Indian Cinema has not only been a commercial entertainment industry but the mirror of its culture, inclusive of contemporary issues faced by one and all, particularly a certain repressed class of women. However, the industry has been devoid of the realization that the way its movies are being shown, was normalizing the biases attached to its subjects, in the society. How issues related to prostitution have been depicted in films are reflective of and even constructive of India’s socio-legal treatment of women in context of the profession of sex workers. The central theme of this chapter is Indian Cinema’s depiction of the plight of sex workers and stigma surrounding them in various facets from1950s to 2020s. They had never been seen as human but rather vessels for discarding lust of men. Society has even refused them entry into religious places, social occasions, and educational places. This paper explores films as popular jurisprudential texts of society and how they serve as social agents constructing their own socio-legal treatment of the subjects while portraying and commenting on the already existing ones. The popularity of these movies has significantly risen over the years. How the legal construct of the country has transformed in response to them is part of the subject matter this paper shall explore.

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Do Sex Workers Have Human Rights? Looking Through the Lens of Indian Cinema

  • Purvi Pokhariyal,
  • Mitsu Parikh,
  • Shivani Bhardwaj

摘要

Indian Cinema has not only been a commercial entertainment industry but the mirror of its culture, inclusive of contemporary issues faced by one and all, particularly a certain repressed class of women. However, the industry has been devoid of the realization that the way its movies are being shown, was normalizing the biases attached to its subjects, in the society. How issues related to prostitution have been depicted in films are reflective of and even constructive of India’s socio-legal treatment of women in context of the profession of sex workers. The central theme of this chapter is Indian Cinema’s depiction of the plight of sex workers and stigma surrounding them in various facets from1950s to 2020s. They had never been seen as human but rather vessels for discarding lust of men. Society has even refused them entry into religious places, social occasions, and educational places. This paper explores films as popular jurisprudential texts of society and how they serve as social agents constructing their own socio-legal treatment of the subjects while portraying and commenting on the already existing ones. The popularity of these movies has significantly risen over the years. How the legal construct of the country has transformed in response to them is part of the subject matter this paper shall explore.