Bollywood’s most renowned feminist heroine
Anyone with a pair of eyes and an ear to the international news beat is likely aware of how India's entrenched patriarchy engenders a despicable inability in its men to respect the female body. Daily news outlets are littered with horrific tales of rape, molestation, eve-teasing, and rape apologia ("She shouldn't have dressed that way; it was her fault for being so beautiful; we couldn't contain ourselves"), and so, unceasingly, on.
While newscasters and supposed experts are quick to telecast “debates” on the reasons behind and posited solutions for the second-class status assigned to women in India, progress, if any, is slow, and fresh tales of trauma submerge whatever evidence there may have been to show for movement forward.
Bollywood, India's booming film industry, is no stranger to cultural manifestations of misogyny. Older films would depict as the cinematic climax gruesome scenes of a woman violated, triggering the wrath and revenge of the male hero against the villainous perpetrator. Though modern cinema is less likely to script women as so helpless as their “golden-age” counterparts, on-set scandals continue to erupt. “Item-dancers,” actresses hired specifically to perform a song-and-dance number for a film for promotional purposes, are vilified by the media for dressing provocatively, despite doing nothing worse than obeying the directions of costume designers who intend to cater to the slavering desires of the masses. The Indian double standard doesn't end there. Daily newspapers and gossip rags carry fresh accusations levelled by models and actresses towards filmmakers and executives of molestation and manipulation on the way up the career ladder. Most damnably, young dime-a-dozen actresses continue to be romantically paired with the same circle of powerful 50-year-old actors, the latter of whom are arguably valued more for their star influence than for sex appeal or acting credibility.
Though some filmmakers, notably Indian-American Mira Nair, push the envelope by releasing movies that deal with the struggles of young women trying to make it big in large cities — stories that may intersect with such taboo topics as homosexuality and AIDS — the Madonna-Whore complex persists in more standard cinematic fare. In very general terms, an on-screen woman is by nature ambitious, coarse and aggressive, unattractively masculine in her efforts to move upward in a man’s world; or she is the sweet, unworldly housewife, content with her place within her society so long as she is free to serve her husband and look after the children. Her happiness is contingent on the terms of her imprisonment. Perhaps sensitive, realistic portrayals of women are not generally preferred by the paying public, explaining why they are relegated to low-key films financed by independent studios willing to take chances on female directors. These indies will perform rounds on festival circuits, bid feebly for the foreign language Oscar (Water, directed by Mira Nair, released 2005, comes to mind), and suffer consignment to eternal obscurity.
Enter Rekha. An actress today renowned as much for her talent and gravitas as for her beauty, Rekha is also known for rumours of her romantic dalliance with Amitabh Bachchan, whom many regard as the greatest screen legend in Bollywood. While filming famed director Yash Chopra’s Silsila (“Series of Events,” released 1981) with Bachchan, Rekha's closeness to the actor raised many an eyebrow and sparked rumours of an affair between the two thespians; Bachchan was married to acclaimed actress Jaya Bhaduri at the time. In the noise and heat of the media circus that ensued, particularly strident were the accusations hurled at Rekha of tempting a married man, and it was easy for cinema goers to forget the prodigious talent and almost iconoclastic leanings of the actress herself in her choice of roles. Fortunately, Indian audiences do not tend to hold grudges for long, and Rekha soon emerged in the modern day as a gem of the silver age, a stately beauty who occasionally makes side appearances in modern remakes of classic films that she originally headlined. She represents the intersection of arthouse (or “parallel”) cinema with the mainstream movie scene, and her many accolades, notably the Filmfare Award for Best Actress, won twice, attest to her success in maintaining and reinventing her status over a career spanning nearly five decades.
Though of an older crop of actresses, Rekha continues consistently and impressively to perform in films that challenge the roles of women in Indian society. One of her more recent films, Super Nani (“Super Grandmother,” 2014, dir. Indra Kumar), is based on a Gujarati play. It explores the life of a harried, frumpy grandmother taken for granted by her extended family; she then radically changes her physical appearance in order to assert her worth and centrality to the household. The movie breaks down two identifiable stereotypes: the first, and more obvious, of the deferential, plain grandmother who exhausts herself caring for ungrateful, lazy grown children (the obverse of the demonic mother-in-law often featured in soap operas), and the less apparent but insidious reception of a foreign-raised Indian whose poor Hindi and general ignorance of all things India renders him effete and unworthy of the respect of the practical, hardboiled rough-and-tumble Indian (the obverse of the America-returned prodigal doctor who showers riches on his overjoyed rural cousins). Indeed, it is the Indian-American, played by Sharman Joshi, who offers his maligned, unkempt grandmother the support and sympathy she requires to remold her identity. It is he who sees her for who she is as a person, and he whom she rewards with her affection once her stunning makeover and newfound self-confidence floor her now-contrite children.
It wasn’t always this way. When she started work as a thirteen year old actress in the 1970s, Rekha was far from her celebrated position. "I was called the ‘Ugly Duckling’ of Hindi films because of my dark complexion and South Indian features," she told Calcutta’s Telegraph in a 2008 interview. Not one to give up without a fight, she went abroad to France, took a makeup course, and came home to change what defined a diva. Newly elegant, she could pick more selective roles, and her prestige increased as critics came to recognize her talent. But even as she won more respect and found a niche in the industry, she found a way to speak out for other women, and continues to do so today. What arguably is most impressive about Rekha is the depth of her commitment to feminist cinema, evinced by the consistency and diversity of her roles.
Here are just a few of her projects:
Ghar (“Home,” 1978, dir. Manik Chatterjee): A seminal film that marks a turning point in Rekha’s career. A young newlywed is gang-raped; her caring husband supports her recovery but the psychological trauma of the event soon takes its toll. Hailed by critics for the mature treatment of its subject matter and the bravura performance of its lead.
Umrao Jaan (1981, dir. Muzaffar Ali): Another wonder of Indian cinema, based on an Urdu play; Rekha portrays Umrao, a courtesan with a heart of gold, whose rise and fall reflects the turbulent politics of 19th century Lucknow.
Ijaazat (“Permission,” 1987, dir. Gulzar): Rekha leaves her philandering husband, determining that she would rather have none of him than half.
Khoon Bhari Maang (“A Line of Blood on the Head,” 1988, dir. Rakesh Roshan): A wicked husband frees himself of his doormat of a wife to pursue a younger, prettier object — until his wife, who survives the murder attempt, returns for revenge. Physical transformation is once again inherent: the frumpy Rekha of the film’s first quarter returns fearsome and terrible after plastic surgery. The film is a remake of Return of Eden, an Australian miniseries, and the biblical allusion contained in the Australian title is paralleled here by Hindu imagery. The scene in which she kills her husband’s toady servant takes place with the iconography of the goddess Durga above him, the embodiment of cosmic justice and a body almost beyond gender, though physically female.
Rekha was well-established at this point, and the film launched director Rakesh Roshan’s career. The movie’s fluid femininity is underscored by an argument for social mobility: Rekha’s final revenge scene features her riding a horse, representing her movement into the equestrian elite, and brandishing a whip on her terrified ex-husband to dispense her rough brand of justice.
It would be foolish to assume that it is only the substance of her films that marks the depth of her contribution to Indian cinema. Though many parallels with Rekha’s own career abound in the stories she conveys, indicating how choiceful — and influential — a star she is in selecting scripts, beyond the content of her films it is the charisma of the woman herself that is worth noting. Several periods of decline followed the good times, and she reinvented herself after every downturn, redefining what it means to be an actress in Bollywood from one who ends her career upon marriage. Arguably no other career actress today matches up to Rekha’s trailblazing conduct, either on- or off-screen. Amid the intransigence of the convention of the tawdry item-dancer, we must recognize and welcome more actresses like Rekha, who, rather than selling portrayals of how a woman should be from a man’s perspective, spend time exploring and celebrating how each woman truly is, in all her aspects, like Durga herself.
