Gender and Hindi Cinema: Part Two
India attained independence in 1947 and became a republic in 1950. These transitions however, were not without their problems. With independence came the horrors of Partition, followed by uprisings in various states like Andhra, Tamil Nadu which questioned the legitimacy of India as one nation. This resulted in, what I call, the second instance of nationalism — the project of nation building, which was initiated by the Indian state. In this part, I will focus on the initial decades of Independent India and how Hindi cinema placed gender at the center while defining the mantle of nationhood through its celluloid shoulders.
Nation in the Time of Cinema
Hindi cinema became the site of navigating the nationhood project while focusing on modernity. Vasudevan (2000), while analysing the early films of the 1950s, argues that early films of this decade were ‘social films’. Social film means the films which addressed the issues of modern life. By focusing on the narrative structure of these films, he argues that the films engaged with “mythic articulations of woman, whether by herself or in relation to a man” (ibid., p.105). For example, while analysing a specific scene in the film Andaz (1949), undertaking a frame by frame analysis, he argued that the film, “uses its woman character to set limits to image of modernity. Through her, the narrative negotiates a notion of ‘Indian’ social codes and a larger, national identity for the spectator of the film” (ibid., p.109). On the other hand, while focusing on films like Baazi (1951), Awara (1951), Aar Par (1954), he argues that the social identity of the male hero is destabilised as the hero navigates the space of virtue and tradition to the space of villainy and modernity. The streets in these films signify the chaotic modern life, and the hero’s tumultuous journey signified the rocky beginnings of the Indian nation.
Similarly, Chakravarty (1996) has argued that a particular version of realism was used as a strategy of representation during the 1950s films, through which ambivalent attitudes to social change were diffused along with the national identity. Nationhood, he argues, was assimilated with a highly contextual view of realism in these films. By using Jameson’s concept of figurability[i], he argues that films of this period made the nation figurable through the films. The cinema of this time captured the moral ambivalence of the nation, as it was going through a transition.
The films captured the optimism of technological advancement in contrast to the cultural scepticism of the modern city. The village life was seen as the ideal life, which was a moral space of tradition, while the city represented the amoral space where obsession with materialistic gains often ended up corrupting the individual. This code, he argues often ended up creating “stereotypes of the poor but happy peasant, the hard working and honest labourer, the idealistic schoolteacher, the philanthropic doctor” (ibid., p.99). Such figures got corrupted coming in the contact with the city, where the individual often migrated for higher wages. He argues that films like Hum Log (1951), Footpath (1953), Andhian (1952), Shri 420 (1955), Pyaasa (1957) are marked by their anxiety and pessimism of this overall transition.
What is fascinating to note, which Chakravarty seems to miss out, is that it’s the male hero that often makes this transition or migrates to the city in search or the lure of higher wages and gets corrupted. The masculine adventure, if I may, fits well into the discourse of inner-outer dichotomy. The females are a stronger lot when compared to the male characters in these films but their strength lies in strength of tradition. The tradition-modern framework underscores themes of gender, nation, spatial and class mobility in the context of these films.
Imper-so-nation!
By the end of the 1950s however, a new cinematic code emerged in the Hindi film industry. The moral ambivalence of early years had given way to the promise of the new nation and the film Mother India (1957) took this to mythic proportions. Chakravarty (1996) has argued that the film’s representation of women’s suffering, sacrifice of her own son for the sake of the community (and the nation) is the stuff of myths. In the changing times of nation, to celebrate the woman’s role as a wife and a mother was to canonise the role of the woman in the Indian society.
In that respect, the film’s view is a patriarchal view of the women’s position in the Indian society as it glorifies her role of a sacrificial woman, who is not only willing to sacrifice herself for the community but also her son. Virdi (2003) in this respect, has a different take and argues, that despite making the women becoming the metonym for the nation, the film offers a spectacular twist as the mother is seen not only as a sacrificing mother but also a phallic annihilator. Chatterjee (2008), in a similar vein, has argued that Radha (Nargis) not only stands in for the ideal mother but for the future of the nation. The film gives a melodramatic account of an ideal woman, who is at once an ideal wife to her husband, an ideal mother to their sons and an ideal sister to other women.
The males in this film, again fall into the category of “weak men”. First, the husband of Radha is physically amputated while working in the fields, leaving greater responsibility to the mother figure signifying a metaphorical castration. The other weak man is Birju (Sunil Dutt), her son who gets punished for his transgressions against the community. However, the image of the male hero has had different interpretations as well during this period. Nandy (1981), for example has noted that Hindi film heroes often remained surname less, region less, casteless and ethnically non-identifiable signifying the pan-Indian identity of the male hero.
Chakravarty (1996) has argued that the male hero, despite the ambivalence, represented the nation as the “body of the hero becomes a map on which the nation appears to coexist in harmony” (p. 204). By the 60s, this symbolic representation becomes tangible as films like Upkar (1967) appeared, where the male protagonist Bharat (Manoj Kumar) signified the bodily manifestation of the nation. Virdi (2003) has argued that the male hero was projected as the saviour of the nation. The heroic success was equated to upholding the law of the land. The antagonists in the film are seen as enemies of the nation, corrupting the very social fabric of the Indian society. But what Virdi adds to this dimension is that the hero not only avenges the nation but also the sins against the mother. The mother and the nation in such films are always in peril, and it is the hero who comes to avenge them. She argues that the hero of the Hindi films “represents an idealised longing for a nationalist spirit…a crusader for the nation and optimistic about its future” (ibid., p. 92).
Madonna-Vamp Dichotomy
While the male hero had become stronger in terms of screen presence, the representation of females became binary. A binary was established by the late 60s, which Butalia (1984) has called the good woman-bad woman binary. The good women were self-sacrificing mothers, dutiful daughters, loyal wives, all of whom were traditional in outlook, and on the other hand the ‘bad woman; was seen as modern, often single, sexually expressive, westernised, often smoking or drinking.
Virdi (2003), expanding on this dichotomy argues that films like Purab aur Paschim (1970), brought this divide into a sharper focus. The female protagonist Preeti (Saira Banu) is shown as the Indian woman who has strayed away from the Indian way. Being influenced by the western lifestyle, she becomes a decadent westerner, indulging in smoking weed and drinking. It takes an Indian man to change her and bring her back to right ways. This signifies a change in the representation of gender relations in the films. Earlier, the female characters in most films were seen as traditional and the male characters often got corrupted by the modern or the western ways of life, but later the cinematic code took a shift. Similar code can be seen at work in the film Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1971), where Prashant (Dev Anand) goes out to Nepal to find his lost sister, Jasbir (Zeenat Aman) who has lost her way and lived the life of a hippie. She even changes her name from Jasbir to Janice. But in this film, it is shown that she had become too western and could not be ‘saved’ and commits suicide by the end.
One of the casualties of such binary was that certain actors ended up being a typecast in Hindi films. Helen remains one of the prime examples of such typecasting as she played the role of a femme-fatale in over 700 films (Moorti, 2003). Mazumdar (2007) has argued that the vamp occupied a hypersexualised space in Hindi cinema till the 1980s and despite all the moral discourses she remained popular. The vamp was a “visible intrusion of the West into the cinematic space of Indian films, signifying an unrestrained sexuality and license, given to vices unknown to Indian women.
The vamp was the outsider, distinct from the iconic woman of the nation. While the heroine was the site of virtue and “Indianness,” the vamp’s body suggested excess, out-of-control desire, and vices induced by “Western” license.” (ibid., p.85–86). Mazumdar has argued the figure of the vamp is in relation to the dreadful decadence and crisis of the city. The city is seen as a space of moral depravity and the vamp was usually restricted to spaces like the nightclubs, bars and casinos. Through this dichotomy, the purity/spirituality of the nation is mediated through the image of the heroine, and her body becomes the site of contestation in terms of value systems. Moorti (2013), however, has argued that despite being the antithesis of the Indian femininity, the character of vamp is more at par with the hero. She has more agency than other female characters in the films. She navigates the public space and is far more sexually expressive. But more often than not most of these characters end up being dead in the films.
The idea of spatial mobility is related to gender roles in films, which is clearly visible from the above arguments. What is interesting to note is the vulnerability of the feminine when it comes to negotiating different spaces. The hero on the other hand negotiates different social-cultural spaces without affecting his identity. The boundary between the internal and external are blurred. In effect, it underscores the capability of the masculine to traverse these spaces and remain unhinged. Furthermore, he ends up being the carrier of tradition in alien spaces (Love in Tokyo, 1966; Sangam, 1964; An Evening in Paris, 1967) and often the rescuer of the lost female protagonist from the western influences (Purab aur Paschim, 1970; Hare Rama Hare Krishna, 1971). The relationship of gender with modernity and nationhood comes out in the early decades of post-independent Hindi cinema. While the masculine representation is seen frail and confounded in front of modernity, the feminine is not only able to navigate but also help the male figure in the films. However, as the nation moved, it’s cinema thrusted back to the centre the strong masculine figure with the nation in his heart and the feminine figure got lost in the transition.
[i] To be figurable is for something to be accessible to our imaginations, to become representable in tangible form. For further reading see: Jameson, 1977
