Female body, femininity and authority in Bollywood:

The "new" woman in Dangal and Queen

Ahad, Waseem; Akgül, Selma Koç

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ABSTRACT (ENGLISH)
Bollywood's departure from its earlier constructions of women as sex objects, victims of male violence, dependent,
obedient and peripheral, is partly due to global/transnational cultural and economic flows that have influence in
Indian society. What needs to be charted out is how patriarchal anxieties continue to emerge in recent Bollywood
movies where women otherwise appear to assume assertive screen presence and play dominant roles. This study
seeks to disentangle notions of "national" and "local," in particular, because the former does not explain India's
family or local community settings that exercise substantial control over women. Through an analysis of two films,
Dangai (2016) and Queen (2014), this study shows how present-day Bollywood appropriates opposing ideals of
Hinduism and liberal ideology; therefore, the stories remain rooted in contemporary social discourse. It will be seen
that the somewhat masculine woman in Dangai, who is divested of erotic and reproductive attributes, bears the
double-burden of subordination by a family patriarch and becoming a national symbol. Through its scrutiny of
Queen, the study also demonstrates how a new Indian femininity, "assertive" and "confident," is mediated by the
dominant male cultural gaze. The films offer useful models for comparison of varying forms of femininities.

FULL TEXT
Headnote
ABSTRACT
Bollywood's departure from its earlier constructions of women as sex objects, victims of male violence, dependent,
obedient and peripheral, is partly due to global/transnational cultural and economic flows that have influence in
Indian society. What needs to be charted out is how patriarchal anxieties continue to emerge in recent Bollywood
movies where women otherwise appear to assume assertive screen presence and play dominant roles. This study
seeks to disentangle notions of "national" and "local," in particular, because the former does not explain India's
family or local community settings that exercise substantial control over women. Through an analysis of two films,
Dangai (2016) and Queen (2014), this study shows how present-day Bollywood appropriates opposing ideals of
Hinduism and liberal ideology; therefore, the stories remain rooted in contemporary social discourse. It will be seen
that the somewhat masculine woman in Dangai, who is divested of erotic and reproductive attributes, bears the
double-burden of subordination by a family patriarch and becoming a national symbol. Through its scrutiny of
Queen, the study also demonstrates how a new Indian femininity, "assertive" and "confident," is mediated by the
dominant male cultural gaze. The films offer useful models for comparison of varying forms of femininities.
KEYWORDS Bollywood; female sexuality; Hinduism; nation; patriarchy
Introduction
Bollywood's representation of women has historically been a point of contention among scholars. This issue has
been examined in multiple ways and almost all studies bring out dismal accounts of women's treatment in India's
popular Hindi cinema. The general criticism is directed towards the dominance of the male gaze and marginalization
of women, whose gendered identities have remained integral to the visual and narrative discourse of movies. As a
result, women have been stereotypically placed in peripheral roles, always appearing in relation to or dependent on
male characters as obedient or devoted wives, bedridden or caring mothers and gorgeous girlfriends (Ganti, 2004,
p. 190; Moini, 2011, p. 1455). Ganti (2012) and Deshpande (2007) underline the cultural, ideological and economic

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underpinnings of Bollywood films that stress the desire of the Indian middle-class to glorify patriarchy, the joint family
system of the Hindus and the chastity of women. Bollywood's experiment with portraying same-sex relationship
between two men goes a step further, "erasing" woman altogether (Srinivasan, 2011, p. 73). Director Tarun
Mansukhani's film Dostana (Producer, H.Y. Johar &K. Johar, 2008) is therefore seen as reminiscent of the buddy
films of 1980s that marginalized women through their portrayal of hyper masculinity and male-to-male friendship
(Srinivasan, 2011).
In their treatment of women's bodies and sexuality, Bollywood films have not only kept them at the margins of their
narratives and screens-offering them subordinate and less significant roles, while male characters dominate -but, as
Derné (1999) argues, male force, violence and harassment against women is "legitimatized" by equating it with love
and courting, and the "mistreatment" of female is "eroticized" (pp. 560-563). This author also shows a significant
correlation between the deteriorating situation of women in Indian society and their mistreatment in Bollywood
movies (p. 566). Further, in their analysis of popular box-office hits of the 1990s, Ramasubramanian and Oliver
(2003) highlight male sexual violence against women and how even the male hero's moderate violence is portrayed
as "fun" (p. 333). Similarly, an ethnographic study by Derné and Jadwin (2000) reveals the active objectification of
women's bodies by viewers who identify with the male hero or men surrounding the dancing woman on-screen (p.
250).1 Gupta (2010) highlights how some superhit Bollywood movies, in order to create humor, normalize Hindi and
English words like rape and balatkaar, an assertion that takes female sexuality forgranted as an object for assualt.
Owing to the growing public discourse on women in Indian society, the last decade or so has seen a surge in
women-centric Bollywood movies. Women's gender and sexuality comprise the subject matter of the films, as seen
in Dil Bole Hadippa (Producer, A. Chopra, 2009), Dangai (Producer, A. Khan, K. Rao &S.R. Kapur, 2016), Dirty
Picture (Producer, E. Kapoor &S. Kapoor, 2011), English Vinglish (Producer, S. Lulla, R. Balki, R. Jhunjhunwala &R.
K. Damani, 2012), Kahaani (Producer, S. Ghosh &K.K. Gada, 2012), Lipstick Under My Burkha (Producer, P. Jha
&J.B. Angels, 2016), Mary Kom (Producer, S. L. Bhansali, A. Andhare &S. Ssingh, 2014), Queen (Producer, V. 18
M. Pictures, A. Kashyap, V. Motwane &M. Mantena, 2014), Sultan (Producer, A. Chopra, 2016). Alternatively,
women are portrayed in roles that make indirect references to their sexuality or gender, as in Band, Baaja, Baaraat
(Producer, A. Chopra, 2010), Tanu Weds Manu (Producer, V. Bachan &S. R. Singh, 2011) and Tanu Weds Manu:
Returns (K. Lulla &A. L. Rai, 2015).
However, as discussed by Gopalan (1997), some films with women in dominant roles that have a "strong presence
on screen," did appear earlier in the 1980s, as well such as Insaaf Ka Tarazu (Producer, B.R. Chopra, M. Chopra
&R. Chopra, 1980), Pratighaat (Producer, R. Rao, 1987) and Zakhmi Aurat (Producer, A. Punjabi, 1988) (p. 44).
Apart from the fact that the narratives of these three films were predicated on rapes of the female protagonists,
Gopalan (1997) draws our attention to how women in these appeared as dual victims of sexual violence and failure
of the justice system (p. 44). Writing about the exploitation of state regulation by the Indian film Industry "for
sadomasochistic pleasure," Gopalan (1997) acutely points out:
The female body is always the object in focus, and is repeatedly subject to a withdrawing camera that banks on an
intimate relationship between the psychic law ruling taboos and the State overseeing censorship. The rape scenes
in the avenging woman genre are not far from this formulation, where the narrative informs us that the horror of rape
is in part motivated by the absence of the State, but attention to cinematic materiality suggests that the State, as
censorship authority, is very much present as one of the crucial negotiating sites. Until the arrival of the revenge plot
in these movies, rape scenes appear to be mere substitutes for sex, relentlessly eroticizing violence. (p. 50-51)
In this backdrop, the current surge becomes even more significant as the films cover a range or mix of themes such
as sports, crime, romance, and professional life. While the depiction of sexual or physical violence has come down
remarkably and women are portrayed in strong roles, confident about their sexuality and bodies, these continue to
be used for inscribing cultural values and meanings that reflect patriarchal anxieties. The marginalization and
objectification of female sexuality by Bollywood finds strong resonance in traditional Hindu mythology, where women
represent two distinct characteristics embodied by Menaka and Sita. The former represents dangerously erotic and
sexual powers and can lead men to transgression, while the latter is chaste, obedient and domestic who submits her

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will to men (Nijhawan, 2009). Female is presented both as resourceful and powerful, while the male is assigned the
task of cultivating and shaping that power and resource (Wadley, 1977). Such myths have been significant in the
nationalist imagination of the ideal Indian woman and Bollywood's characterization of women too has generally been
informed by this representation (Dwyer &Patel, 2002; Hellman, 2007; Nijhawan, 2009). The two films Dangal (or
Wrestling, 2016) and Queen (2014) illustrate such ideals, as seen in this study.
Bollywood has historically reiterated conservative cultural and ideological values regarding women's sexuality, while
negotiating exigencies of social and politico-economic changes. As a result, the "new" woman in Bollywood has
come to be defined and redefined in the past few decades. Chatterjee's (2016) analysis situates woman in global-
local, modern-traditional or transnational-national frames to highlight Bollywood's response to, and reflection on
social changes in post-colonial India. These, she argues, are marked by "development and modernization that
embrace crossing borders, seeking opportunities and moving beyond restrictions of local and national" (2016, p.
1190). In her analysis of the protagonist of English Vinglish who seeks her own empowerment through the learning
of English, Chatterjee (2016) argues,
Moving beyond a "limited" conception of nationalisms and nationhood, Bollywoodization signals trade and cultural
linkages that does not restrict constructions of gender to a delimited territory. Instead, it moves, with the mobility and
agility of populations, and imaginations, across differences. This movement, however, remains rooted in a certain
symbolism despite its world travels. Sashi is an Indian woman and is portrayed persistently as first and foremost
Indian (p. 1190).
Similarly, Nijhawan (2009) in her analysis of Bollywood item songs, what she calls "dance spaces" (p. 100),
identifies a blurring of the character attributes of vamps and chaste women, and disentangles dichotomies among
"wives, goddesses, dancers and workers" (p. 105). According to her, the appearance of the "strong" and "assertive"
woman in recent song sequences symbolizes a "break" from the earlier norms about chastity and suppression of
desire as being desirable for Indian woman (p. 107). This, she seems to suggest, represents the advent of the "new"
woman in Bollywood.
The explication of the "new" woman-implied by Bollywood's departure from previous constructions of women as
victims of male violence, sex objects, dependent, obedient, and peripheral-as the coming together of dichotomous
character attributes, blending of local and traditional with global ideals of "individuality and independence," does not
clearly chart out how patriarchal anxieties continue to play out in recent Bollywood movies where women appear in
dominant and more assertive roles (Nijhawan, 2009, p. 107). The binaries of "local" and "national" are often used as
conflated categories which need to be disentangled, for the trope of "national" does not explain the domains of
family or local community in which the Indian woman is located. Moreover, Chatterjee (2016) and Nijhawan's (2009)
conceptualization of "new" is based on those representations where females assume confident and assertive roles,
wherein desire and realization of empowerment is self-driven, suggesting an amount of agency; Queen like English
Vinglish, as will be demonstrated, falls within this classification. The other "new," masculine femininity of Dangal,
constructed locally, with no suggestion about the woman's personal interaction with the global or transnational, is yet
to be examined. This femininity is deprived of agency due to a father's overwhelming desire to fulfill his own dream
of winning a gold medal, hence, the daughter is reduced to a means to an end.
Besides, as women are obtaining strong and dominant roles in Bollywood, becoming more confident in expressing
and asserting their sexuality, the scholars' optimism about women's status in this major Indian cultural form is also
becoming noticeable (see Mukherjee, 2018 and Nijhawan, 2009). Therefore, a thorough investigation is required to
understand the narrative and discursive strategies involved in films, the construction of female characters in these
and how certain forms of femininities are legitimized and others rejected. Since women's bodies have remained the
primary location for the articulation of cultural meanings and values, both in Indian society and in cinema, this study
also examines how the male-dominated social and cultural gaze and male control operate beneath the assertive
"new" women's bodies of Bollywood.
For this purpose two box office successes of recent years, Dangai and Queen, offer appropriate models for
investigating and comparing various forms of femininities constructed in global, national or local settings. The former

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is a sports film that is largely set in India and the latter is a comedy-drama film set mainly in European locations but
for a few sequences in the beginning and end. It will be demonstrated how the incorporation of the ideals of
women's empowerment and women's compliance with gender norms are materialized through film narrative
strategies, discursive statements, and cinematic techniques. Our analysis underscores two opposing categories of
discourses: conventional and non-conventional. The conventional category comprises instances that legitimize the
discourse about women's bodies and sexuality, characterized as follows:
(1) Woman as submissive, weak, and obedient.
(2) Woman's body as an object of male sexual eroticization and violence.
(3) Woman's body as chaste and reproductive.
The non-conventional category includes instances from the films where discourses legitimize the following
characterizations of women:
(1) Physical prowess of male and female bodies viewed as equal.
(2) Woman's body not seen as an object of the male voyeuristic gaze.
(3) Woman's body not seen as chaste and reproductive.
(4) Man and woman seen as equal/independent agents.
Instances are defined here as sub-narratives that possess their own causality and resolution within the larger
narrative of the film, film sequences, scenes and dialogue. In this, elements from the two movies have been selected
on the basis of their significance with regard to male-female relations and the woman's identity. The subjects of
examination here include narrative causality, closures, discursive strategies, and cinematic techniques.
Conventional construction of femininity in Dangai
Mukherjee (2018), while reflecting on the double role-Veer (male) and Veera (female)-played by Rani Mukherjee
who disguises herself as a male cricketer to play in a men's cricket team in Dil Bole Hadippa, contends that the
"counter cinema" of sports movies can provide an "alternative" to the stereotypical and ideological presentation of
femininity (p.76). According to her, "Veera is a possible alternative to the represented femininity" as this enables "the
spectator to comprehend the difficulty of being a woman in a man's world" (p.77). However, only a partial analysis
would inspire such optimism. Mukherjee (2018) fails to give a full account of the ideology that underlies the character
of Veera. Popular Bollywood narrative films are typically long and have multiple plots, such as in the case of Dil Bole
Hadippa and Dangai. Therefore, the analysis has to be multipronged. Outside of her cricketing life Veera is
presented in traditional clothing of shalwar-kameez (tunic and loose pants) as a woman who can make chappatis
(flat wheat bread), two important traits of an ideal Indian wife. In this case her husband to-be is presumed to be the
London-returnee coach, Rohan Singh (Shahid Kapoor), who is tired of a western lifestyle and her traditional Indian
dressing is portrayed as a binary opposite to the revealing clothing of the "westernized" woman.
A similar explanation has to be extended to Dangal as well in order to gauge the conventional and non-conventional
coding of femininity. In this case, too, Mukherjee's (2018) criticism is only partially applicable: it seems to be directed
against what Datta (2000) refers to as the "family" or local community "paradigm," privileging the national paradigm
despite the fact that both are oppressive in that the reproduction of meanings and values is staged externally upon a
woman's body and sexuality while she herself has little control. Dangal is a 2016 movie inspired by the real-life story
of the Phogat family, set in Haryana, a state that is considered to be one of the most hostile towards women in India,
with high rates of female feticide and the low sex ratio of 914 girls for 1000 boys as of 2017, despite a major
government campaign to redress this (Pandey, 2015, para. 5; PTI, 2018, para. 5). Directed by Nitesh Tiwari and with
one of Bollywood's superstars Amir Khan as the father, Mahavir Singh Phogat, Dangal became the highest grossing
Indian film at the time of its release (Raghunathan, 2017). It begins with the father, Mahavir, a former national
wrestling champion, who hoped to have a son who would win an "international medal" that he himself could not win
because of his poverty. After the birth of four daughters and no son, he decides to give up his dream.
When Mahavir later learns about how his two older daughters, Geeta and Babita beat up two neighborhood boys, he
decides to train them in wrestling in order to pursue his dream to win an international gold medal. Thus, the film
narrative is predicated on the father's inability to win the medal himself. He did not have a son, and masculine sports

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like wrestling are expected to be the natural privilege of males. Therefore, Dangai starts with a show of poses of
muscular male bodies, lifting weights and fighting one another in the village akhada (arena) in slow-motion
montages, to reflect this. The crisis in the narrative starts with the father's decision to train his daughters instead.
Patriarchy is thereby introduced in the following statement: "Gold will remain gold, whether won by boy or girl," says
Mahavir to his wife as he decides to train his daughters in wrestling. Gold as the subject of this statement
underscores the father's dream. His unilateral decision also signifies his authority that dismisses any potential
resistance by one who is assigned to training for wrestling. Patriarchy assumes a two-fold domination here: the
daughters are not only inferior in age, but their sexuality, unlike that of sons, also remains contentious and a matter
of speculation for society, as depicted in the film.
Mahavir then make another pertinent statement, expressing confidence in his daughters' abilities: "Our daughters
are no less than boys," implying they are as good as boys in order to learn wrestling. However, this statement refers
to equal physical power, as from the start, talent and physical strength of daughters in Dangai is discursively
prefixed by a father's proprietorship when he says to his wife: "Wrestling is in their blood," when she questions if
their daughters are strong enough to practice this masculine sport. Thereupon, the girls remain predisposed to their
father's control. In a sub-narrative Geeta reclaims her feminine space by growing her hair long, which her father
sees as "distraction." On her holiday visit to her home from the Indian National Academy (INA) her father discovers
this and is infuriated. His rage multiplies when she tries to teach some "new" wrestling techniques she has learned
at the INA to children in her village, which her father feels challenges his own "outdated" knowledge of wrestling.
This toxic encounter triggers a wrestling fight between daughter and father, a bizarre though tough and spectacular
battle between "old" and "new" techniques. The daughter wins the fight because of her youthful strength against her
aging father, but her rebellion and victory is portrayed as a divergence that almost costs her career unless she
apologizes to her father. "Whatever happened today was not fair," says Babita, the younger sister who remains
obedient to her father, to Geeta. With a mix of audio-visual montage and sad music, the emotions of the father are
represented as those of a lonely old man watching Geeta from the top of his house as she departs to go back to the
INA. Subsequently, she begins to lose matches, purportedly because of her disobedience and brief claim to
independence and it is only after she regretfully apologizes to her father do things come back on track for her.
The glorification of a father's authority is nowhere fiercer than at the point where Geeta, after winning the national
championship, goes to the INA for further training, leaving behind her father who had been her coach till then. Her
entry into the academy elicits resentment and insecurities in the father. Rather than signifying a stride towards
progress, her admission to the INA triggers a contest between the father and the academy coach Pramod Kadam,
who represents state authority. In this sub-narrative the coach is represented as less-educated, lacking in technical
skills, envious and morally corrupt, while the father, who surreptitiously continues to train his daughters outside the
INA center, is portrayed as highly dedicated, passionate and knowledgeable. Using psychoanalytic tools to examine
sports movies, Mukherjee (2018) accurately points out that in Dangai the male deposits his "burden" on the
daughters'/students' shoulders which
... forces us to question whose story are we watching anyway? In both Chakde India and Dangai, women athletes
strive less for themselves and more for their male tutors. Hence they fight "displaced" battles, and provide the male
subjects with illusions of wholeness and unity. They become channels through which the men taste vicarious
victories, and, at the same time, nurse their wounded egos. (p. 74).
Geeta's status as a mediator between her father and his dream is asserted at the final match of the Common Wealth
Games. Mahavir, who is locked in a nearby room by Geeta's team coach for taking credit for her performance, fails
to attend the match. When she wins he can, however, hear the Indian national anthem being played out, which
makes his eyes shine with joy as he realizes that "India" or his daughter has won. The signification of this audio-
visual montage asserts the father's victory mediated through his daughter. Although the latter was instrumental in his
victory, national pride, too, is associated with him. Only his struggle in training the daughters is emphasized at this
point, while Geeta's own skills and hard-work are downplayed. Notwithstanding this interpretation, the relationship
constructed in Dangai has to be seen as triangular: between father, daughter and the nation. Datta's (2000)

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discussion on Bhabha's DissemiNation (1990) helps to disentangle nation and state and is useful here. She points
out, nation as "culture" is articulated through "language, signifiers, textuality and rhetoric,"2 the state is deemed as a
set of "regulations, policies, institutionsand organizations" (Datta, 2000, p. 73).This uses nation in a "family
paradigm" where women are held in inferior positions and their roles restricted to domesticity, controlled by localized
familial regulations (Datta, 2000, p. 78). According to her, it is the space of family, rather than state, that constitutes
home for women (p. 78).
This study adds the category of local community, where local conventions construct gendered roles and identities for
individuals, to explain the implications of Dangal's settings and narrative. Films like it are set in local community
settings with a pretense to subvert conservative conventions. In this context Basquiat's (2001) work is relevant.
Drawing from Althusser and Gramsci, she shows how a community asserts its traditional values through cultural
reproduction, self-policing and unquestioned authority, and in the process how feminism gets "erased" (p. 6).
Communities, according to her, maintain a "certain autonomy" from the "larger societal order." They "have no desire
to adhere to a higher authority because they are the higher authority," and therefore, act as their own ISA
(Ideological State Apparatus) in order to protect their own "objective reality" or conventions (Basquiat, 2001, pp. 9-
10). Mahavir, a former national wrestling champion and a respected community leader, challenges many aspects of
his community norms, as will be seen below, to ensure the girls too have the right to become wrestlers. In that sense
he replaces the state, which is the basic arbiter of nationalism and for equality. He upholds his personal autonomy,
and pits himself against the symbol of state authority, the team coach.
Just as woman's body and sexuality is used as a channel through which male honor3 is hurt by the inflicting of rape
or sexual violence on her, Dangai illustrates the point that the opposite can also be possible: "new" femininity is
constructed to cure wounded male egos. The construction of such masculine femininity involves divesting of the
erotic and reproductive attributes of the woman's body (Khan, 2014, para. 2). In the entire film Mahavir's role is
threefold: fulfilling his personal ego and dream of winning an "international medal," bringing glory to the nation and in
the process training his daughters as wrestlers. Therefore, the narrative causality and resolution of Dangal is that,
because of the father a daughter is able to become international wrestling champion, a symbol of national pride. The
film narrative also underscores a dialogical relationship between the nation and individuals, and among individuals
who negotiate with one another on the basis of their societal power for the national imaginary. However, it is the girls
who assume the lowest role within this hierarchy; they are merely used as vehicles, while the man and nation
identify with one another. Because of their social and cultural status, not only do girls have to fulfill male egos and
dreams, they become symbols of nationalism. All of this transpires through a collusion by the state, the national
authority, and the father as the family authority. In this respect Mahavir's antagonistic relationship with the team
coach is Dangal's strategy to magnify the figure of father, the family patriarch, and highlights the state's deep and
direct penetration into the lowest unit of the society.
The Dangai girl, Geeta, simultaneously bears the multi-layered brunt of patriarchy: domination multiplies when she
passes from the stage of daughterhood to studentship/traineeship and thereafter, to become a national symbol after
winning an international medal. Increase in the degree of domination or when repressive force is fused with
"persuasive" and "manipulative," power, it leads to willing submission (Van Dijk, 2008, p. 89). Woman as a strong
national hero and woman as dependent/obedient in Dangai are two categories that coalesce and are made
inseparable in the same discourse that fuses father and teacher in one man, Mahavir Singh, who stands at the
junction between family and wider society.
"New" femininity in Dangai: Breaking community conventions
In spite of the woman's body being at the center of its discourse, Dangai subverts all the references-visual as well as
oral-of eroticization or reproductivity associated with it. The discursive focus on teaching and training of the two
women (Geeta and Babita) dilutes the classical portrayal of the woman's body as weak, chaste or an object of
voyeuristic gaze and sexual violence, and reconstructs it as a "new" masculine one. Two remarkable instances in
the film are significant. First, when Mahavir Singh forces his daughters to wear shorts and cut their hair short, they
become a focus of lewd comments within the community. However, the context in which the scenes are set

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invalidates the sensual impact of such comments; the film has already set the stage for a different narrative that
directs viewers' attention towards their father's story, that is, his dream of turning the girls into athletes. Second,
when Mahavir takes Geeta to the akhada, which had hitherto seen male wrestling only, it is her body that becomes
the site of speculative talk among the men who come in droves to watch the male-female fight. They express
fantasies of seeing her naked body if her clothes get torn during the fight. However, the visual structure of the
scenes in this sequence does not complement the on-screen men's lustful commentary.4 The camera, remains
indifferent about the gaze of the men in the film, for example, no male perspective shots are offered and all
sequences preceding the fight create a context, about which the viewers within the film know nothing and the
attention of the audience is drawn towards the girl's father. The story of his desire to turn his daughter into a world
champion overshadows the entire fighting episode at the akhada. The film finally eliminates chatter about the girl's
sensuality, making way for applause for Geeta's performance, who chose to fight against the strongest of the four
male contenders and proved to be equally competitive.
Dangai's discourse for creating the "new," equal woman in the form of Geeta is articulated via her physical strength
as she fights with boys in the arena, assumes the looks of a boy with a male haircut and dressing style, divesting all
erotic symbols from her body and removing allusions to her reproductive sexuality. These suggestions are made at
the beginning of the film through references about domesticity being "natural" for women, wrestling a "masculine"
sport and so on. The emphasis on gender performativity is part of Dangal's strategy in the beginning to trigger
narrative crisis: the community in which the film is set is shown as stable, with all inhabitants performing their
gendered roles. Masculine men pose their bodies and carry heavy burdens, while women are occupied by domestic
chores. The crisis begins when Mahavir decides to shake this gendered structure.
Queen: Liberated woman versus the male gaze
Queen (2014), a film directed by Vikas Bahl, begins with a middle-class boy Vijay (RajKumar Rao), an engineering
student, and not so confident Rani Mehra (Kangana Ranaut), a home science student, about to get married. Just a
day before the wedding, while preparations are underway at Rani's house, Vijay calls off their love-cum-arranged
marriage because he "realizes," that they are not compatible. This decision destroys Rani's dreams of going to Paris
for her honeymoon and leaves her family helpless. As family members try to console her, she resolves to embark on
a solo honeymoon trip to Paris. Thus the narrative is based on a privileged man's betrayal of a woman because the
male-dominated social milieu has reduced her into a meek, overly simple and submissive woman.
Rani's tour in Paris and Amsterdam underscores her self-discovery as a person with physical, emotional and, more
importantly, sexual power. Through the cataphora-anaphora5 strategy the film offers a comparison between her
experiences at home and in Paris and Amsterdam, where freedom from familial ties allows her independence to do
things on her own, such as fight off a thief, carry her luggage and overcome the fear of roaming around alone. Her
"oppressive" experiences in India were marked by subordination, dependence and submissiveness to her fiancé.
For example, in a sequence when she drives her drunk room-mates home, she recalls the time when her fiancé
yelled at her while teaching her how to drive on a busy road in India and said: "Go stay at home. You will never learn
... " In another experience at a dance bar in Paris she gets drunk and dances with other women in liberation and
recalls when her fiancé fumed at her after seeing her dance at a wedding party in India: "Are you mad. What would
happen if mummyji (her to-be mother-in-law) found you dancing there ... " The mother-in-law is one of the main
oppressive forces a woman in India has to contend with when she moves to her husband's home after marriage
(Rodrigues, 2018). In Amsterdam Rani lodges with three male roommates whose disparate backgrounds and
identities (Japanese, black French and Russian) serve the stereotypical function of emphasizing the "human"
character of the roommates rather than cultural or social differences of color, gender, ethnicity or region.
Through Rani's struggle against subordinating cultural conventions, which empower male partners, and her self-
discovery, the film overturns the traditional status of a woman and prompts an alternative construction of femininity,
as confident and independent. However, liberal ideological underpinnings are manifested through the choice of the
tourist spaces used by the film, Paris and Amsterdam, where Rani discovers herself. The film is set in pubs and bars
in Paris and Amsterdam where men and women mingle together. The use of the European spaces contrast with the

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concrete gendered social walls of India, and emphasize the former as signifying a free "liberal" world. But in the
postcolonial liberal imagination "global," "western" or "modern" still exist as conflated categories, a replication of the
colonial "characterization of India as being in the infancy of civilizational progress," and Europe as a symbol and
pioneer of progress (Bhambra, 2007, p. 23). Therefore, the question of liberation and the relationship between local
and the global movements have to be viewed with suspicion so long as the meanings of the two categories remain
implicated in power balance/ imbalance.
Taylor, Johnston, and Whitehead (2016) underscore the complex process of incorporating ideals of woman's
empowerment by corporations into their capitalist marketing strategies (p. 124). Similarly, Queen's discourse
transmutes ideals of empowerment into acts of objectification, just as Dangal's discourse conflates acts of a
woman's submissiveness/obedience and her empowerment. The discovery of power by Rani, through the
eroticization of her body parts, underscores this liberal contradiction. Nijhawan's (2009) research on Bollywood item
songs highlights the dichotomies between traditional, domesticated femininity, desirable for the "national project,"
and the negative femininity of the dancing woman deemed as undesirable in such a project. She accurately points
out that Bollywood over time has begun to negotiate global cultural influences. According to her, in the item songs
that she has examined, "the subject is the woman and not the man despite the fact that she is performing for men"
(p. 107). She further states, "In dance numbers ... there is sexual agency in the blurring of previously dichotomized
boundaries and genres. 'Wife' characters (good women) in current day Bollywood can simply be girlfriends, can
dance, wear revealing clothing, be assertive and independent" (p. 108).
This argument can be extended to Queen as well whose subject is a woman, Rani. However, Nijhawan (2009)
concedes that women perform for men in item songs, but fails to mention that her gendered subjectivity is not only
presented "for men" but is defined by men, as Thapan (1995) notes, the "internalization of the gaze of the socially
and perhaps sexually dominant Other which has turned the woman into a surveyed object"; thus rendering her
strong and assertive performance on screen into a mere object for viewing by a pervasively dominant male gaze (p.
48).
In a sequence at a garment store where Rani tries on a sleeveless, deepneck top, she clicks a selfie in the trial-room
to send to her ex-fiancé. In the next scene, the latter, who seems to be in the middle of a serious conversation with
someone at a bar, with glasses of beer before them, is interrupted as he receives the picture on his mobile phone.
He instantly changes his mind and wants to patch up with Rani and tries to seek her forgiveness. In another scene in
the washroom of a dance club, Rani's friend, Vijaylaxmi, as a liberated, westernized woman, asks her to pull her top
down to let her cleavage and "sexy boobs" show. The signification of breasts as an erotic field is a clear example of
the woman's torn/mixed subjectivity. Such discourse on empowerment through the discovery of body parts is
repeated when, on her return from Europe, she visits her ex-fiancé's house. The first thing his mother notices is her
"deep-neck" kurta (top or shirt). The problem raised by the eroticization of breasts has not only to do with
objectification of female body parts, but also that in human cultures breasts are, as Bordo (2004) aptly points out,
"required to be so exclusively "for" the other - whether as instrument and symbol of nurturing love, or as erotic fetish"
(p. 20). Therefore, social meanings and values do exercise a substantial control over how a woman makes herself
appear.
Self-eroticization by Rani presents the universal challenge of the lurking male gaze, the "other," that has permeated
female bodies. Although in the case of Queen the "other" is clearly the intended target, the fiancé, but he represents
the invisible gaze which alienates the body from her person (Bartky, 1990, pp. 28-29). But then there is another
national gaze that also regulates Indian women's dressing, gendered sexuality and behavior. The female body, as in
Dangai and Queen, is a carrier of national meaning, as noted earlier.6 The "deep-neck" Indian kurta or shirt that
Rani wears on her return to India after transforming herself in Europe echoes the "new woman" of English Vinglish,
Sashi, who refuses to read The New York Times and instead chooses a Hindi newspaper on her return flight to India
from the US where she "conquers" English, reverting "to her traditional role as symbolic bearer of nationalism and
patriotic womanly virtues" (Chatterjee, 2016, p. 1189). Similarly, Rani's kurta symbolizes a reversal, while the deep-
neck marks her empowerment, two aspects that balance her image in modern globalizing India. Her reversal, it can

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be argued, also serves as a film strategy to underscore the originality of the traditional and modern/western-the two
terms appear to be conflated in the film - dressing is just an instrument to discover hidden beauty and power.
As Tseělon (1993) explains, ideological underpinnings surround concepts of beauty and looking. An uncontrolled
body is deemed as ugly; hence it needs to be modified to match the standards of fantasy and the way one dresses
plays an essential role to do so. For Indian women, whose body appearance is subjected to multiple levels of control
in society, such an idea presents tougher criteria: her body has to simultaneously look beautiful and adhere to the
standards of Indian-ness. Her body appearance has to be acceptable within intimate spaces as a girlfriend or wife by
conforming to the model of beauty and at the same time has to be acceptable to national norms. The narrative
resolution of Queen attempts to deal with this contradiction in an Indian way. The kurta represents Indian-ness and
the deep-neck is a window to a potent hidden beauty, echoing the ambivalence that surrounds the body and
sexuality for modern Indian women.
These reflect the different forms of the male gaze whose pervasiveness makes it difficult for the woman's body to
escape. The resolution in Queen, however, delivers a more confident and assertive woman and thus is more
creditable from a feminist point of view compared to Dangal. The protagonist in the latter, Geeta, notwithstanding her
success, remains fixated to a male, the symbol of a patriarchal family system as well as a bearer of national pride.
So she presents her medal to her father after winning it. Rani, the protagonist in Queen, in contrast, returns her ring
to her fiancé while thanking him for ditching her, which gave her the opportunity to discover herself.
Conclusion
It can be clearly established that in spite of assuming dominant roles, appearing strong and assertive and less so as
objects of violence, the woman's body and sexuality continue to be important social and cultural signifiers in the
latest Bollywood film stories, albeit with new configurations, amendments and negotiations that are important
attributes of the "new" woman. We have focused our study mainly on three questions: the concept of "new" woman
in Bollywood, the male gaze or male-dominated social or cultural gaze underlying the bodies of "new" women and
the convergence of opposing discourses of power and weakness, liberation and subjugation, acceptability and
unacceptability in the two popular narrative films, Dangai and Queen.
Dangai and Queen underscore a liberal construction of femininity, representing individual struggle against certain
conventions and coding-what Willis (1984) would call as "counter-cultural" representation-while retaining or
encouraging others (p. 91). Our analysis of Dangal has shown how Bollywood represents and reproduces patriarchy
in its rawest form and does this via characterizations of woman. It subverts the conventional characterization of the
woman's body, that is physically weak, reproductive, chaste or an erotic object, yet one that is subordinate to
dominant male figure (father). Similar explanation, meanwhile, could be applied to the women of other films as well
such as Tanu Weds Manu: Returns (2015), where a dichotomy is created between two women characters: Tanu, an
assertive woman who enjoys a modern and lavish lifestyle, therefore is misguided, while Kusum is compliant and
obedient. In contrast, in Queen Rani's discovery of her sexuality, self-assertion and grooming by dressing differently
while she is in Europe serves as a grim reminder of the deep permeation of male-dominated social and cultural
power, and the western-centric notions of beauty and empowerment. Its narrative causality, however, is antithetical
to patriarchy, where the woman rebels against conventions that seek to subordinate her.
We have illustrated the double-edged nature of male gaze or male-dominated social and cultural gaze in our
examination of Dangai and Queen, where the woman's body is presented either as an object of sight or as regulated
by socially and culturally acceptable dressing. Although the two woman-centric movies, Dangai and Queen, may
have gone a long way in challenging stereotypes, they end up getting caught in a ubiquitous patriarchal web. The
women wrestlers in Dangai remain subservient to their father figure and in the somewhat over the top fantasy movie,
Queen, although the estranged fiancé never comes back to the fold, the phantom fiancé lurks about somewhere.
The popular Bollywood movies of the past decade that have focused on women have demonstrated an intricate
relationship between Hindu tradition, Indian nation and liberal ideology, and how an interplay among these is staged
through women's bodies and sexuality. As complex and culturally diverse as Indian society is, it is always difficult for
state laws to penetrate society at sub-cultural levels. There is a pervasive mystification of woman's sexuality: on the

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one hand, she is identified with national pride and, on the other, she is regarded as an essential contributor to the
family. Therefore, women have to deal with control and regulation at multiple levels, of family patriarchy, local
community norms and national symbolism. In addition, there are the current exigencies of globalization and
modernization, of which women's bodies and sexuality are essential manifestations. This leaves little room for
woman to assert her own agency. Bollywood films, therefore, far from rattling deep-rooted patriarchal constructs, are
only thriving in this situation.
A film of the length of any popular Bollywood movie, which carries multiple plots and sub-narratives, can be as
contentious in the portrayal of the female body and sexuality. Therefore, an approach to understand these has to be
equally nuanced and multi-dimensional, as we have tried to use here. The sportive, skillful and strong bodies of
women athletes in films such as Dangai and others mentioned in passing are marked by "disciplined" and "cultured"
liberty, one that entails willing submission to the parameters set by the norms of a patriarchal Hindu tradition.
Accordingly, the rejection of the totally "westernized" woman-construed as dangerous and misguided-continues to
persist in Bollywood, as seen in some films. The marriage between the liberal ideals of beauty and power and
conservative norms of a good Indian woman is something that has emerged anew in the popular narratives of
Bollywood. The so-called confident and assertive women of the song and dance videos discussed by Nijhawan
(2009), merely appeared for visual pleasure without any narrative consequence. To unravel the convergence of
opposing discourses in popular Bollywood movies one has to look deep into the construction of women's characters-
their roles, social statuses, clothing, physiology, framing within scenes, implicit and explicit oral references to their
sexuality and so on-and how the story is constructed through these narratives. Mere domination in film narratives
and female bodies on screen that flaunt their sexuality in these films cannot be taken as indicators of women's
growing agency and therefore one has to look beyond.
Sidebar
CONTACT Waseem AHAD @ pallwaseem@gmail.com
Notes on contributors
Waseem AHAD was born and brought up in Jammu and Kashmir, India. He did his BA and MA in Mass
Communication and Journalism from University of Kashmir, Srinagar. Currently, he is a Turkiye Burslari scholar,
doing a PhD from the Faculty of Communication, Kocaeli University, Turkey. His main research interests are
subaltern identities, discourse and cinema. His PHD research topic is related to "The Ideological Apparatus of Indian
Cinema and Kashmir."
Selma KOÇAKGÜL is an Associate Professor, teaching at the Faculty of Communication in Kocaeli University,
Turkey. She has done her Masters and PhD from Istanbul University, Turkey. The focus of her study has been
women, discourse, culture, and political communication.
Footnote
Notes
1. Mandhai and Gautam (2018) in an Aljazeera article argue that the glorification of rape continues in Bollywood.
2. Specifically on gender, which is constructed through cultural practices and codes, similar discussion appears in
Lorber (2018).
3. Mushtaq and Amin (2018) underline the convergence of woman's honor and nation, and argue that nationalist
violence is inflicted on women's bodies to defeat the "other" (para. 7).
4. The on-screen viewers' lustful comments and gestures are not complemented by the visual structure of the scene.
That is, many works following Mulvey (1989), have shown how the alliance between camera, onscreen male-gaze
and off-screen male-gaze objectify women's body. However, in the case of Dangal we see the camera breaking that
alliance. Therefore, while onscreen men are engaged in a commentary, the camera takes the off-screen viewers'
attention to other things that are more important according to the context built prior to that scene. For a relevant
discussion see Ramasubramanian and Oliver (2003), and Derné and Jadwin (2000).
5. The scenes that go back and forth in time to recall moments of the past that have resemblance with present
action in the film. For a broader discussion see Shaul (2012, pp. 121-133).

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6. The women protagonists of Dil Bole Hadippa and English Vinglish are also represented as national symbols.
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DETAILS

Subject: Women; Patriarchy; Bollywood films; Rape

Location: India

Identifier / keyword: Y; GenderWatch; New Woman; Femininity; Hindi cinema; Authority; Queen

Publication title: Asian Journal of Women's Studies; Seoul

Volume: 26

Issue: 1

Pages: 3-21

Publication year: 2020

Publication date: 2020

Publisher: Taylor &Francis Ltd.

Place of publication: Seoul

Country of publication: United Kingdom, Seoul

Publication subject: Women's Health

ISSN: 12259276

Source type: Scholarly Journal

Language of publication: English

Document type: Feature

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 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/12259276.2019.1690777

ProQuest document ID: 2418148439

Document URL: https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/female-body-femininity-authority-

bollywood-new/docview/2418148439/se-2?accountid=14696

Copyright: Copyright Taylor &Francis Ltd. 2020

Last updated: 2023-11-20

Database: GenderWatch

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