About the Book
Films and Feminism: Essays in Indian Cinema explores both mainstream and parallel cinema for an analysis of the woman image, the idea of romance, the imposition and defiance of patriarchal order and a woman’s journey towards self-definition.
Films reach a wider audience than literature as they move across the barriers of class, literacy, religion and even language. Not only do they reflect reality, they also construct reality. Their reach and impact makes it imperative to work through the rhetoric and melodrama of the medium to unearth the subtleties and ambiguities which lie within.
This second edition, with a new introduction attempts to capture the shifts that have taken place since its earlier publication. With four new essays supplementing the earlier twenty four, the shifts in film techniques and film audiences, the blurring of the line between alternative and commercial cinema and women’s image of themselves are brought out. Largely focusing on Hindi cinema, there is also a reflection of Bengali and Kannada cinema. This new edition enlarges the scope of the inquiry into feminist concerns and feminine representation.
The volume makes a significant contribution to film, gender and literary studies as it opens up multiple dimensions of inquiry.
Contents
1 Rituparno Ghosh / Somdatta Mandal
2 Saffronizing the Silver Screen / Gita Viswanath
3 Female Bodies and the Male Gaze / Bindu Nair
4 Courting / Malati Mathur
5 Women in Indian Cinema / Vrinda Mathur
6 Bollywood Portrayals of Women With Disabilities / Meenu Bhambhani
7 Muslim Women’s Identity / Supriya Agarwal
8 Towards the Radicalization of the Indian Family / Veena Singh
9 Crossing the Boundaries / Anshoo Sharma
10 Body as Text / Jasbir Jain
11 The Working Woman in Three Bengali Films / Dipendu Chakrabarti
12 Comedy and Gender / Jyoti Bhatia
13 Questioning the Confines of Marriage / Bandana Chakrabarty
14 Symbolism and Space in Aparna Sen’s Paroma and Deepa Mehta’s Fire / Mini Nanda
15 Breaking the Silence / Sudha Rai
16 Journey into the Mind of a Woman / Tripti Jain
17 Maternal Enthrallment in Satyajit Ray’s Aparajito and Devi / Madhuri Chatterjee
18 The Mythical Text of Woman’s Re-Presentation in Cinema / Anu Celly
19 Tamanna / Santosh Gupta
20 From Victimhood to Potential Threat / Renuka Pamecha
21 Mirch Masala / Krishna Rathore
22 Spatial Contours in Zubeida / Veena Jain
23 Battling for Being / Ranju Mehta
24 Locating Perception and Paradoxes Within an Image / Rakesh Thakur
25 En Route to Freedom and Self Discovery / S. Asha
26 Strengthening Identity and Choosing Freedom / Manasvini Rai
27 The Road Not Taken / Avinash Jodha
28 Female Picaro and the Fairytale Structure / Vijaya Singh
About the Author / Editor
Jasbir Jain, formerly of the University of Rajasthan, Jaipur has written on a wide range of areas. She has been working on films for more than two decades. Amongst her latest works are Indigenous Roots of Feminism: Culture, Subjectivity and Agency, recently also translated into Hindi, Theorizing Resistance and The Diaspora Writes Home: Subcontinental Narratives. Currently she is working on Post Enlightenment and Modernism.
Sudha Rai, formerly Head, Department of English, and Dean, Faculty of Arts, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur has worked in the area of diasporic writing, Australian indigenous writing; and cultural constructions of disability. She is a recipient of the Senior Fellowship (2008-09) awarded by the Australia-India Council, and was Visiting Research Professor (2010) at Paul Valery University, Montpellier III (France). Rai is currently on a Senior Research Fellowship awarded by the Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi. She is the author of V.S. Naipaul: A Study in Expatriate Sensibility (1982) and Homeless by Choice: Naipaul, Jhabvala, Rushdie and India (1992).
