Abstract:
This paper examines some of the popular songs of the Indian Film Industry where the roles
of men and women are fixed stereotypically. Some of these lyrics are written by legendary
Indian lyricists such as Gulzar (Sampooran Singh Kalra), Jatin-Lalit and so on. Despite of
having clear evidences of gender biased language, almost all of these songs became
exceedingly popular throughout the decades and the legacy of using such stereotyped lyrics
is going on in the present times as well. The paper goes through some of those lyrics and
explores the representations of men and women in them. If analyzed carefully, one would
realize that in more or less every song, women are portrayed doing household chores, getting
dolled up and waiting for their men, while men are mostly represented as women’s saviors
and voyeurs. With references to the cultural theorists such as Morag Shiach and Naomi Wolf,
this paper deals with the complex question of gender representations in Bollywood songs and
shows how such lyrics have the capacity to influence the listeners as well as having an
impact on their ideas eventually. While searching for the reasons behind these redundant
stereotypes, the paper also delves into feminist theorists like Gilbert and Gubar to show the
impact of the imbalance in male-femalelyricists ratio in the industry. The purpose of this
paper is thus twofold; firstly it exhibits that Bollywood industry has still been using the same
stereotypical framework throughout the last 100 years and secondly itanalyzes the gender
insensitive traits that are working as a perpetuating tool of patriarchy
