Sugar and spice: The golden age of the Hindi movie vamps, 1960s-1970s

Abstract

In commercial Hindi cinema, representations of female identity have always been closely linked with female sexuality. Often considered a fairly accurate barometer of sexual mores in the country (Dasgupta, 1996), Hindi cinema has provided measured representations of ‘acceptable’ femininity in India. Early films produced by the Bombay film industry tackled progressive social issues (Vasudevan, 1989), and dealt with female sexuality in a similarly progressive way. However, after the slow erosion of the ‘social films’ of the 1950s, the spectre of female ‘eye candy’ soon arose. This particular vision of female sexuality was embodied in the character of the Hindi movie ‘vamp’. Vamps were women who provided sensuality to the film’s narrative, and reached their zenith in the 1960s and 1970s, when almost all commercial Hindi films negotiated with sexuality through their lens.