This story is from November 22, 2015

‘No Nargis, Madhubala among today’s female actors’

Women Actors Reduced To Eye-Candy, Says Basu
‘No Nargis, Madhubala among today’s female actors’
Panaji: Despite Bollywood drifting towards women-centric films like Queen and Piku, none of the actresses today have attained the kind of status that Nargis and Madhubala had back in their day, critically-acclaimed filmmakers AnuragBasu and SudhirMishra opined.
The stalwarts were speaking at a knowledge series session on female protagonists in Bollywood on Saturday at National Film Development Corporation’s (NFDC) ‘Film Bazaar’ along with actor Vani Tripathi Tikoo.
The session was moderated by senior film critic, Namrata Joshi.
Basu blamed the reason for women actors being reduced to mere eye-candy on the regressive thinking of certain filmmakers, and screenplay writers’ preconceived notions about women. “There are filmmakers who base their cinema on the way they themselves see women. Also, writers who have a very reserved view of women end up portraying those kinds on characters on the silver screen,” he said.
Tikoo said that liberation, or the idea of being bold, is dangerous territory for filmmakers to move into. She, however, maintained that films that thrive on female characters must be made, marketed and encouraged.
Mishra on the other hand, said, “Mainstreaming and non-mainstreaming has become a discriminatory trend in films these days. If an actress makes her mark in the industry with a feminist film, she has to play a role subservient to the male star in order to get into mainstream cinema,” he said. He further added that floodgates have opened for more films with strong female protagonists in order to break the stereotype and allow actresses to stand for themselves.
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