Exploring Intersections Of Gender And Urbanicity In Life In A Metro

Abstract

This paper attempts to study the effect and counter-effect of urbanicity on gender and sexuality on the cityscapes, especially how the metropolitan spaces contribute in making, highlighting or challenging the popular notions of gender in Hindi Cinema. The paper relies for this study primarily on Anurag Basu’s Life in a Metro, which depicts the lives of nine individuals in Mumbai and the place. The characters strive throughout the movie to balance their sexuality with the reality of life, presented through the urban space of the metropolitan. Rahul’s flat signifies a free space where guilt-free interactions take place but the liberty of the space is diluted through the presence of a married person (Shikha’s husband). Similarly, the space of Shikha’s home is a feminine space which depicts loyalty and faith, which seems to grow hostile with Shikha’s increasing interactions with Aakash and makes her daughter sick. Likewise different settings of space and characters are studied closely to portray that certain metropolitan spaces act as a character working marital relations and supports pre-marital and extra-marital affairs. Metropolitan spaces, including time and destiny, are therefore often gendered, working against or in support of a particular gender or sexuality. The paper will be divided into three parts; first dealing with the effect of cityscapes on gender, second dealing with the counter-effect of sexuality on urban space and the third dealing with the nature of compromise that occurs between these spaces. This paper will aid in understanding the relation of cityscapes with gender and cinematic presentations of pleasure and its intersections with gender.