{"id":9617,"date":"2025-01-11T18:01:36","date_gmt":"2025-01-11T12:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/?p=9617"},"modified":"2025-01-11T18:01:36","modified_gmt":"2025-01-11T12:31:36","slug":"raj-kapoor-and-the-male-gaze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/raj-kapoor-and-the-male-gaze\/","title":{"rendered":"Raj Kapoor and the Male Gaze"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Raj

Raj Kapoor<\/p><\/div>\n

Raj Kapoor stepped into the world of cinema as producer, director and actor with Aag <\/em>(1948). He was 24 when he founded RK Films. At that time, the concept of \u2018male gaze\u2019 did not exist.<\/p>\n

\u2018Male gaze\u2019 is a term coined by Laura Mulvey in her seminal work, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema<\/em>, published in Screen<\/em> in 1975. According to Mulvey, \u00a0a viewing of a series of feature films made by male directors and their technical crew, also composed mainly of men, would reveal that women characters within the films are designed to cater to male sexual desires. The camera is transformed into a voyeur, essentially male, that focuses on the woman\u2019s body in a way that becomes a source for the visual pleasure of men.<\/p>\n

When we look back at the films of Raj Kapoor, we not only see the replication of the Laura Mulvey theory in his earlier films, but we discover the evolution of Kapoor as a producer-director in his use of the \u2018male gaze\u2019 for the female characters in his films.<\/p>\n

In the sixteen films that Kapoor and Nargis<\/a> worked together as an on-screen couple, there was a magic chemistry that lit up the screen almost every time. Juxtaposed against the tramp-like wanderer that Kapoor is in most of these films, Nargis, whether playing a trained and practising lawyer in Awara,<\/em> or the rustic beauty in Barsaat<\/em>, was portrayed with dignity.<\/p>\n

Kapoor’s character in Shree 420<\/em> represents the common man lost in a world dominated by the rich and famous. This role, in an amazingly dizzy combination of comedy and drama, is unforgettable. Vidya, the young woman he falls in love with, is presented as the epitome of Indian female goodness, inner beauty, and purity. Memorable is the scene when Vidya visits the casino along with Raj and is publicly humiliated by Maya (Nadira). She begins to cry quietly, while Raj remains silent. It is a wonderful scene, brilliantly acted and executed.<\/p>\n

\"Shree

Nadira, Raj Kapoor and Nargis in Shree 420<\/em>. Standing beside Raj Kapoor is music director Jaikishan<\/p><\/div>\n

There was absolutely no attempt to use the cinematic presence of Nargis as a titillating object of sensuality to whet the sexual appetites of a male audience. Her last appearance in an RK film was a very brief cameo in Jagte Raho <\/em>in which she offers some drinking water to a very thirsty Kapoor who has spent an eventful night looking for some water to drink.<\/p>\n

\"Jagte

She offers some drinking water to a very thirsty Kapoor (Jagte Raho<\/em>)<\/p><\/div>\n

Nargis\u2019s entire screen image was carefully designed by Kapoor himself. He styled her look from his personal perception of what defined a beautiful woman. Her hair is mostly short, framing her slightly long face, captured beautifully on camera that gives it a touch of the surreal. In the first part of Mera Naam Joker,<\/em> we see a younger version of the Joker having a crush on one of his teachers (Simi), who always wore white.\u00a0This formed the basic model not only of Nargis\u2019 screen image in RK films but also the public image of Raj Kapoor\u2019s wife Krishna who was always draped in white sari and white blouse, decent, reticent and dignified.<\/p>\n

Nargis in all Raj Kapoor films<\/a> was seen as pristine, highlighted as a beautiful woman through clever backlighting by his cinematographer. With few exceptions, she represented a visual purity. This posed a striking contrast with the Chaplinesque image of the ‘vagabond’ hero which is the English translation of the word \u2018awara\u2019. In the long dream sequence in Awara<\/em><\/a>, however, we find Nargis and Raj Kapoor both wearing Western costumes of glamour and glitter. The posters show her in larger images than the image of Raj Kapoor.<\/p>\n

\"Awara

Awara<\/em> poster – Nargis’s image is larger than that of Raj Kapoor (Pic: SMM Ausaja Archives)<\/p><\/div>\n

According to Mulvey, visual media reduces female characters with virtues and aspirations into mere \u2018objects\u2019 of aesthetic value.<\/p>\n

Once Nargis walked out of Raj Kapoor\u2019s films and life, Kapoor changed the leading lady images in his films featuring other heroines like Padmini (Jis<\/em> Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai<\/em>), directed by his cameraman Radhu Karmakar, Vyjayantimala (Sanga<\/em>m), Zeenat Aman (Satyam Shivam Sundaram<\/em>), Padmini Kolhapure (Prem Rog<\/em>), Mandakini (Ram Teri Ganga Maili<\/em>) Dimple Kapadia (Bobb<\/em>y) and Zeba Bakhtiar (Henna). <\/em>His scripts gave the leading female characters a lot of flesh in terms of the roles, but much more in terms of using them brazenly as titillating objects of cinema.\u00a0 Most of the time, these women were shown as helpless victims of a patriarchal society. In terms of their cinematic presence, they were merrily turned into \u2018objects\u2019 of display and titillation. In other words, one may conclude that Raj Kapoor\u2019s vision of his celluloid woman changed dramatically after Nargis stepped out of the RK camp. It fits more and more into Laura Mulvey\u2019s theory of the male gaze through his later films.<\/p>\n

Raj Kapoor\u2019s sudden shift in his cinematic perspective of women was roundly criticized by other filmmakers and admirers though audience tastes had changed radically over time. Special mention must be made about how Padmini was presented as a voluptuous woman in Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai<\/em> with more body than mind or spirit. This phase continued to dominate the leading ladies of his films. Consider the image of Vyjayantimala in Sangam<\/em> where she does wear the sari very gracefully but when the newly married pair travel abroad, we see her in a skin-tight costume singing and dancing to the seductive number \u2018Main kaa karuun Ram mujhe buddha mil gaya<\/em>.<\/em>\u2019<\/p>\n

Kapoor did not make the women in Mera Naam Joker<\/em> the object of a voyeuristic camera probably because it was a semi-autobiographical film said to be inspired by Charlie Chaplin\u2019s Limelight.<\/em><\/p>\n

In Satyam Shivam Sundaram<\/em>, though Roopa (Zeenat Aman) covers half her face with her ghunghat<\/em> as it is scarred, the rest of her body is turned into an \u2018object\u2019 of the camera, her ghagra sometimes reaching up to her thighs, a lot of her cleavage visible above her short choli.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Satyam

Shashi Kapoor and Zeenat Aman in Satyam Shivam Sundaram<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

In Bobby<\/em> and Prem Rog<\/em>, where Rishi Kapoor played the male lead, Raj Kapoor took great care to focus on social evils such as the caste-class divide and widow remarriage respectively but did not present the leading ladies as \u2018bodies\u2019 than as \u2018minds.\u2019 Was it because the father in Raj Kapoor took precedence over the actor-producer, who did not want to expose his son to the body of a young woman?<\/p>\n

Probably not, since his youngest son was the hero in Ram Teri Ganga Maili<\/em> where Kapoor was roundly criticized for having shot Mandakini draped in a white sari without a blouse bathing under a waterfall.<\/p>\n

Nargis, through her screen image in RK films, drew a bold line of difference when she left the RK fold. \u00a0The other leading ladies who walked in, represented \u00a0women as the \u2018object; where the hero\u2019s ultimate role was to \u2018rescue\u2019 these damsels in distress.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Click Raj Kapoor@100<\/a><\/h2>\n

for Critiques, Reviews, Interviews<\/h2>\n

\u2014 The Centenary Tribute Series<\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Raj<\/a><\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Raj Kapoor’s portrayal of women in his films evolved from respectfully depicting Nargis to later adopting a more sexualized ‘male gaze’ approach after Nargis’s departure, writes Shoma A Chatterji<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":580,"featured_media":9631,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[424,2593],"tags":[1048,1051,1049,1047,1050,2228,2613],"class_list":["post-9617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indian-cinema-retrospectives","category-raj-kapoor-centenary","tag-nargis-and-raj-kapoor","tag-nargis-and-raj-kapoor-movies","tag-nargis-raj-kapoor","tag-raj-kapoor","tag-raj-kapoor-nargis","tag-shashi-kapoor","tag-zeenat-aman"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/580"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9617"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9622,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9617\/revisions\/9622"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}