Ruling the Men’s Den: crime, outrage, and indian women gang leaders

Abstract

The Hindi film industry, popularly known as Bollywood, is predominantly a male‐dominated industry. However, evidence of gradual social transformation and the industry’s consequent need to develop new cinema has provided some innovative screen space for female artists. Until recently, Hindi cinema has tended to portray women with seductive yet graceful beauty, and many female characters personify endurance and patience as well as a high degree of emotional control. Historically, Indian cinema does not have its fair share of movies that are women oriented (Gokulsing and Dissanayake, 1998) and in part this is because Indian literature does not supply enough female protagonists or antagonists to be adapted to cinema. Influenced by this bleak legacy, screenwriters have also avoided women‐centered narratives. Characters written for women in the early days of Indian cinema were either too hazy to make any social or even commercial impact or were restricted to portrayals as “attractive companions,” which resulted in the woman’s frailty and behavioral patterns being presented in sharp contrast to the depiction of masculine virility (Chakravorty, 2002). However, there have been some modest attempts to create female characters that include some of the social attributes of female liberation through the introduction of rebellious characters in social dramas and crime films (Datta, 2000). This chapter analyzes the role of female gangsters and villains in Indian films by discussing the construction of these characters, the social reasons for the origin of such roles, and the development of the role of female gangsters through a comparative analysis against Indian male gangsters.