Feminine Abandon and the abducted Woman in post-Partition Shorey Comedies
Relocating to Bombay from Lahore after partition, the refugee filmmaker Roop Shorey made a series of romantic comedies in independent India starring his collaborator-wife Meena Shorey. In these films, Meena wrestled men, scaled walls and drove tractors, demonstrating a complete disregard for received ideas of femininity, which most crucially involved making a spectacle of herself. This paper reads Meena’s performance in a trilogy of romantic comedies, Ek Thi Larki (Once there was a girl, 1949), Dholak (Drumbeats, 1950) and Ek-Do- Teen (One Two Three, 1954) as a response to the gendered trauma of partition. Reconstituted as the runaway girl, Meena’s unruly guise shares an allusive relationship with a partition figure – the abducted woman. While the literal instances of abduction within these films provide occasion for adventure and humour, the feminine abandon of the Shorey heroine speaks eloquently of her historical underside.
Date:
15 November 2016, 14:00
Venue:
St Antony's College, 62 Woodstock Road OX2 6JF
Venue Details:
Fellows' Dining Room
Speaker:
Salma Siddique (Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies, Freie Universität Berlin)
Organising department:
Asian Studies Centre
Organiser contact email address:
asian@sant.ox.ac.uk
Booking required?:
Not required
Cost:
None
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Maxime Dargaud-Fons
