This dissertation focuses on a content analysis through which representation of women in Bollywood cinema is examined. Bollywood has been a major point of reference for Indian culture in the last century and will undoubtedly persist for years to come. To an extent, Bollywood has shaped the way in which people read Indian culture as well as reflecting India's events, traditions, values and customs by the mere fact that it is a pervasive and inescapable force in Indian society. Women have been and to an extent still are represented as mere wallpaper in Bollywood films. Issues around gender, gender-based violence, femininity, women's rights and sexuality (outside of being a sexpot) are often ignored and in most cases, subverted. Feminist discourse in the west has taken this up in relation to Hollywood (cf. Mulvey, 1975; Kuhn, 1984; Kaplan, 2000) however, discussions of gender in eastern cinema has yet to be fully developed. Even though there is a body of work in this field (cf. Butalia, 1984; Datta, 2000) there is room for far more in-depth investigation. This study explores the ways in which women are represented and misrepresented in Bollywood cinema by looking at the main features which make Bollywood what it is: the stock characters, song and dance routines and elaborate dress. Each of these elements is discussed by using one or two films to illustrate the formula that is used in Bollywood cinema to undermine women. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

This thesis proposes that the merging of the theories of ‘accented’ cinema and postcolonial feminisms allows for the establishment of a theoretical framework for the analysis of (what will be argued for) an emerging postcolonial feminist film practice. In An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (2001), Hamid Naficy argues that even though the experiences of diaspora and exile differ from one person to the next, films produced by diasporic filmmakers exhibit similarities at various levels. These similarities, he says, arise as a result of a tension between a very distinct connection to the native country and the need to conform to the host society in which these filmmakers now live. Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta are women filmmakers of the Indian diaspora whose films depict Indian women – in comparison with their popular cinematic construction - in unconventional and controversial ways. These characters, at some crucial point in the films, transgress their oppressive nationalist representation through the reclaiming of their bodies and sexual identities. This similarity of construction in Nair and Mehta’s female protagonists, as a result, facilitates a filtering of postcolonial feminisms throughout the narrative of their films. Even though the postcolonial feminist writings of Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1991, 1994, 1997) and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1990, 1994, 1996, 1999) do not relate directly to the study of film or cinematic practices, their works, specifically those regarding the construction, maintenance and perpetuation of nation and nationalism in postcolonial narratives, serve as a specifically gender-focused appropriation of Naficy’s theories. Mohanty and Spivak’s arguments surrounding the use of text and, particularly, narrative as tools for the representation and empowerment of Third world women, women of colour and subaltern women, work toward illustrating how postcolonial feminisms articulate through a specific moment of ‘accented’ filmmaking: that of women filmmakers of the Indian diaspora. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2004.