Between the Family and Politics: Female Politicians as Media Objects in Bollywood Films

Of late, researchers have examined the stereotyping of female politicians in entertainment media as a serious problem in several democratic societies. Despite chauvinism and stereotyping, the entertainment industries find female politicians attractive content producers, which guarantee tangible profit, as audiences are interested in learning about the life stories of female politicians. This article employs feminist political economy of communication to analyse exposé of female politicians in three Bollywood chick flick movies featuring lead characters in important political positions. This study finds that chick flicks—movies centred on attractive female lead characters and typically marketed to women—serve as a mechanism to sell commercial entertainment products to both female and male audiences. I argue that Bollywood’s political movies are marketed through a focus on bodily attributes of female politicians that helps perpetuate patriarchal ideology in which women are passive homemakers and effectively domesticated and excluded from public sphere.

Girl Talk: The Postmodern Female Voice in Chick Flicks

In this final chapter, I revisit my discussion of the female voice in mainstream cinema to explore the aural representation of women in contemporary chick flicks. In examining this category of films, it is clear they have some evolutionary links with the screwball comedy genre discussed in Chapter 1. This is evident in the female characters we encounter in modern chick flicks who, like their screwball predecessors, are often strong, confident and quick-witted, engaging in verbal battles to achieve their ‘happily ever after’ either with their lead male character or with fellow female characters, or sometimes with both.

Talkies, Road Movies and Chick Flicks

The representation of gender in film remains an intensely debated topic, particularly in academic considerations of US mainstream cinema where it is often perceived as perpetuating rigid, binary views of gender, and reinforcing patriarchal, dominant notions of masculinity and femininity. While previous scholarly discussion has focused on visual or narrative portrayals of gender, this book considers the ways that film sound – music, voice, sound effects and silence – is used to represent gender. Taking a socio-historical approach, Heidi Wilkins investigates a range of popular US genres including screwball comedy, the road movie and chick flicks to explore the ways that film sound can reinforce traditional assumptions about masculinity and femininity, impart ambivalent meanings to them, or even challenge and subvert the notion of gender itself. Case studies include Mildred Pierce, Aliens and The Deer Hunter.