Images of Women: The Case of Bollywood Film
The film Mother India (1957), directed by Mehboob Khan, stars Nargis, one of the most famous actors in India, in the title role. Her role embraces complex, sometimes contradictory images and identities of Indian women. You will also see an excerpt from the film, Pyaasa, directed by Guru Dutt, in which he sings about the degradation of women in prostitution despite the new, independent India. You will have excerpts that focus on the images and representations of women in these films. The words to the famous Pyaasa song that Dutt sings are also here for you to read. On Mother India, you will have information on Nargis, the film's star. In films everywhere, the star and the character they play in the film are often meshed for viewers. Nargis's willingness to appear in unglamorous ways is important, as is her departure from film when she married. Nargis's character, her well-known affairs with director Raj Kapoor, her later marriage, and her political statements were all part of Bollywood expectations and contradictions for actresses and actors alike.
Guru Dutt (1925-64), the director of the film Pyaasa, was very sympathetic to the treatment of women in India. Before him, the director Satyajit Ray (1921-92), acknowledged as one of the greatest directors in the world (but not a Bollywood director; he was influenced by Italian neo-realist films of the 40s and 50s), was also aware of the need to reform the treatment of women. A famous actress, Madhabi Mukherjee, was recruited by Ray to portray the role of Arati in his 1963 film, Mahanagar (The Big City). Recalling her meeting with Ray, Mukherjee wrote:
"He read me the entire story, Mahanagar. I was stunned. This was the first woman-centered screenplay I had encountered. I was not going to play second fiddle to the main male character as in all plays and films I had acted in or was familiar with."
In Mahanagar, Mukherjee played Arati, who takes a job as a saleswoman due to her family's financial constraints. The family is horrified at the thought of a working woman, but for Arati, going door to door selling knitting machines opens up a whole new world and new friends and acquaintances, including an Anglo-Indian friend, Edith. Earning money also raises Arati's status in the family, especially when her husband loses his job.
Below you will see an excerpt from the film, Pyaasa (1957), directed by Guru Dutt, in which he sings about the degradation of women in prostitution despite the new, independent India (see the translated lyrics below). You can see the film on YouTube or purchase it from Amazon. Here you can see excerpts that focus on the images and representations of women in these films. The words to the famous Pyaasa song that Guru Dutt sings are also here for you to read. In this excerpted scene, a prostitute is forced to dance while her baby cries and men leer at her. Dutt is empathetic and cries over her fate. He then wanders through the red-light district and sings of how the new India still fails its poor and downtrodden, and he asks how India can be proud of itself when it treats these people so badly.
The title of the film Mother India (1957), directed by Mehboob Khan (1907-64), was chosen to counter American author Katherine Mayo's 1927 book Mother India, which vilified Indian culture. Allusions to Hindu mythology are abundant in the film. Its lead character is named Radha. Radha is a popular Hindu goddess. She is a milkmaid and the consort of Krishna, an avatar of the god Vishnu. Radha is sometimes considered an avatar of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth. In the film, Radha may represent an idealized Hindu woman with high moral values, embodying the ideal, self-sacrificing mother. Mother India, like Pyaasa, represents India as a nation in the aftermath of independence (1947) and expresses ideas of nationalism and nation-building. Some scholars see Radha as the symbol of female empowerment; others see her as a female stereotype. The goddess Radha is considered a metaphor for soul, whose longing for Krishna is a longing for the divine. In the film, the character Radha longs for the husband who abandoned the family after an incapacitating injury.
The film stars Nargis (born Fatima Rashid; 1929-81), one of the most famous actors in India, in the title role. Her role embraces complex, sometimes contradictory images and identities of Indian women. The film represents the pinnacle of Nargis's career and won her the Best Actress award at the prestigious Karlovy Vary festival. It is a well-known story that while shooting the film, Nargis was trapped amidst lit haystacks. As the flames spread, Sunil Dutt, who played her rebellious son Birju in the film, ran through the fire and rescued her. He proposed to her, and Nargis married him and quit films after marriage. She did make a comeback playing a woman with a split personality in Raat Aur Din (1967) and won the National Award for this role.
In films everywhere, the star and the character he or she plays in the film are often meshed for viewers. Beautiful Nargis's willingness to appear in unglamorous ways—covered with mud in Mother India—is important, as is her departure from film when she married (and stayed married, being the long-suffering wife during her husband's many affairs with other actresses). Nargis's life was complex and inconsistent: her well-known affairs with director Raj Kapoor (1924-88), her later marriage to Sunil Dutt, her political life as Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's friend (who gave her a seat in the Indian House of Lords in 1980, from where she denounced films by Satyajit Ray because they showed poverty in India, despite the fact that Nargis was in several 1950s Raj Kapoor films about urban poverty.) These roles were all part of Bollywood expectations and contradictions for actresses and actors alike.
In this first excerpted scene, the film shows the hard physical labor Radha and her children must endure to survive. This song is fatalistic and is about how they accept suffering and drink the poison of life, if that's all they get.
In this scene, we see the aftermath of a previous scene in which the greedy landlord has tried to feed her starving children and she refuses his offer. But her son Birju (whose name is a version of Krishna) faints, and so she decides to go to the landlord and ask for help. He adores her and promises her gold and a rich life if she will marry him, but she refuses his offer. She then picks up the altarpiece of Lakshmi (the goddess Radha is an avatar of Lakshmi), the goddess of wealth and fortune, whom the landlord worships, and speaks out against the goddess. The landlord grabs her, but she fights back and beats him and leaves. She is physically powerful, like a goddess, but subject to harsh circumstances. Is this landlord denigrated because he is small and unattractive? He is greedy in other parts of the film, but his physical appearance is perhaps calculated to induce Mother India's and our disgust. This is not a good reason to condemn him, though his greed is (he charges high interest on loans, and her family is deeply in his debt due to the expenses of her wedding many years before).
In this scene that follows the previous one, she makes a soup for her starving children. The neighbors urge her to leave with the other farmers, but she refuses to leave, in case her husband, who left when he lost the use of his arm, returns. This scene then surveys her life from marriage to widowhood and struggle and eventual success, as farmers decide to remain in the village and enjoy a good harvest, for which she is credited. In the end, everyone joins together to form a human map of India that includes Pakistan, once the northwest province of India for millennia, but which became a separate country in 1947 during a horrendous Partition in which millions died. But here in this scene, India and Pakistan are rejoined in the film's notion of a united India, a utopian vision of the nation.
Mother India can be purchased or rented from retailers such as Vudu.com.
Pyaasa can be purchased or rented from retailers such as Amazon.com.
