Bollywood Images: The illusions and realities of arranged marriages, weddings, dowries, and attitudes toward the girl child in the lives of women in India.

Abstract

My intent is to explore three Bollywood films and the depictions of Indian life that they offer, especially as they relate to attitudes toward women and girls. The ideals held up within each film will be discussed side by side with the images that each presents, then compared and contrasted with the current realities of life for these women and their daughters-looking especially at those involving the abilities of women to choose their husbands, the high cost of weddings and/or dowries, and the all-too-frequent violence inflicted on women and girls in India in the way of dowry-related cruelty, torture and sometimes death.