Transnational Publics, Nationalist Ideology and the ‘Woman Question’ in Hindi Cinema: The Film Queen (2014)

Abstract

ABSTRACTRecent scholarship has pointed to a new obsession in the male-dominated Bollywood industry—of engaging with the status of the urban, middle-class, post-colonial woman. Using the example of the 2014 film Queen, I discuss this recent trend towards ostensible female empowerment. In the film, the main character, Rani, is a middle-class woman seeking freedom from tradition—from man and marriage—by going on her honeymoon alone. As she plays the tourist in Europe, the viewer is led to believe that she has come into her own, finding her self and her purpose. I argue against this reading, contending instead that constructing Rani's empowerment abroad is in fact a medium for re-conceptualising private and public spheres and reinstitutionalising indigenous patriarchies transnationally, for even abroad Rani is not free. She is both an agent for and a victim of reconstituting middle-class, nationalist ideologies. For this reason alone, the film is about subjection rather than empowerment.