This is because the principal official language of India is Hindi succeeded by English. Hindi is the national language of India, and in a country which has 22 official languages it is convenient to have one official Indian language, which is representative of India, and Hindi is that language. Therefore, Hindi feature films become representative of Indian films in any international forum. In the purely regional context of India itself, films made in Hindi are viewed across the nation owing to the commonality of this language. Therefore for the purpose of this paper, Indian cinema refers 1 o commercial films produced in Bollywood, in the national language of India, Hindi. According to Butalia (1984), Indian cinema is the single largest medium of communication with the masses, and close to 12 million people are watching films every week in cinema houses and theaters (p. 108).
Considering that the film industry entertains an enormously large population, what and who this film industry is made of becomes an important question. According to Ganti (2004), Bombay film industry is a male-dominated industry. Women pursuing careers within the industry are primarily either actresses or playback singers.
This trend has changed in recent years with women making their mark as choreographers, costume designers, editors and screenwriters but their numbers are still much smaller in comparison to their male counterparts. Very few women are lyricists or composers. While a handful of them have ventured into direction, they have not achieved the commercial success their male counterparts have (p. 94).
The Essay on Insurance Industry Indian
In the year 1993, Malhotra Committee was formed which initiated reforms in the Indian Insurance Industry. The aim of which was to assess the functionality of the industry. It was incharge of recommending the future path of insurance in India. It even attempted to improve various aspects, making them more appropriate and effective for the Indian market. In the year 1999 The Insurance Regulatory ...
Women are thus very sparse in number behind the scenes of this film industry. In an industry with so few women working within it, it seems fair to assume that the portrayal of women onscreen by male directors and other male rofessionals will have gender biases and constraints and may not necessarily explore women’s world views, perceptions and subjective realities. What roles women play onscreen is more often than not, the male director’s notion of what roles women ought to be playing. This notion is based on the director’s beliefs, attitudes and values, combined with what the director thinks viewers want to see. What viewers want to watch is something that conforms to their beliefs, attitudes and values, which come from the social framework within which they live, which is the same social framework in which directors, live.
There has to be a consistency in the beliefs, attitudes and values of all those 2 involved. This is Milton Rokeach’s beliefs, attitudes and values theory from 1968, in action. Each member of the audience looks for entertainment that conforms to an existing system of beliefs, attitudes, and values which come from a socio-cultural context in society. According to Littlejohn and Foss (2005), it is only when inconsistencies arise in this system of beliefs, attitudes and values, will there be dissatisfaction leading to change. As long as there is no inconsistency, a change in concept or perception is hard to arrive at (p. 0).
This is exactly what happens to Indian film directors and to Indian cinema. It conforms to the existing structure because everyone seems happy with it, and it seems as though there is no dissatisfaction whatsoever in the way women are portrayed and so there is no need for the portrayal to change. Figure 1 – The vicious cycle in Indian commercial Cinema 4. Conform to Preferences & Meet Profit Margin 3. Directors’ Preference 5. Audience happy to watch films that conform to their value system 2. audience preference 1. Socio-Cultural Framework and Power Structure 3
The Essay on Starstruck Film Director
The novel "Starstruck" is written by Kathy Hopkins, and is 216 pages in length. The publisher is Harper Collins Publishing and the date of publication was not listed in the novel. Cathy Hopkins started writing novels in 1987, and she wrote a number of 16 books that year. In the year 2000 she started to write teen novels. My novel "Starstruck" is about a girl named Lia, dealing with her hectic ...
Figure 1 above illustrates the vicious cycle, and going further, the thesis will look at how one of the many contemporary women directors have interrupted this cycle and the consequent impact of two of her films. The Socio-cultural framework, and power structures in operation in society, including religion, the Hindu religious beliefs, and the influence of Hindu epics and myths on popular culture, govern the tastes and preferences of the audience. Both these factors determine the directors’ preference. Directors and producers have to make films that address audience preference and also meet their profit margins.
Audience is quite satisfied to see films that uphold their value system and conform to it, because they live in that social value system. This cycle is hard to end but some revolutionary directors have tried to do so. In this thesis, I will look only at one such director, Canadian-Indian film maker Deepa Mehta and two of her controversial films. Her films Fire 1996 and Water 2005, created a public outrage upon release, because the earlier film portrayed women in roles completely non-conforming to existing patriarchal social norms (as lesbians) and the latter film ortrayed the ills of the Hindu religion and the atrocities committed on Hindu widows in the 1940s, making a politically incorrect point. Both films stirred the anger of religious groups and resulted in riots across North India. Fire 1996 is the story of two women who by chance are daughters-in-law of the same household, in heterosexual marriages. However, their marriage equations with their spouses are unequal and a lack of the love, affection and space they look for in their marriages, drives them towards each other.
They find the comfort and space they always lacked in their heterosexual marital relations, in the love relationship that ensues between them. The whole idea of women being portrayed as making this choice angered political parties, religious groups and religious fanatics, who went about threatening to kill the director, smashing and 4 destroying the theaters and cinema houses that dared to screen the film. The film was banned from screening in the city of Mumbai, the center of the Bollywood film industry, and the entire state of Maharashtra where Mumbai is located.
Water 2006, made by the same director, was thrown out of India even before it could be shot on location in 1Varanasi, a small town in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Deepa Mehta’s set was destroyed and the film’s cast and crew were driven out of the shooting locations by state religious factions. Water is a period film set in the 1940’s in the pre-independence era when Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement was the biggest social phenomenon in British colonial India. During this period widow remarriage was not common. Widows were considered unlucky and a curse on society.
The Essay on The Status Of Women In India
India is a large country that makes up most of South Asia, and has been inhabited by settlers for many millennia, even before Aryan tribes from the northwest infiltrated the Indian subcontinent around 1500 B.C. . Throughout this enormous time period, many changes have occurred in their way of life, with the roots of discrimination against women lie in the religious and cultural practices of India ...
They were sent from the homes of their in-laws and parents to special widow homes. The treatment of one such child widow who is sent to a widow house in the small town of Varanasi on the banks of the River Ganges is the essence of the story. This child widow learns the hardships of widowhood as she observes another widow in her early twenties who is also confined here. Using the “holy” aspects of religion like the town of Varanasi and the River Ganges, to bring out the negative aspects of the religion was unacceptable to society, especially to politically affiliated religious groups who were able to mobilize the masses against this film.
Riots broke out in protest against the screening of this film. Deepa Mehta, who was already a controversial figure in India after Fire in 1996, was given police protection when she came to India to film Water. Finally, she could not film there and had to go to Srilanka to make the film. Why did these two films wreak such havoc? Is it the in-built patriarchal 1 Varanasi is the holy town of the Hindu religion and the River Ganges is its holy river. It is popularly believed that bathing in the River Ganga/Ganges can wash away all human sin and purify human beings to enter heaven. 5 ropaganda that thrives in Indian society or is it religious and political propaganda? These questions will be addressed in detail later. Also, given that this decade has seen many changes in Indian women’s roles in society, it is interesting to explore how much has changed in a male dominated film industry. During a telephone interview student of Sociology in Chennai, India, Smriti Nandakumar, states, I did my dissertation on women who pursue unconventional careers. In the process I interviewed women in the police department, women pilots, women lyricists, women assistant directors and many others who are in uncommon careers.
The Essay on The Film "Woman In Black"
Explore the ways in which Hill creates sympathy for Arthur as the hero of the Woman in Black Key to the success of TWiB is Hill’s expertise in encouraging the reader to identify with the main character, Arthur Kipps. She achieves this by stimulating feelings of sympathy towards Arthur. Some of the ways in which she does this are by using a variety of different methods such as a range of ...
I found it interesting and inspiring to note that a number of them actually had it hard on their way up and really had to challenge the pre- existing stereotypes inbuilt in society. It seemed to have been rough for them, but they still seem to have managed to reach the top and achieve their ambitions. They are all respected in their families and in society for what they have done. (personal communication, Jan 8, 2011) During the last decade, women in India have been fighting a bill for 33% seat reservation in parliament for women. Women in politics and other fields elieve that this bill will enable more women to come to the forefront and represent the feminine population with greater empathy and sensibility, especially pertaining to women’s issues. At a point and time with such political happenings, the representation of women in Indian cinema, is a significant issue. At a time when women seem to have broken free from the Indian home and family set-up into the world, and are ready to challenge stereotypes, is this happening in the Indian film industry and the industry’s portrayal of women in films? Are Indian films reflecting this changing social trend?
These are questions worthy of exploring. 6 Since a large population watches Bollywood films, Bollywood cinema is a powerful mass medium of communication in India, and cinematic portrayals definitely are highly impressionistic, as this paper will later validate. What does this highly impressionistic medium communicate to the masses through the many stories that films tell? How does it portray women and what sort of messages does it send to the mass audience? The phrase “portrayal of women” could refer to both women pursuing film careers offscreen and actresses onscreen.
The study focuses only on the onscreen roles of lead actresses. A reference to off-screen roles has been made above only to mention the context in which the lead actresses are working in the industry. 7 Chapter 2: Pilot Study – Quantitative Methodology Defining Stereotypes Although this paper is primarily a qualitative analysis of the roles given to women in Indian cinema, a quantitative pilot study was undertaken to understand the operational definitions of the term and to check if the operational definitions conformed to the portrayal of women in commercial Indian cinema.
The Term Paper on Status of Women in Indian Society
The third factor in the revival of women's position was the influence of Mahatma Gandhi who induced women to participate in the Freedom Movement. As a result of this retrieval of freedom, women in Indian have distinguished themselves as teachers, nurses, air-hostesses, booking clerks, receptionists, and doctors. They are also participating in politics and administration. But in spite of this ...
The research question of this quantitative pilot study is – Were lead actresses portrayed in stereotypical roles in highest grossing blockbuster Indian films from 21960-2009? The question that will follow it for the purpose of this thesis is: In the last 64 years how have female characters been treated onscreen and how much of the treatment has changed today? Method Content analysis of the highest grossing all time blockbuster hit film of each decade, based on their box office earnings as recorded by boxofficeindia. com.
In this website films are classified as (i) All time Blockbuster Hit, (ii) Blockbuster Hit, (iii) Super Hit, (iv) Hit, (v) Above Average and (vi) Average. In this thesis only the first three categories are considered. Table 1 below shows the gross adjusted earnings, by decade for films in categories one and three. It shows the highest figures for category one, and the lowest figures for films in category three, indicating the range between the highest and the lowest possible earnings for a film to belong to the blockbuster league. The figures for category two films are understood to be anywhere in between this range.
