http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/movies/24chop.html?8hpib
Excerpts
Bollywood's Good Girls Learn to Be Bad
By ANUPAMA CHOPRA NY Times
MUMBAI
HALFWAY through "Aitraaz" ("Objection"), a Bollywood take on Barry
Levinson's "Disclosure," Sonia grabs hold of Raj. Once upon a time,
they were lovers. But when Sonia, an ambitious model, opted for an
abortion instead of child and marriage, Raj left her. Now she is his
boss. Sonia starts to undress him, whispering, "Show me you are an
animal." When he refuses and walks away, she screams: "I'm not asking
you to leave your wife. I just want a physical relationship. If I
don't have an objection, why should you?"
The actress Priyanka Chopra had a difficult time playing this scene. A
former Miss World, Ms. Chopra was a sophisticated, globally feted
celebrity and she had prepared for her role by studying the calculated
seductiveness of Sharon Stone in "Basic Instinct." But on the day that
scene was shot, Ms. Chopra broke down and cried. The directors,
brothers who go by the hyphenate Abbas-Mustan, had to spend a few
hours convincing her that she was only playing a character. Filming
didn't start until late afternoon.
Ms. Chopra wasn't just being dramatic. She is a Bollywood actress, and
as such, trained to play the role of a virginal glam-doll, not a
sexual aggressor. By tradition, a Bollywood heroine is a
one-dimensional creation who may wear eye-popping bustiers or writhe
passionately during a song in the rain. But she is unfailingly
virtuous. Whether girlfriend, wife or mother, she is the repository of
Indian moral values. In the ancient epic "Ramayana," the hero Lakshman
draws a furrow in the earth, the Line of Lakshman, which represents
the limits of proper feminine behavior, and requests that his
sister-in-law Sita not step outside it. As if heeding his exhortation,
Bollywood heroines have rarely stepped out of line, even for a kiss.
But a decade-long cultural churning has overturned stereotypes in
India. In 1991, the threat of fiscal collapse forced the government to
introduce wide-ranging economic reforms and allow multinational
corporations to operate in India. The same year, satellite television
arrived. Today, consumerism, globalization, the proliferation of
semiclad bodies in print and television, and the emergence of a more
worldly audience have redefined the boundaries of what is permissible.
Sex has been pulled out of the closet and actors have become more
willing to experiment with their images. The latest Bollywood heroines
seem to be taking a page out of Mae West's book: when they are good,
they are very good, but when they are bad, they're better.
Mallika Sherawat, 24, a statuesque actress, needed little convincing
to step out of the stereotype. Ms. Sherawat made her leading-lady
debut in 2003 with "Khwahish" ("Desire"), which grabbed headlines for
its 17 kisses. Her follow-up was even steamier. "Murder," released
last year, a rehash of Adrian Lyne's "Unfaithful," had her playing a
lonely housewife in Bangkok who has a passionate affair with an
ex-boyfriend. Ms. Sherawat pushed the edge of the sexual envelope as
far as the Indian Censor Board would allow. The lovemaking scenes
featured bare backs, cleavage and passionate kissing.
Bolder still was the idea that a respectable upper-middle-class woman
could have sexual desires and cheat on her husband - and get away with
it. "Murder" made back its investment, approximately $750,000, several
times over. Ashish Rajadhyaksha, a senior fellow at the
Bangalore-based Center for the Study of Culture and Society, said the
film established Ms. Sherawat as an Indian "postfeminist icon." The
self-anointed "kissing queen of India" now has bigger ambitions. She
plays an Indian princess in a coming Hong Kong movie, "The Myth,"
starring Jackie Chan. After making a splash on Mr. Chan's arm at the
Cannes Film Festival, she is, she says, negotiating with Creative
Artists Agency for representation.
Ms. Sherawat's journey from a traditional small-town nobody to an
international sex symbol is a modern-day fairy tale that has already
had an impact. (For Ms. Sherawat, it also has a downside: She says her
father refuses to speak her.) Film studios here in Mumbai are overrun
with starlets fiercely trading on their sexuality, and even
established actresses are now taking chances. In "Fida" ("Crazy"),
released last year, Kareena Kapoor played a scheming hedonist who
beguiles her besotted lover into robbing a bank for her. Ms. Kapoor, a
fourth-generation star, is Bollywood aristocracy. Her
great-grandfather Prithviraj Kapoor was a leading man in the 1940's,
and her grandfather (Raj Kapoor), parents, uncles and sister are
famous actors. There were audible gasps from audiences when her true
character was revealed with a dramatic flourish in "Fida": she steps
out of the shower with a man who is not her lover.
Heroines aren't just discovering sex, they are positively reveling in
bad behavior. In a forthcoming, still-untitled film, Sushmita Sen, a
former Miss Universe, plays a protagonist who "enjoys being negative,"
she said. "She cheats, lies, sleeps with men, even kills them and gets
away with it all. I want to give this bad woman a tremendous
conviction. You have to fear her."
...
The good-girl heroine isn't the only standard Bollywood type to be
transformed. The vamp, Hindi cinema's designated bad girl, was
traditionally just as important a part of the typology. She did things
that upright Indian girls weren't supposed to do - drink, smoke and
have sex - and was usually seen on the villain's arm in garish dens or
smoke-filled bars, wearing feather boas and revealing outfits. But in
the 70's, a slew of more Westernized actresses appropriated the vamp's
glamour for heroines by adopting more flashy clothes and more sexually
assertive body language. By the 80's the vamp had disappeared.
...
Interpreting the Hindi cinema heroine's latest avatar as a feminist,
however, may be stretching the truth a bit. Earlier films like
"Hunterwali" ("The Woman With a Whip," 1935) and "Amar Jyoti"
("Eternal Flame," 1936) featured more powerful female images - a
whip-wielding, crime-fighting action heroine, and a female pirate who
keeps men in captivity.
...
That's why most actresses are hedging their bets. Ms. Chopra got rave
reviews and awards in "Aitraaz," but she has followed up with
good-girl acts. "I'm not sure I can play such a sexually aggressive
character again," she says. "My family and friends were very shocked."
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