ABSTRACT:
Cinema! The spectacular innovation has cut into human life with a successful rapidity never experienced in the past. In the daily life of capitalist towns, the cinema has become just such an integral part of life. The passion for the cinema is rooted in the desire for distraction, the desire to see something new and improbable, to laugh and to cry, not at your own, but at other people's misfortunes. The cinema satisfies these demands in a very direct, visual, picturesque, and vital way. That is why the audience bears such a grateful love to the cinema, that inexhaustible font of impressions and emotions (Lev Trotsky, 1923). This popular media of mass consumption plays a key role in molding opinions, constructing images and reinforcing dominant cultural values. The paper deals with representations of women characters in mainstream Indian movies. The paper begins with a discussion on the field of feminist film criticism and how mainstream Indian Cinema and Tamil cinema, in particular, has restricted itself to defined sketches of womanhood. It also undertakes some glimpses from popular films to analyze this process of stereotyping – considering that reality in mainstream cinema is constructed from the male view point. A section is devoted to discussion on the contemporary realistic brand of cinema and its understanding of women. Here only the female lead characters of the films are taken into consideration for this paper. In conclusion, a debate ensues on whether mainstream Indian cinema has been successful in portraying women of different shades in a society dominated by patriarchal values.
Cite this article:
Prabakaran V. Breaking Stereotypes and Female Representation In Mainstream Indian-Tamil Films. Res. J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 2018; 9(1): 281-284. doi: 10.5958/2321-5828.2018.00051.7
Cite(Electronic):
Prabakaran V. Breaking Stereotypes and Female Representation In Mainstream Indian-Tamil Films. Res. J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 2018; 9(1): 281-284. doi: 10.5958/2321-5828.2018.00051.7 Available on: https://www.rjhssonline.com/AbstractView.aspx?PID=2018-9-1-51