Alexandra Delaney-Bhattacharya

• South Asian popular culture
• Gender studies
• Film studies
• Whiteness studies
• Bollywood film

• South Asian popular culture
• Bollywood film
• Gender studies

• MSc Poverty and International Development, University of Manchester 

An exploration of the evolving representation of white femininity in Bollywood film

The construct of the white woman as promiscuous runs deep in the Indian imagination.

There is a historical trajectory of Othering any woman or group of women that challenge or threaten Hindu patriarchal ideology, with white women as a specific group culturally Othered from the colonial period onwards through theatre, literature, and film. From the earliest silent Bombay-produced films, white femininity has experienced a complex relationship with Bollywood film.

White femininity in 1960’s Bollywood was synonymous with the Vamp figure. This femme-fatale represented “the most visible intrusion of the West into the cinematic space of Indian films, signifying an unrestrained sexuality and license given to vices ‘unknown’ to Indian women” (Mazumdar 2007:85).

These licentious characters were played by Indian or Anglo-Indian actresses assuming temporal white subjectivities to satiate the need for the promiscuity associated with white western femininity. Economic liberalisation in the 1990’s brought changes to consumption patterns and a spawning of the advertising industry (Dwyer 2010).

These changes manifest in the type and content of films being created with increased internationalization and newfound prosperity contributing to the consumer-driven culture being represented (Kaur 2002).

White women, actresses from Australia and Europe, have returned to Bollywood films, no longer framed only reductionist or essentialist ways.

Alexandra's research project focuses on the representation of white femininity in Bollywood film following economic liberalisation that occurred in India from the early 1990s. This involves defining white femininity in Bollywood and examining the different and multifaceted ways in which it is represented. 

• Rajinder Dudrah
• John Mercer 

Publications

• From Saira to Scouser: The evolving representation of white femininity in popular Hindi cinema
• ‘Representation in Bollywood’ Working Paper, Journal for South Asian Popular Culture, 17(3), 22nd October 2019 - Co-editor of the Representation in Bollywood Dossier published in the Journal for South Asian Popular Culture, 17(3), 19th October 2019

Papers presented at the following conferences

• Euro-Bollywood Panel, The 11th International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) University of Leiden, 16 -19 July 2019
• Representation in Bollywood Cinema Symposium, Birmingham City University School of Media, Thursday 31st May 2018
• Sex, Gender, and Sexuality: Postgraduate Perspectives, University of Leicester, 29th July 2017
• Futures Past: South Asia Now and Then, University of Leeds, 22nd May 2017