“Main Teri Dushman” : critiquing the patriarchic suppression of female identity through Sridevi.

• Main Author: Mohammed Shafie Haja Mohaideen.
• Other Authors: Brian Keith Bergen-Aurand
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/52184
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

“Sridevi” is one name that lingers in many of the actresses, actors and audiences’ heart due to her remarkable and unforgettable performances in the Indian cinema, predominantly in Bollywood and Kollywood. However, what is largely forgotten is Sridevi’s empowerment by her adherence to the patriarchal structure of Indian cinema. This paper would argue that Sridevi straddles binaries using her body to embody different patriarchal stereotypes only to subvert the very rules that govern her body within patriarchy. Her body becomes a site for the performance of different body types such as the disabled body, the queered body, and the combination of vamp and innocent qualities. This project investigates how Indian cinema looks at Sridevi and how what others have written about represention of women in Indian cinema applying Laura Mulvey’s and Claire Johnston’s notion of gaze and spectatorship. In doing so, I would also investigate how the Indian cinema avoids the ‘inclusion’ of the cinematic tools such as camera angles, costuming, and songs and dance sequences that are employed, to ‘manipulate’ or ‘dictate’ the way spectators look at her.