'Bad' Women of Bombay Films : Studies in Desire and Anxiety

"This book presents a feminist mapping of the articulation and suppression of female desire in Hindi films, which comprise one of modern India's most popular cultural narratives. It explores the lineament of evil and the corresponding closure of chastisement or domesticity that appear as necessary conditions for the representation of subversive female desire. The term 'bad' is used heuristically, and not as a moral or essential category, to examine some of the iconic disruptive women of Hindi cinema and to uncover the nexus between patriarchy and other hierarchies, such as class, caste and religion in these representations. The twenty-one essays examine the politics of female desire/s from the 1930s to the present day - both through in-depth analyses of single films and by tracing the typologies in multiple films. The essays are divided into five sections indicating the various gendered desires and rebellions that patriarchal society seeks to police, silence and domesticate."-- Provided by publisher Front Matter ....Pages i-xx Introduction: Breaking Bad (Saswati Sengupta, Shampa Roy, Sharmila Purkayastha)....Pages 1-24 Front Matter ....Pages 25-25 Desire, Deviancy and Defiance in Bombay Cinema (1930s–1950s) (Ira Bhaskar)....Pages 27-44 “haan, haan mein alaida hoon!” (Yes, Yes I Am Different!): The Disorderly Bibi in Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam (1962) (Shampa Roy, Saswati Sengupta)....Pages 45-62 The Goddess of Mean Things: The Mother-in-Law in Hindi Films (Mrinal Pande)....Pages 63-71 “ek admi tha, usne shadi karli...” (There Was a Man, Who Got Married...): Female Agency and Domestication in Omkara (2006) (Anjali Yadav, Anusha Choudhary, Divya Gupta, Ifsha Zehra, Neha Jaji Varghese, Prachi Khari et al.)....Pages 73-90 Front Matter ....Pages 91-91 The Politics of Sanitization/Sanskritization: The Court Dancers and Classical Pasts (Rajnartaki, 1941; Chitralekha, 1964; Amrapali, 1966) (Deepika Tandon)....Pages 93-111 Goddess, Saint and Journeying Soul: Courtesans and Religion in Bombay Cinema (1939–2015) (Ruth Vanita)....Pages 113-130 The Prison-House of Performance: The Figure of the Dancing Girl in Bombay Films of the 1960s (Sameera Mehta)....Pages 131-147 Guns, Gangsters, and “gandagi”: The Moll in Hindi Cinema (Neha Yadav)....Pages 149-166 Sex Workers in Hindi Cinema: Imagos and Realities (Rakesh Shukla)....Pages 167-184 Front Matter ....Pages 185-185 The Caged Woman: Female Guilt, Desire and Transgression in Bandini (1963) (Smita Banerjee)....Pages 187-201 “itni bhhi mahaan main nahi hoon, raja!” (I’m not that Great, O King): The Angry Young Woman of the 1970s (Menka Ahlawat)....Pages 203-221 Outcast[e]/Outlawed: The Bandit Queen (1996) (Neha Dixit)....Pages 223-240 The Female “Atankvadi”: Gender, Militancy and the Politics of Representation in the Late 1990s (Isha Purkayastha)....Pages 241-257 Honoured Mother and ‘Honour’ Killing: Ammaji in NH10 (2015) (Nonica Datta)....Pages 259-274 Front Matter ....Pages 275-275 Of Pallus and Pants: Fabricating the New Woman of the New Nation in Andaz (1949), Mr. and Mrs. 55 (1955), Shri 420 (1955) (Nupur Mittal)....Pages 277-295 Consumer Pleasures and Hindi Cinema’s En-gendered Distribution of Moral Capital in Hum Aapke Hain Koun (1994) and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011) (Megha Anwer)....Pages 297-312 Twenty-First-Century Heroines: Modernity in Cocktail (2012), Queen (2014) and Highway (2014) (Puja Sen)....Pages 313-330 Curiosity, Consent and Desire in Masaan (2015), Pink (2016), Lipstick Under My Burkha (2016) and Veere Di Wedding (2018) (Abhija Ghosh)....Pages 331-343 Front Matter ....Pages 345-345 “naye naam nit naye roop dhar” (Don New Names and New Forms Daily): The Figure of the Actress in Popular Hindi Cinema (Shikha Kothiyal)....Pages 347-364 Playing Anaarkali (2017): Gender, Morality and Erotica (An Interview with Swara Bhasker)....Pages 365-373 Back Matter ....Pages 375-381