Med 5 Cw Task 12

The text that I have chosen as a historical text to focus on is ‘Mother India’. Mother India was released in 1957 and was directed by Mehboob Kahn. To give a brief overview of what ‘Mother India’ is all about, or what themes revolve around the movie are themes such as, Feminism, rights, and poverty, again it can also be said that in this movie the representation of gender is seen greatly too.

First of all, looking at how this is similar to my text we can say that in ‘Mother India’ the main female protagonist (Nargis) in the movie named Radha is the only female figure that is been portrayed to be hard working and is doing cheap labour, for example working on the farms with her sons. We can compare this to my text ‘Provoked’ and say that it is similar to my text because Aishwarya Rai goes to jail and is working there. The reason why we can say this is similar is because we would normally associate the men’s to commit murder and go to jail, however there is a role reversal here.

Focusing on the gender roles here a lot can be said. Nargis (Radha) has brought out the femininity in this movie and gave a new light to women’s. During the early days women’s were seen as ‘Sex objects’ and were seen to be looked at, as Laura Mulvey had quoted. However, looking art ‘Mother India’ it shows a new view of females. In this movie we see Nargis continuously working hard on the farms trying to get rid of her debts. We can easily link this back to ‘Provoked’ as looking at ‘Provoked’ Naveen was seen to be a very abusive husband that used to come home late and drunk, and Aishwarya was seen as the typical housewife cooking and cleaning and taking care of her children. Once she goes into jail and receives her rights we see Aishwarya in a new form. So altogether it can be argued that ‘Mother India’ had brought the new generation of females as she was seen to be the ‘Breadwinner’, thus t it links the same with ‘Provoked’.

Furthermore, the movie ‘Mother India’ looks a lot at issues such as poverty and nation. This was a typical problem in the early days in India, as they used to do farming they very much relied on the weather for their crops to grow and make money in that process. The men’s in this movie are seen to be very laid back and relaxed as they are very much just after their money, which again shows men to be very selfish and greedy. Looking at today’s generation females are now seen to be very independent and active in their own ways. They are no longer dependant on men’s to earn and bring the money home, as they earn themselves now. So it can be easily argued that since the early days femininity has changed a lot.