Police: Zinda Laash, Representation of Sex Workers in Bollywood.
Duration: 00:03:32; Aspect Ratio: 1.333:1; Hue: 115.163; Saturation: 0.014; Lightness: 0.265; Volume: 0.200; Cuts per Minute: 11.028; Words per Minute: 73.522
Summary: Given the legal ambiguity of prostitution in India, it is not surprising that the police attitude towards sex workers is derogatory and hugely moralistic. The treatment of sex workers is extremely harsh and insensitive. However, this ensures that the sympathy of the viewers are firmly with the sex workers, as the police and law is often shown to be corrupt and abusing their power.
Market (dir: Prakash Shaw, 2003), revolves around the life of a young Muslim girl from Hyderabad, Muskaan Bano (Manisha Koirala) who is married off at the age of 15 to a Dubai based sheikh. He divorces her after raping her for seven days, and her father dies fighting for justice for his daughter. The film takes a seven year leap, and Muskaan is now in a brothel in Hyderabad. She then moves to Mumbai, and is transformed from a small town prostitute to a high class call girl with the help of a couple of friends. She then goes to Dubai, locates the sheikh, who was responsible for ruining her life, and plans revenge. The plot is trite, and somehow implies that young girls from a lower section of society must always be forcefully driven into prostitution. They rarely have any other avenues of livelihood.
Mumbai, India
What's your name?
Muskaan.
What?
Muskaan Bano.
Where do you stay?
I am new in the city.
Where have you come from?
Hyderabad.
Why?
For work.
She tells lies like a true Mumbaiite!
What work do do you? What work did you do in Hyderabad? Why are you silent, speak up??
Prostitution!! I am a whore! A whore!! That is what you wanted to hear right?
Bollywood
Dubai
Hyderabad
Manisha Koirala
Market
Mumbai
Muslim Women
Prostitution
Sex workers
police.
zinda laash
Various
Move up. What's your name?
- Shantaram Joshi.
Joshi...
Chandni Bar (dir: Madhur Bhandarkar, 2001)was a hard hitting film about Mumbai's murky underbelly. Prostitution here was masked behind bar dancers. Mumtaz (Tabu) follows the predictable narrative of young abandoned girl brought to the city by a corrupt uncle who forces her to become a bar dancer in a beer bar, called Chandni Bar. These girls are basically both sex workers as well small time dancers. Mumataz has a love affair with a gangster, who eventually marries her. She leaves the bar, to make a better life for herself with her husband and two kids. Tragedy strikes them again, when her husband is killed. She is left helpless, resorting to prostitution to save her son who had taken to crime. Her daughter ends up becoming a dancer at the same bar where Mumtaz had started. This film was highly acclaimed critically for its somewhat realistic portrayal of bar dancers, however Madhur Bhandarkar's later films all fall into very similar narratives of controversial professions, lead female heroine and a doomed ending.
Mumbai, India
Bar Dancers
Beer
Chandni Bar
Gangster
Madhur Bhandarkar
Mumbai
National Awards
Tabu
police.
prostitute
sex worker
underworld
zinda laash
What's your name?
- Vikas Sapte
Where have you come from?
- Pune.
What do you do?
- We are professors.
You are professors? What do you teach your students? How to get drunk and watch bar dancers??
- We had gone for the first time.
Have we come from Alibag?
- No sir...
Write the report!
- Please try to understand. Don't spoil our reputation.
When you go to bars your reputation does not get spoilt?
Chandni Bar (dir: Madhur Bhandarkar, 2001)was a hard hitting film about Mumbai's murky underbelly. Prostitution here was masked behind bar dancers. Mumtaz (Tabu) follows the predictable narrative of young abandoned girl brought to the city by the corrupt uncle who forces her to become a bar dancer in a beer bar, called Chandni Bar. These girls are basically both sex workers as well small time dancers. Mumataz has a love affair with a gangster, who eventually marries her. She leaves the bar, to make a better life for herself with her husband and two kids. Tragedy strikes them again, when her husband is killed. She is left helpless, resorting to prostitution to save her son who had taken to crime. Her daughter ends up becoming a dancer at the same bar where Mumtaz had started. This film was highly acclaimed critically for its somewhat realistic portrayal of bar dancers, however Madhur Bhandarkar's later films all fall into very similar narratives of controversial professions, lead female heroine and a doomed ending.
Mumbai, India
Sir, my son!
What happened? Whats the problem?
Abhay is my son, Sir.
Stand outside.
I think you have arrested him by mistake.
We have not made any mistake, your son has. He was threatening people for money over the phone.
He's not like that Sir, he is a studious boy.
What studies? His father was a gangster and you work in a beer bar. Your son will study??
Shut up and get out.
Bar Dancers
Beer
Chandni Bar
Gangster
Madhur Bhandarkar
Mumbai
National Awards
Tabu
police.
prostitute
sex worker
underworld
zinda laash
Bollywood
Dubai
Hyderabad
Hyderabad, India
Manisha Koirala
Market
Market (dir: Prakash Shaw, 2003), revolves around the life of a young Muslim girl from Hyderabad, Muskaan Bano (Manisha Koirala) who is married off at the age of 15 to a Dubai based sheikh. He divorces her after raping her for seven days, and her father dies fighting for justice for his daughter. The film takes a seven year leap, and Muskaan is now in a brothel in Hyderabad. She then moves to Mumbai, and is transformed from a small town prostitute to a high class call girl with the help of a couple of friends. She then goes to Dubai, locates the sheikh, who was responsible for ruining her life, and plans revenge. The plot is trite, and somehow implies that young girls from a lower section of society must always be forcefully driven into prostitution. They rarely have any other avenues of livelihood.
Mumbai
Muslim Women
Prostitution
Sex workers
The girl is beautiful. Is she your sister? She is captured in a brothel? You want to get her out? But why? What use is it? She works in a brothel. Where will you run from the truth? Even if you get her married, she will not be happy. She needs a man every night, that too, four five. One man cannot keep her happy. Understood?
police.
zinda laash
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