Bollywood
Issue in Focus: The Script of Love
The discursive power vested in audio-visual media can prove to be emancipatory if it seeks to re-write the scripts of love, to expand it to include various subjectivities, disturb the patriarchal gendered dynamics that it is based on by introducing a story that allows the audience to imagine it in various different ways.
By Anannya Chatterjee
December 3, 2018
Movies, Music and Conversations on Consent
Recently, social media was abuzz with Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”, a song and video that sparked many discussions on the…
By Manak Matiyani
February 1, 2014
PDA: Slippery Slope from Law to Moral Policing
Sexuality is taboo in our context, and expressions of it publicly or even in the home setting outside the bedroom, especially by those who are not in ‘legitimate’ relationships ‘alarm the modesty’ and are generally considered anti-culture or simply categorised as Western concepts.
By Yoshita Srivastava
September 1, 2020
Playlist: Separation and Longing in Bollywood Movies
Watch some popular Bollywood music videos about separated lovers across the decades.
By Ramya Anand
September 15, 2016
Queering the Narrative: The Evolution of LGBTQ+ Themes in Hindi Cinema
Despite the progress made, Hindi cinema still faces challenges in accurately representing the diversity of LGBTQ+ experiences. Critiques have been raised regarding the tendency to prioritize cisgender, upper-class narratives.
By Taarina Therese Chandiramani
Review: Risk-averse Bollywood Tackles Taboo Issues
Several recent mainstream Hindi films have dealt with issues of sexuality and gender not usually discussed in the intended audience’s drawing rooms.
By Shaifali Agrawal
Review: What a controversial book and blockbuster tell us about male infertility
What does Tanu Weds Manu Returns (2015) have in common with Perumal Murugan’s controversial book, One Part Woman (2013)? Stories on emasculation…
By Shweta Krishnan
Review: What Does Clothing Have to do with Sexuality in the Media?
Attire and sexuality in the common imagination and approach as represented (and also as received) by the mainstream media tell us a lot about prevailing attitudes to both. Advertisements bombard us with all kinds of representations, negative and positive, of human sexuality, sexual expression and desire. In the creation and marketing of attire and fashion, there is a great awareness of sexual buy-in or rejection by the market – that’s us.
By Shikha Aleya
Review: What Sex Work Taught Feminism: Tales of the Night Fairies
Note: Five sex workers – four women and one man – along with the filmmaker/narrator embark on a journey of storytelling. Shohini Ghosh’s Tales of the Night Fairies explores the power of collective organising and resistance while reflecting upon contemporary debates around sex work. The labyrinthine city of Kolkata (Calcutta) forms the backdrop for personal and musical journeys.
By Moulshri Mohan
Some Contemporary Hindi Films that Changed the Way We Perceive Sexuality
When representing sexuality, these stories went beyond dramatic and one-dimensional representations of sex and sexual orientation.
By Breakthrough Media Team
TARSHI at the Movies!
We decided to watch Animal and OMG 2 and found that both the movies bring up many of the issues that we work on.
By TARSHI
March 18, 2024
The Construction of Women as Spaces
This article explores how women are constructed as a ‘space’ manufactured by men to seek comfort, but void of having any active agency or participation in that space itself. I seek to bring this out in this article by drawing a parallel between the nineteenth century ‘Bharat Mata’ (Mother India) and the depiction of the twenty-first century ‘heroine’ in Bollywood movies.
By Tanvi Chattoraj
April 1, 2022
The Dirty Picture
The Dirty Picture, directed by Milan Luthria (2011) has ushered in various debates around sexuality through its representation of sexuality…
By Sujatha Subramanian
October 1, 2014
The Editorial: Fiction and Sexuality
For many of us, it was fiction that fed our souls as children, and now as adults who are still ‘growing up’, it feeds us still. Fiction makes, remakes and unmakes us who walk in worlds of the imagination. It liberates us to dream various versions of ourselves and others into being as the articles in this month’s In Plainspeak eloquently reveal.
By TARSHI
September 15, 2017
The Love Laws: Lessons from Shah Rukh Khan and Others
“Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how…
By Shweta Krishnan
February 1, 2018