The millennial woman in Bollywood : a new 'brand'? / Maithili Rao.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rao, Maithili, author.

Azmi, Shabana, author of foreword.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Millennialism and society.

East Indians in motion pictures.

Millennialism.

Women in motion pictures.

Motion picture industry--India--Mumbai.

Motion picture industry.

millenarianism.

India--Mumbai.

Place of Publication:

Oxford University Press 2023

Summary:

With the turn of the century, slowly a change began to come over the women in mainstream Bollywood films. The female lead shed-off her cardboard role of the beloved and gained complexity that reconciled career, ambition, and personal fulfillment, along with an assertion of the right to be feminine. The present work studies this shift and traces the emergence of a new Bollywood brand - the millennial woman - that took its cue from a new globalized India where the educated working woman became more self-assertive and unapologetic about her life choices. Rao argues that contemporary popular cinema has sensed a change in the zeitgeist and worked it into trusted formulaic stories in small safe doses so that the audience continue to take home a feel-good factor without feeling threatened by it. While the success of early films like 'Chandni Bar' (2001), 'Page 3' (2005), and 'Fashion' (2008) with female protagonists emboldened filmmakers and their financiers to venture into a territory previously considered box office poison, the reinvention of the classics by a band of subversive and irreverent filmmakers such as Anurag Kashyap and Tigmanshu Dhulia gave a hospitable home to the new woman in 'Dev D' (2009) and 'Saheb, Biwi aur Gangster' (2011). The feisty, independent, and sometimes confused young woman who is comfortable with her sexuality has made her way (and comfortably settled) into the modern romance-comedy as well. With films like 'Kahaani' (2012), 'Queen' (2014), and 'Mary Kom' (2014), that had women protagonists driving the plot, the reins have been handed over to the female lead. -- Publisher's website 20230814

Contents:

Foreword / Shabana Azmi

Preface - a New Brand?

Introduction: a Changing Ecosystem Births the Millennial Woman as a Brand

No Means No

Rom Com Revamped

Nonconformists are the New Cool

Woman the Hero

Woman at Work

Sisters Under the Hood

The Subversives

Subversion in Retro Mode

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

93-5497-459-7

93-5497-460-0