Spaces of Her Own: Agency in Cinematic Narratives of Urban Women
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.67431/r0hnpw24Keywords:
Spatiality, Love, Modern Woman, City, Situatedness, Habitus, Spots of TimeAbstract
A cultural shift in the Hindi film industry is particularly signified through the progression that is witnessed in the nature of the female roles in mainstream cinema as well as independent cinema. Narratives forwarded by female voice and perspective are continuously being produced, that indeed presents a positive way forward in representing their hopes and desires. But the critical junctures of access, provision, rights, and desires are still fraught with inequalities which reflect the aspect of gender hierarchy in domestic, professional, and public spaces. In this paper, positionality of the women characters is read through the spaces they inhabit in Hindi films such as Wake Up Sid (2009), Ship of Theseus (2013), Piku (2015), and Tumhari Sulu (2017). In these films, urban environment and its structures intersect with female spatiality as the characters jettison certain ideologies and responsibilities to foster a feminine will to find happiness and comfort. The narratives here cede everyday victories to the female characters as they attempt to shape the space that resonates their subjectivity. The paper explores a certain facet of representation that deals with women in love with their space over the narratives of struggle, tension, and violence, that generally define female oriented films.
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