In 2013, Sharmila Tagore1 called Bollywood ‘[n]o country for old women’.1 Like all older women, aging female actors of Bollywood too have experienced what Susan Sontag calls ‘the double standard of aging’: at older ages women are viewed as being too old to play central figures unlike men who play lead roles for a longer time. Aging reduces women’s suitability as ‘heroines’ in the film industry. The article (a) provides a critical genealogy of female aging in the world of Indian cinema, which was born in the colonial era and (b) assesses the representation of older women in more recent Bollywood movies.
BeugnetM. (2006). Screening the old: Femininity as old age in contemporary French cinema. Studies in the Literary Imagination, 39(2), 1–20.
2.
BeugnetM. (2012). Encoding loss: Corporeality and (im)materiality in the age of the digital. Studies in French Cinema, 12(3), 257–271. 10.1386/sfc.12.3.257_1
3.
BhasinS. (2019, August30). ‘Tawaifs of Awadh’: The first women of Hindi cinema. The Hindu. https://www.thehindu.com/society/history-and-culture/tawaifs-of-awadh-the-first-women-of-hindi-cinema/article29233983.ece#:~:text=Tawaifs%2C%20the%20Awadhi%20term%20for,good%20taste%20and%20high%20fashion.
4.
BhattacharyaP. (2013, December7). Bollywood ‘no country for old women’, says Sharmila Tagore. The Daily Star. https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bollywood-no-country-for-old-women-says-sharmila-tagore
5.
CalasantiT., & KingN. (2015). Intersectionality and age. In TwiggJ. & MartinW. (Eds.), Routledge handbook of cultural gerontology (pp. 193–200). Routledge.
6.
ChatterjeeP. (1993). The nation and its fragments: Colonial and postcolonial histories. Princeton University Press.
7.
ChiversS. (2011). The silvering screen: Old Age and disability in cinema. University of Toronto Press.
8.
ChopraS. (2021). Shyam Benegal: Filmmaker and philosopher. Bloomsbury.
9.
CohenL. (2002). No aging in India: Modernity, senility and the family. Oxford University Press.
10.
CowaloosurV. (2020). Review of dancing with the nation: Courtesans in Bombay cinema. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 56(5), 729–730. 10.1080/17449855.2020.1762969
11.
GangarA. (2006). The cinema of prayoga. In ButlerB. & MirzaK. (Eds.), Cinema of prayoga: Indian experimental film & video 1913–2006 (pp. 9–26). no.w.here.
12.
GhoshA. (2019). Curiosity, consent and desire in Masaan (2015), Pink (2016), Lipstick under my burkha (2016) and Veere di wedding (2018). In SenguptaS., RoyS., & PurkayasthaS. (Eds.), ‘Bad women’ of Bombay films: Studies in desire and anxiety (pp. 331–343). Palgrave Macmillan.
13.
GopalS. (2010). Sentimental symptoms: The films of Karan Johar and Bombay cinema. In MehtaR. B. & PandharipandeR. V. (Eds.), Bollywood and globalisation: Indian popular cinema, nation, and diaspora (pp. 15–34). Anthem Press.
14.
GopinathP., & SundarP. (2020). Introduction: Masculinities. South Asian Popular Culture, 18(1), 1–10. 10.1080/14746689.2020.1736819
15.
KulkarniD. (2016, August4). Female actors and Hindi cinema: Whose voice is it, anyway. Feminism in India. https://feminisminindia.com/2016/08/04/female-actors-given-voice-hindi-cinema/
16.
LambS. (2000). White saris and sweet mangoes: Aging, gender and body in north India. University of California Press.
17.
MarksonE. (2003). The female aging body through film. In FairclothC. (Ed.), Aging bodies: Images and everyday experiences (pp. 77–102). AltaMira Press.
18.
MohantyP. (2019, October28). Bollywood has always been ageist: Saand Ki Aankh just proves that. Arre. https://www.arre.co.in/bollywood/bollywood-has-always-been-ageist-saand-ki-aankh-just-proves-that/
NeedhamA. D. (2013). ‘Performing wom[e]n’ and the gendered national imagination: An exploration of Shyam Benegal’s Sardari Begum, South Asian Review, 34(3), 53–70. 10.1080/02759527.2013.11932940
21.
OldenburgV. T. (1990). Lifestyle as resistance: The case of courtesans in Lucknow in India. Feminist Studies, 16(2), 259–287. 10.2307/3177850
22.
OldenburgV. T. (2002). Dowry murder: The imperial origins of a cultural crime. Oxford University Press.
23.
PandeM. (2019). The goddess of mean things: The mother-in-law in Hindi films. In SenguptaS., RoyS., & PurkayasthaS. (Eds.), ‘Bad women’ of Bombay films: Studies in desire and anxiety (pp. 63–71). Palgrave Macmillan. 10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_4
24.
RajaI. (2013). Contractarianism and the ethic of care in Indian fiction. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 36(1), 79–91. 10.1080/00856401.2012.731145
25.
RajadhyakshaA., & WillemenP. (1998). Encyclopaediaof Indian cinema. BFI Publishing & Oxford University Press.
26.
RamaswamyS. (2010). The goddess and the nation: Mapping Mother India. Duke University Press.
27.
SahaniA. (2018, January23). ‘Courtesans brought older aesthetic traditions to the new nation’ [an interview with Ruth Vanita]. The Indian Express. Retrieved August29, 2020, from https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/art-and-culture/courtesans-older-aesthetic-traditions-indian-hindi-cinema-5035186/
28.
SenM. (2010). ‘It’s all about loving your parents’: Liberalisation, Hindutva and Bollywood’s new fathers. In MehtaR. B. & PandharipandeR. V. (Eds.), Bollywood and globalization: Indian popular cinema, nation, and diaspora (pp. 145–168). Anthem Press.
29.
ShahP. (2011). Review of the goddess and the nation: Mapping mother India. American Anthropologist, 113(3), 529–530. 10.1111/j.1548-1433.2011.01365_19.x
30.
SontagS. (1972). The double standard of aging. In Saturday Review of the Society, September23, 29–38. NZ.org: Periodicals, Books and Authors. http://www.unz.org/Pub/SaturdayRev-1972sep23-00029
31.
SwinnenA. (2015). Ageing in film. In TwiggJ. & MartinW. (Eds.), Routledge handbook of cultural gerontology (pp. 69–76). Routledge.
32.
ThatraG. (2016). Contentious (socio-spatial) relations: Tawaifs and Congress house in contemporary Bombay/Mumbai. Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 23(2), 191–217. 10.1177/0971521516635307
33.
ThomsonR. G. (1997). Extraordinary bodies: Figuring physical disability in American culture and literature. Columbia University Press.
34.
VanitaR. (2012). Gender, sex, and the city: Urdu rekhti poetry in India, 17801870. Palgrave Macmillan. 10.1057/9781137016560
35.
VanitaR. (2017). Dancing with the Nation: Courtesans in Bombay Cinema. Speaking Tiger.
36.
VanitaR. (2019). Goddess, saint and journeying soul: Courtesans and religion in Bombay cinema (1939–2015). In SenguptaS., RoyS., & PurkayasthaS. (Eds.), ‘Bad women’ of Bombay films: Studies in desire and anxiety (pp. 113–130). Palgrave Macmillan.
37.
VasudevanR. (2011). The melodramatic public: Film form and spectatorship in Indian cinema. Palgrave Macmillan.
38.
VirdiJ. (2003). The cinematic imagination: Indian popular films as social history. Rutgers University Press.
