2024/01/01 by Sony Jalarajan Raj, Adith K. Suresh · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Cinema and Media Studies #Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism #South Asian Cinema and Culture
paper · pdf · doi:10.4000/ges.4585
openalex publication_date 2024/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
The influence of film noir is reflected in Indian popular cinema through narratives that portray the aesthetics of crime-infested, morally deranged and extremely violent urban cityscapes where characters deal with the anxieties of a modern world. The representation of women in such narratives presents a context that challenges the way female characters are imagined and stereotyped in traditional Indian film narratives. This paper examines the social, cultural and historical construction of female identity in Indian cinema through the lens of female gangsters and film noir. The noir space in Bollywood cinematic narratives is dominated by hypermasculine, morally elusive, and existentially indifferent villains/anti-hero personas. However, by portraying the role of gangsters and criminals, women also occupy the underworlds of crime and action. They violate the norms of culturally assigned gender performance by fundamentally disrupting the entertainment value associated with the traditional picturization of the female identity. This article argues that the noir female portrayals that disrupt the symbiotic relationships between conventional gender politics and cultural norms emerge as a new category of transgressive figures that walk the thin line of moral dichotomies. They subvert their existing identities to create a state of gendered unpredictability by replacing male subjective positions.