GENDER REPRESENTATION IN SPORTS: A PERSPECTIVE THROUGH INDIAN SPORTS FILMS

Resumo

Gender representation in sports is one of the main concerns in the present scenario. It is a fact is that gender inequality can be spotted in the very established sports arena also. The women sports players in India have to face many challenges to cross the borders of glory. Firstly, most of the family are conservative and their traditional way of thinking about women playing sports and they lack supports and encouragement from the family and society. From the government. The social taboo on women in participation in sports is still there in many parts of the country. And if she succeeds in the sports, the next steps maybe they have to face are gender inequalities and discriminations in the name of caste, creed, and sex. The Indian film industry is one of the largest cinema hubs in the world and the Indian film stars are renowned for the astounding performances in Indian films and foreign films.  Apart from the dominated Bollywood films, there are many regional language films also across the country such as Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, and Marathi etc. Tamil film industry centered at Chennai, Tamil Nadu is India’s second-largest film industry in terms of films produced and distributed. The study titled “Gender representation in Sports: A Perspective through Indian Sports Films” aims at how gender and women are portrayed in Indian regional sports films aka Tamil films and how they act and survive the social stigma and stereotypes and succeed in their goal. Both films discuss the plights and problems facing women sports players while succeeding in their goal and pointing fingers towards the representation of women in society. The study also explores the representation of gender in films and women empowerment through sports. A mixed methodology is used for the study. Qualitative scene-by-scene analysis and quantitative content analysis with coding are applied. Structuralist Film Theory and Feminist Film Theory were used for the theoretical framework.