Women Wooed by the West

There are two types of women in classic Bollywood films: the Good Girl and the Bad Girl. The Good Girl is virtuous, chaste, and possesses traditional Indian values. In the end, Good Girl is happily married off to Handsome Hero. On the other hand, the Bad Girl is outspoken, often smokes and drinks and dances like her hips are on fire. You can be sure that at the end of the film Bad Girl will either a) die, b) develop cirrhosis of the liver (or some other vampish disease) and die, or c) bleed to death in some way, alone and unloved. What is interesting is that over the last few decades, film critics have drawn the parallel between good/bad and east/west. The bad girls were often depicted as having been corrupted by the allegedly loose morals of western society. Therefore, early Bollywood film served to warn women of the dangers of getting wooed by the wicked western ways!