Female-Star-Authorship across South Asia: Genres and controversy on Pakistani and Indian Screens

Abstract

ABSTRACT If women’s angry controversies with oppressive systems have been central to feminist consciousness-raising, expressions of systemic female indignation have tended to be marginalized or suppressed in the bourgeois female-and-family-centered “Socials” born of Pakistani and Indian national cinema cultures in the 1950’s through 1970’s. Turning to mainstream cinema that responds to feminist mobilization, this article excavates the reflexive role taken by female-star-directors of postcolonial South Asia in unsettling dominant narratives of family and state by way of working paradoxically through their own star identifications with domestic women in social film traditions. Illuminating a hitherto unexplored industrial genealogy of female authorship across South Asia, this study relates star-director-producer Shamim Ara (1942–2016) from the Lahore film industry (Pakistan) to star-director Aparna Sen (1945-) from the Kolkata film industry (India). My argument is that, despite contextual differences, these stars as ambivalent performative “authors” inhabit both cinematic and extra-cinematic media (television, magazines) to rearrange the generic worlds of their fans and produce desire for improper controversies. I examine these intertextual politics of female-star-authorship through the lenses of two entertainment films: Shamim Ara’s Action Heroine film Lady Smuggler (1987) and Aparna Sen’s Horror Comedy The Jewelry Box (2013)