Films move across the barriers of class, literacy, religion and language. Not only reflecting reality is their purpose but also constructing the reality. The history of Indian cinema goes as far back as 1913 when Dada Sahib Phalke, one of the pioneers of the silent feature film in Indian cinema broke ground with Rajah Harishchandra. Since then many critical issues have been raised and analysed. There have been films dealing with social, political and psychological themes. The Indian cinema encompasses the lives, aspirations, emotions, sentiments, problems and struggle of “one half of humanity” – that is the woman.
“Men act, women appear. Men look at women; women enjoy themselves being looked at.”
-John Berger: ways of seeing.
The above statement very clearly showcases the position of women in the society, including the main stream and parallel Indian cinema. In the ‘realm of look’, women has appeared numerous times on screen, sometimes to satisfy the need of the subject of the film or sometimes unnecessarily. But the term unnecessary can be called as very dubious. It can be variable to situations and to viewers.
Indian cinemas portray women in both the ways, i.e. bearer and maker of the meaning. Though this contradicts to Budd Boeticher’s statement that,” what counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In her the women has no slightest importance.” In a way it is evident that the position of women in Indian cinema has travelled a lot from the reputation of being the show piece to main lead. In lot of movies, women specially constituted the role as spectacle. The subject of look is especially evident from the increasing numbers of item numbers in the Indian parlance. Sometimes the one item song ends up making a film hit, such as “chamma chamma” did for the film “china gate”. What the common traits of all the item numbers are the cinematic elements of lighting and shot taking , i.e., the way the body is arranged with respect to the camera and hence to the eye of the audience. All these create some movements in the body, which all add up in turning the woman into a subject of glare. The gaze gets invited to certain parts of the body, which are selectively considered sexual. The costumes are often dazzling with sequins or a metallic finish, brightly coloured and revealingly cut. In this context, a quote from Laura Mulvey’s seminal article, “visual pleasure and narrative cinema” could be mentioned, “in their traditional exhibitionist role, women are simultaneously looked at and displayed with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact, so that they can be said to connote to be looked-at-ness”. But this does not suggest that it is the only spectral position or way of presentation of woman. Because it cannot be denied that spectral pleasure may even proceed from viewing of the female figure as plenitude or opposite sex identification. After all we are all multiply gendered and according to psychoanalysis essentially bisexual. Thus this pleasure might be coming from the ability of cinema to satisfy the need to overcome sexual differences, the wish to be both the sexes temporarily through the mobility of multiple ,fluid identifications.
Well this goes one category of the role of women in Indian cinema, the other category is different. In films like “Bandini”,” Damini”, the script talked about the stage from the victimhood to potential threat, the film “Mirch Masala” showing the victory of the simple unarmed women over the nuisances of a man by the help of her simplest harming ideas. Another film “zubeida” was seen showing its spatial contours. Whereas, "Astitva",kept on raising questions on the very idea of existence. The real meaning of the film is contained not in the declaration of its intent but in the totality of the experience which it provides. Sensitive national issues like Muslim women’s identity are also worked on. “pakeezah” , “nikah”, “bazaar” and “umrao jaan” can be cited as examples. In these films we notice that the female protagonists enjoy a key postion, as far as their roles are concerned, they are the central figures around whom the story resolves but what needs to be looked at is their identity as women. Such portrayal of women in the Indian cinema drives us more towards the universal reality.
So far the existence of a woman in the society, yet “munni” couldn’t have been herself if it wasn’t for her.
