I guess our girls are making some name for themselves

http://nytimes.com/2005/07/24/movies/24chop.html


Bollywood's Good Girls Learn to Be Bad

By ANUPAMA CHOPRA
Published: July 24, 2005

MUMBAI

HALFWAY through "Aitraaz" ("Objection"), a Bollywood take on Barry Levinson's "Disclosure," Sonia grabs hold of Raj. Once upon a time, they were lovers. But when Sonia, an ambitious model, opted for an abortion instead of child and marriage, Raj left her. Now she is his boss. Sonia starts to undress him, whispering, "Show me you are an animal." When he refuses and walks away, she screams: "I'm not asking you to leave your wife. I just want a physical relationship. If I don't have an objection, why should you?"

The actress Priyanka Chopra had a difficult time playing this scene. A former Miss World, Ms. Chopra was a sophisticated, globally feted celebrity and she had prepared for her role by studying the calculated seductiveness of Sharon Stone in "Basic Instinct." But on the day that scene was shot, Ms. Chopra broke down and cried. The directors, brothers who go by the hyphenate Abbas-Mustan, had to spend a few hours convincing her that she was only playing a character. Filming didn't start until late afternoon.

Ms. Chopra wasn't just being dramatic. She is a Bollywood actress, and as such, trained to play the role of a virginal glam-doll, not a sexual aggressor. By tradition, a Bollywood heroine is a one-dimensional creation who may wear eye-popping bustiers or writhe passionately during a song in the rain. But she is unfailingly virtuous. Whether girlfriend, wife or mother, she is the repository of Indian moral values. In the ancient epic "Ramayana," the hero Lakshman draws a furrow in the earth, the Line of Lakshman, which represents the limits of proper feminine behavior, and requests that his sister-in-law Sita not step outside it. As if heeding his exhortation, Bollywood heroines have rarely stepped out of line, even for a kiss.

But a decade-long cultural churning has overturned stereotypes in India. In 1991, the threat of fiscal collapse forced the government to introduce wide-ranging economic reforms and allow multinational corporations to operate in India. The same year, satellite television arrived. Today, consumerism, globalization, the proliferation of semiclad bodies in print and television, and the emergence of a more worldly audience have redefined the boundaries of what is permissible. Sex has been pulled out of the closet and actors have become more willing to experiment with their images. The latest Bollywood heroines seem to be taking a page out of Mae West's book: when they are good, they are very good, but when they are bad, they're better.

Mallika Sherawat, 24, a statuesque actress, needed little convincing to step out of the stereotype. Ms. Sherawat made her leading-lady debut in 2003 with "Khwahish" ("Desire"), which grabbed headlines for its 17 kisses. Her follow-up was even steamier. "Murder," released last year, a rehash of Adrian Lyne's "Unfaithful," had her playing a lonely housewife in Bangkok who has a passionate affair with an ex-boyfriend. Ms. Sherawat pushed the edge of the sexual envelope as far as the Indian Censor Board would allow. The lovemaking scenes featured bare backs, cleavage and passionate kissing.

Bolder still was the idea that a respectable upper-middle-class woman could have sexual desires and cheat on her husband - and get away with it. "Murder" made back its investment, approximately $750,000, several times over. Ashish Rajadhyaksha, a senior fellow at the Bangalore-based Center for the Study of Culture and Society, said the film established Ms. Sherawat as an Indian "postfeminist icon." The self-anointed "kissing queen of India" now has bigger ambitions. She plays an Indian princess in a coming Hong Kong movie, "The Myth," starring Jackie Chan. After making a splash on Mr. Chan's arm at the Cannes Film Festival, she is, she says, negotiating with Creative Artists Agency for representation.

Ms. Sherawat's journey from a traditional small-town nobody to an international sex symbol is a modern-day fairy tale that has already had an impact. (For Ms. Sherawat, it also has a downside: She says her father refuses to speak her.) Film studios here in Mumbai are overrun with starlets fiercely trading on their sexuality, and even established actresses are now taking chances. In "Fida" ("Crazy"), released last year, Kareena Kapoor played a scheming hedonist who beguiles her besotted lover into robbing a bank for her. Ms. Kapoor, a fourth-generation star, is Bollywood aristocracy. Her great-grandfather Prithviraj Kapoor was a leading man in the 1940's, and her grandfather (Raj Kapoor), parents, uncles and sister are famous actors. There were audible gasps from audiences when her true character was revealed with a dramatic flourish in "Fida": she steps out of the shower with a man who is not her lover.

Heroines aren't just discovering sex, they are positively reveling in bad behavior. In a forthcoming, still-untitled film, Sushmita Sen, a former Miss Universe, plays a protagonist who "enjoys being negative," she said. "She cheats, lies, sleeps with men, even kills them and gets away with it all. I want to give this bad woman a tremendous conviction. You have to fear her."

Aishwarya Rai also hopes to induce fear. Her ethereal good looks have been immortalized in wax at Madame Tussauds in London. In the July issue of the British magazine Harpers & Queen she is listed as the ninth most beautiful woman in the world. But in "Dhoom 2" ("Cacophony 2") to be shot later this year, she is to play a vamp. Ms. Rai won't comment on how badly her character will behave. "In this film, you can't define heroes and villains, but it's a character I've never played before," she said. "Why get pigeonholed?"

The good-girl heroine isn't the only standard Bollywood type to be transformed. The vamp, Hindi cinema's designated bad girl, was traditionally just as important a part of the typology. She did things that upright Indian girls weren't supposed to do - drink, smoke and have sex - and was usually seen on the villain's arm in garish dens or smoke-filled bars, wearing feather boas and revealing outfits. But in the 70's, a slew of more Westernized actresses appropriated the vamp's glamour for heroines by adopting more flashy clothes and more sexually assertive body language. By the 80's the vamp had disappeared.

A decade later, globalization further scrambled neat moral divisions. "The heroine," says Gyan Prakash, director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University, "now dressed by a fashion designer and placed in a consumerist mise en scène, was liberated. She could appear in a club and wear revealing clothes without being coded."

But though she was sexy, she wasn't necessarily having sex. In the last five years, however, the heroine has come full circle and outvamped the vamp. Even the good-girl heroines are becoming more complex. One of the year's biggest is "Bunty aur Bubli," a sanitized "Bonnie and Clyde" about two small-town con artists who go on a looting spree across India. The woman, Bubli, unapologetically uses her sexuality to cheat people. But she is not evil or predatory; she's just looking for a good time. Her disdain for the housewife role she is forced to play is comic: "If I have to make mango pickle one more time, I'll die," she tells the police officer who arrests the couple.

Interpreting the Hindi cinema heroine's latest avatar as a feminist, however, may be stretching the truth a bit. Earlier films like "Hunterwali" ("The Woman With a Whip," 1935) and "Amar Jyoti" ("Eternal Flame," 1936) featured more powerful female images - a whip-wielding, crime-fighting action heroine, and a female pirate who keeps men in captivity.

The scriptwriter Bhavani Iyer dismisses present-day heroines as "naïve attempts to portray reality," but admits that they are preferable to the deified women in earlier films.

They are, in any case, just a beginning. At present, Lakshman's line may be bent out of shape, but it is still visible. The box office occasionally applauds the sexual daring of a Mallika Sherawat, but as the director Karan Johar, who has made several wholesome, family-centered blockbusters, put it, "In Bollywood, the No. 1 position will always be reserved for the girl you can take home to Mom."

That's why most actresses are hedging their bets. Ms. Chopra got rave reviews and awards in "Aitraaz," but she has followed up with good-girl acts. "I'm not sure I can play such a sexually aggressive character again," she says. "My family and friends were very shocked."

i think all this is much ado abt nothing. This has been going on for a long time now...and its not like its an original trend started by bollywood or anything. this is also copied from hollywood like most of the bollywood films.

It's not a matter of copying or laxman's rekha(line) being crossed. Kissing has been going on from the late 60s/early 70s(?) "Satyam Shivam Sundaram." People act like, it started late. And sexuality has been explored in movies with bollywood heroines even more at that time. Remember "Mausam," with Sanjeev Kumar. In these movies, women had sexual relations, but with one person. Similarly in hollywood movies the trend is the same. I mean unless they want portray her as a slut, hollywood has also been doing the same thing. There isn't much of a difference I see, except it's hidden more in India with censorship. The bottom line is that hollywood is very explicit about it while Bollywood is more implicit.

And, I don't know if there is such a thing as Indian moral values. Indian culture imposes values on men and women, just like any other culture. However, educated people, Indian or not, know the difference. Moral values are moral values. I mean, people sleep with each other in India, believe it or not! It's just harder because of the parent-imposed rules. I mean women can still look decent without wearing revealing clothes in a club.

And Laxman's rekha, give me a break. In the 'Ramayan,' Laxman draws a line in order to protect his sister-in-law from demons and other wild animals. No one could pass through the line except her. I can't believe people mis-interpret it as a limit on female behavior. That's just male chauvinism speaking I think. I mean it's just stupid to interpret is as such.
I haven't read the Ramayan fully, but I know from listening to it from my grandfather that it has strong female characters that even went into the battlefield with their male counterparts.

I hate articles like this because it makes it look like India is a backwards country that is male dominated and women have to portray themselves a certain way in order to be noticed. I mean, it's been changing for over 30 years now. I'm not saying that it isn't male dominated to a certain extent, but we also have understanding and educated people in the country that are creative and also love others. And in addition, a lot of us don't impose values on our women. They have been becoming free to do what they want slowly before, but more surely now.

Are you serious? , I mean your post seams to be a serious one but you seem to be taking Indian mythology in its most literary sense. You don’t believe there were actual 'demons' do you ?? - the demons in-essence are metaphors for the worldly temptations. Ramayana (and other such works) are not only great stories to tell children but also great manuscripts on human virtues and it depends on how you look at it.

Point-in-case: Ravana with 10 heads ‘could’ denotes the 10 'traits' of sin, The monkey army ‘could’ denotes the confusion (or lack of clarity) in mans actions, Rama killing sukriva from the back ‘could’ denotes a warriors virtue in killing an enemy who had committed a great sin (he stole his brothers wife) etc. etc. Personally looking at it this way seems to make more sense and hence makes it inherently more fulfilling.

The work itself is so complicated that you need a "guru" to really learn its implications. Some time back I read a nice book called "Symbols in Hinduism" and it had a chapter on "Interpreting Ramayana" - it was a big revelation for me.



Statistically speaking we are still backward (economically and socially) . It seems you are from a city (even there we are still backward - its just that we don’t want to accept it). Women liberation has never really happened in India (still waiting!) . 70 % of Indian population still resides in villages (about 300 million women live in rural areas and that is the size of US population!) . The ground-truth is far from what you mention here. Do you realize parts of India still practice child marriage & even SATI !!! .

From what i know all "forward moving " socities on planet earth are male dominated ( except some obscure lil tribes) - its just the nature of the beast. In Human species male is the dominat charecter ( leave it to the 'Y' chormosome !) . but what makes us unique is the social structure in which we live - that "can" give birth to equal rights , but alas that has not happened 'yet' in india but we are def inching towards it .

My 2 cents