Bollywood Women

There are film industries all over the world, but none have come close to producing as many films as Bollywood of Mumbai, India. Unofficially dubbed “dream factory” by most in and out of the bollywood industry, it is an industry that produces more than 900 feature films during any given year. Most all of these films come down to only a handful of different plots, with the main theme involving a young man and woman. There has to always be some moral values of family and traditions to be included into these plots, and many times, a woman being saved. It is the women of Bollywood that I have chosen for my main focus of this paper.

Bollywood is an industry focused upon the main leading men like Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan. These men and a handful of well known others make it big to almost literally monopolize the Bollywood movie industry. They are the “Stars” of Bollywood. The women of Bollywood have had it much harder for succeeding in making it big to carry their fame through the years of a long-term career. There is always so much worry of growing older and being pushed out by the younger fresher ones that are constantly being brought into the Bollywood industry and the fact of Bollywood still being a male dominated industry.

In the book “May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons”, by Elisabeth Bumiller, three of Bollywood’s leading women open up to reveal their own personal Bollywood experiences, and since there is no such thing as a private personal life when in the spot light of any kind, especially in Bollywood, we get it all. Besides, in Bollywood “getting it all” on the stars is almost more important than their movie flops and successes. This seems to be especially true in Mumbai and in the Bollywood industry.

During the late 80’s and early 90’s, three of the most popular actresses in Bollywood were Rekha, Dimple, and Sredevi. But there are also a handful of others who would dance in and out of the starlight when they were on a role in Bollywood successes. Smita Patil is one of these successful actresses. In an interview with Elizabeth Bumiller, Smita speaks of how hard it truly is to be an actress in Bollywood, professionally and personally. “Women who work in this industry have no time for any kind of normal life”, she said. “You’re working ten or twelve hours a day with different men all the time. “You’re constantly demanded to emote, and it tends to become a very high-strung existence emotionally, which leads into your personal involvements. The line is very thin”.

Although Smita was a college educated woman who was aware of worldly issues and a feminist mind set, she was well known for the typical rape scenes and demeaning roles often written into many of the Hindi films. To be an actress within the Hindi film industry, the actress was given little choice but to accept these types of roles unless they chose to make less money and less fame playing in roles for the upper class art films. In commercial Hindi films, there are certain audience expectations, and one is of the man being the one who needs to save the woman from some sort of terrible event. There must be a hero and a victim, and the abuse of a woman gives a good dramatic reason for the man to come along and be the woman’s rescuer. This is quite often the excuse looked for to also throw in a good bloody beating of the bad guy or guys trying to hurt the weak woman.

While Hindi films are infamous for their well known weak and demure roles for the women actresses, they are also just as popular in portraying the woman into the passive sex object. As the woman dances around in the expected sultry overtone, the man gazes at her in an over exaggerated glare. Almost always in a semi trance, he does not hide his desires from all of those who are also watching with a collective approval upon their smiling faces. This dancing young goddess may be dancing around in revealing clothes in the beginning, but three hours later you almost always can count on her being fully dressed in a traditional sari happily playing the role of the demure wife to the man who had been almost drooling over her original seductiveness.

There have been a few bollywood films with a heroine instead of a hero. In “Frames of mind: Reflections of Indian Cinema”, Maithli Rao describes a heroine role played by Dimple Kapadia in the film “Zakhmee Aurat”. Dimple plays the role of a woman police officer who is dedicated to capturing men who rape, and then is subjected to rape herself. In the end, her and the other rape victims lure the rapists to a doctor who castrates them.