4 - Cinematic Representation of Female Bodies in Bangladesh: From Sacred to Wicked?

This paper analyses the discursive representations of female bodies in Bangladesh popular cinema during the late 1990s and early 2000s, a golden period for the national film industry. The cinema industry responded to the interplay between Islam and global modernity by constructing and deconstructing women in the postcolonial nation-state. I aim to identify how cinema employed the classic binary of ‘sacred-wicked’ to represent women’s bodies. Popular cinema continued positioning female bodies as ‘sacred’, stressing the patriotic and Islamic values of religious Bangladeshi mothers on screen, while also portraying women with ‘wicked’ bodies. The latter’s roles in cinema range from sexualized sirens to villainous daughters-in-law who create havoc inside the family. The good (religious) mother represent Islamicization, while the evil women are shown as ‘Western/Westernized’, whose bodies are ‘de-Islamicized’ and otherized.

This sacred/wicked binary became more complex, ambiguous and problematic when related to the transformation of women with the onset of the ‘national modernity’ phase in Bangladesh. I aim to investigate such ambiguities in the ambivalent representations of women in Bangladesh popular cinema at a critical juncture: the beginning of the 21st century. By dissecting representative film texts and genres of popular cinema in late 1990s-early 2000s, this paper uncovers how globalisation, commercialisation and the empowerment of women in Bangladesh society led the film industry to reconceptualize the representations of women and to accommodate ambivalent, almost ‘un-womanly’ roles on screen.