Womanhood in Nepali cinema

Over past decades, Nepali cinema has witnessed a remarkable transformation in the way women are portrayed through films. Contemporary Nepali movies depict women as more liberated, confident, and career oriented.

The ideal of archetypal womanhood has been celebrated theme for kollywood. However, it’s also obvious that the construction of female characters in Nepali films has changed over these decades and has been influenced by changing culture. We can say that, female characterization in Nepali cinemas have, indeed, tried to move on with dominant trend and culture of their times.

Cursory look at the history of Nepali cinema from 1970s to the early years of the twenty-first century compress the changing roles and different portrayal of Nepali women. The films released in the late-twentieth century limited the roles of women within home and kitchen and essentially stereotyped an ‘ideal’ woman who was willing to sacrifice anything for her family pride .Conversely, by the beginning of twenty-first century there have been sudden shifts towards portraying independent female characters who are decisive, risk-taking and willing to overcome traditional grounds and redefine their role and position in society.

While in the 1990s and early 2000s the tendency was to present women in traditional fashion that was largely home-centered, in today’s context one can see the feminine voice with changing portrayals. Nepali movies can be classified under different periodical development that tends to depict varying position of women and represent their voice. Historically, Nepali cinema present women within a certain structure of representation that belongs to the idealized values of womanhood, limited within the boundary of stereotypes, maintaining established patriarchal values. Then, in 1980–90s family dramas were hodge-podge as they often demonstrated contrasting picture of womanhood and depicted women in multiple ways. Those days there were increasing trends to present women in confines of household in a village or semi-urbane joint family. Most of the times the story centered around female character who played key role in solving the familial problems but her image was overvalued on account of being an ideal spouse, daughter or daughter-in-law. Take the story of some Neplai movie “Chino”, “Lahure”, “Saino” the main protagonist is usually a household woman who finds pleasure in caring children, cooking and performing other household chores and ensuring that all the ceremonies of the family are well performed.

During late 90s, there was the beginning of the action era, an era that brought a drastic change in presentation of womanhood. Kollywood ignored, presenting faithful and timid women whose character would attract their male counterpart. Rather, Neplai heroines were reduced to being a glamorous part of movie; dancing around trees, being molest, kidnapped or raped and ultimately rescued by male character.

Similarly, another representation of the changing image of women would be the way distinction is shown between, the good girl and bad girl, ideal and freak out. The freak out or modern girl always revolts, shows attitude, often presented in sophisticated dress, and was punished for her bad deeds.

In course of time, especially after 2010, the comparison between good girl and bad girl disappeared. The heroine speaks as boldly and acts as provocatively as the bad girl of old time. Unlike old movies, instead of being punished for such bold exposition they manage to achieve goals because of same decisiveness and bold character. Some critics view this change as an effect of globalization where modern audience demanded heroines to become more bold or proactive than real woman. She might be shown dumping some Alfa male character or plotting entire game, deceiving her male counterparts, role as played by Piranha Karki in “Sadsang” and “Chakka panja”.

Some remarkable changes in the women’s typical characters have been evident in the films lately. Nisha Adhakiri’s “Padmini” and “Sungava” is a fresh change because instead of casting her as a bad girl the story focuses on biological problem of her sexuality, which she accepts confidently, despite social rejection. This has become flexible partly with the entry of female subjectivity in movies, encouraged by changing lifestyle; new directors acknowledge such changing culture and portray that reality in their fiction. This is opportunity for those female expecting to follow different paths away from the typical stereotypes.

The change in portrayal of womanhood has not been a sudden one but happened at a snail’s pace. Even though the characterization ignores stereotypes, complete paradigm shift is yet to happen. The roles assigned to heroines still carry the stereotypes.