two women enjoyingit together.It was my filmic strategyabout questionsaroundthe gaze and the spectatorsand aroundwho is watchingwhom".The women are filmed whole, not fragmented into body parts, as in most commercial films; this produces an effect of the woman's bodily presence.She knows that the film was a deliberatecelebrationof the eroticismof the femalebody.She focuseson how the fetishizationof the femalebodyin mainstreamadvertisingandfilmhasdeniedwoman this pleasurein women's bodies. Khushis an attempt to take back this ground, to enter boldly into the terrain of filming the female body by doing it in her differentway, with her differenteye. Could it be that the physical, cultural, linguistic differenceof minoritywoman is somethingthe white culturefears for a complex mixture of psychic and economic reasons,unless such differenceis safely made exotic and thus controlled?This questioncan be raised about Mira Nair'slast film KamaSutrabasedon the classicalIndian text on love and sex. Nair's film exoticises and essentializesfemale sexuality in India, more as consumer product from the western economy submittingto neo-colonialdemandsof the market. The significance of women filmmakers working outside the constraints of Hollywood, cannot be over emphasised. Cultures urgentlyneedfilmsin whichfemalespectatorscan identifywith images and situations other than those stipulatedby male hegemonicgaze
OF WOMEN IN INDIAN CINEMA REPRESENTATIONS
81
and thusbeginthe slow intertwinedprocessof changingconsciousness and society.DeepaMehta'sCanadianproductionFireaddressesthese needs squarely. Fire is about a north Indian family and it raises questionsaboutthe patriarchalcontrolsin this household,and urgent issueof femaleidentityandsexuality.The oldersisterin law is childless and her husbandhas lost sexual interestin her.The youngersisterin law, a newly marriedwife is looked on as a baby-makingmachineby her husband who is emotionally involved with a Chinese woman. Findingit difficultto openly challengethe male dominatedstructure of the family, the two women are drawn close together both emotionally and physically.It is literally through an ordeal of fire that Radhaleavesbehindthis familyand walks out to join Sitawhom she meetsin the refugeof a mosque.Mehta'sfilm explodesthe uneasy alliancebetweenfamily,state and marketthroughan explorationof a lesbianrelationshipin an Indiancontext. Fireexploresways out of the male gaze as the act of surveillancelimits truth to the exclusion of the other. Multiform and reflexive ways of gazing structurethe film, certain key moments represent a female-femalegaze which challengesthe look of surveillance. If on one handglobaltransactionsareresultingin the manufacture of confusedimageswith the conservativegarbedin the new language of today, the strident nationalism of right wing ideology is also effectivelystereotypingwomen andtheirroles.In the wake of nuclear tests andthe hugesearchof nationalprideit hasstimulated,the impact of this on women's lives needs to be reconsidered.It is no surprise that the most laudedfilm of the yearhas beena war filmcalledBorder which is set duringthe Indo-Pakwar of the 70's. The film valorises war and the men who die fighting for their country against the pronounced enemy - Pakistan. The militant nationalism it uses effectively valorises the blind mother whose son must leave her to join the army.It romanticisesthe waiting lover and the wife of those soldierswho neverreturnfrom the battle field. Borderwhips up the male rhetoric of war and harnesses the three classical female stereotypes - the mother, the wife and the sweetheart - all these subjectivitiesare sacrificedto the long drawn sequences of actual warfarewherethe heroesfightvaliantlyand die for theirmotherland. If anything the film is an indicator of the limits of possible representationin an increasinglymilitantstate. A searchfor national identityexploits but precludesthe real Indianwomen - muchas we have seen in MotherIndia. Borderremainsa glaringinstanceof how nations are forced to privilege national culture and geographical
82
SOCIAL SCIENTIST
border when protecting themselves in the global arena but at the expense of collapsing culturally different groups within a specific nation.
In the course of this paper I have tried to examine the two pronged in mainstream Indian cinema. process of homogenisation Fundamentalist forces at home erase spaces of difference and possible interventions and construct a monolithic representation of gender and nation. The process of globalisation simplifies image making, isolating it from a historical or social context. The big boom of 'Bollywood' cinema threatens to obliviate alternate images and representations. But the effort to continually find spaces and intervene with a difference is a survival strategy which works - and the effort is ongoing.
REFERENCES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6.
Bhabha Homi K, "Dissemination: time, narrative and the margins of the nation", Nation and Narration, Bhabha ed., London, Routledge, 1990. Ghosh Bishnupriya and Brinda Bose ed., Interventions: Feminist Dialogues on Third World Women's Literature and Film, New York, Garland, 1997. Gopalan, Lalitha, "Avenging Women in Indian Cinema" Screen, 38:1 Spring 1997. Grewal Inderpal and Caren Kaplan eds., Scatteredhegemonies: Postmodernity and Translational Feminist Practices, Minneapolis, 1994. Mohanty Chandra Talpade, "Under Western Eyes, Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses", Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, ed., Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, New York, Columbia, 1994. Parmar Pratibha, "New Queer Cinema" Sight aid Sound, 2.5, Spring, 1992.
