Nobody puts Rani in a corner
Making of the new Indian woman in Queen (2014)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12713582 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Anupama Arora (0009-0007-3350-4693, English and Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, North Dartmouth, MA, USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 145-157 |
| Publication date | 2019-05-04 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | South Asian Popular Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1474-6689 • E-ISSN: 1474-6697 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14746689.2019.1613783 |
| OpenAlex | W2946428022 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 9 |
| References cited | 9 |
Queen (dir. Vikas, 2014) is a coming-of-age Bollywood film that uses the travel trope to illustrate the female protagonist’s awakening. This article examines the journey and transition of Rani, a middle-class upper-caste Punjabi heterosexual Hindu Indian woman, into the ‘New Indian Woman’. Through its female protagonist, Queen offers an iteration and embodiment of the new Indian woman who emerged in the context of upheavals caused by India’s economic liberalization in 1991, one who came to be viewed simultaneously as a marker of modernity and the last bastion of India’s commitment to traditional values. Rani’s refashioned self carefully straddles tradition and modernity desired of the new woman in India. Organized around four interrelated sections, the essay traces Rani’s remaking into a new woman within the context of global travel, new kinship networks, assertion of desire and consumptive practices. Through Rani’s particular embodiment, we see how Bollywood’s new Indian woman can function as a strategy of containment whose object lessons on screen offer moral instruction in maintaining authentic Indian-ness even as economic and cultural markets open themselves up to women. With its possibilities and its limitations, Queen, along with a slew of other New Bollywood films, is symptomatic of a society in transition, one that continues to navigate the effects of changes set in motion since the early 1990s
Caste · Context (archaeology · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Queen (butterfly · Sociology · Subversion · Gender Studies · History · Law · South Asian Cinema and Culture · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · South Asian Studies and Diaspora
Voices in Performance
Hungama ho gaya ? (An uproar has happened?)
Identity tensions of women with two leadership positions in India
Being single, being ‘wrong’
Her trip abroad
The provincial Flâneuse
The “New” Rebel Woman of Bollywood Films and the Fate of Her Rebellion
Changing Stories, Changing Lives
The (im)possibility of decolonising gender in South Asia
| Citations per year | 1.29 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2019 - 2026 (8) |
| Highly cited | No |