Bollywood Broads: Reconstructing the Femme Fatale in Popular Indian Film

• Main Author: Moss, Erin Zimmerman
• Format: Others
• Published: VCU Scholars Compass 2008
• Subjects: Femme Fatale; Film Studies; Gender; Goddess; Hinduism; Hybridity; India; Nautch; Postcolonialsim; Sexuality; Southeast Asia; Women's Studies; Film Noir; Feminism; Cultural Studies; Bollywood; Arts and Humanities; Theatre and Performance Studies
• Online Access: http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/1509; http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2508&context=etd

Mumbai is currently one of the most prolific and lucrative film centers in the world. Its production of the "Bollywood" popular film has attracted billions in audience members outside the nation of India, many of whom do not belong to Indian culture in the Diaspora. The significance of this influence draws from the cross-cultural borrowings increasingly present in Bollywood cinema. The advent of Western investment in the production center has coincided with the diversification of the standard Bollywood film from "masala" musical to more genre specific action, horror and even romantic comedy musical. Within this genre expansion, a nod to a classic—and specifically Western—cinema form has occurred. By borrowing the Femme Fatale from Film Noir and recreating her as the City Siren, Bollywood has achieved liberation for the heroine and from cultural emasculation in one. In this liberation, Bollywood has taken the Western implication of Eastern femininity and used a Western film form to turn that implication on its head. They have declared that the East may be masculine or feminine, easily utilizing either trait, as it is now fluent in both.