Lives of the women of the street have been recounted in myriad Hindi films but it is a subject that the dream merchants never seem to get weary of. Joining the long list of films based on sex-workers will be ‘Laaga Chunari Mein Daag’ that is slated for Friday release.
The film, being produced by Bollywood’s biggest dream merchants Yash Raj Films, hopes to push the envelope further by portraying the life of a small town girl who willingly chooses sex trade as a career.
Hindi cinema’s interpretation of the so-called oldest profession in the world has been ever evolving. While earliest films like ‘Pyaasa’ painted a picture of abject tragedy, films like ‘Umrao Jaan’, ‘Pakeezah’ and ‘Devdas’ depicted courtesans as women with refined sense of music and poetry. Their exploitation was often glossed over and they came across as tragic, gorgeous women of taste who sacrificed their lives for the men they loved.
Shoma A. Chatterji, author of ‘Woman: A Study of the Portrayal of Women in Indian Cinema’, explains that the virtual domination of male filmmakers in Bollywood then had meant that patriarchy and markets dictated how sex-workers and the politics of prostitution are projected in the Hindi film industry.
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