Where Labour is Performed: The Public/Private Dichotomy and the Politics of Stigma in Bhumika and Mandi

This chapter uses the intersectional framework to study Shyam Benegal’s Bhumika (1977) and Mandi (1983), both of which deal with women’s performance of stigmatized labour in the public marketplace. While Bhumika, through its exploration of the personal life of an actress, foregrounds the public-private dichotomy in the relationship of ‘work’ with ‘respectability’, Mandi, with its focus on a house of prostitutes, problematizes the very distinction between domestic space and the ‘public’ marketplace in the performance of sexual labour. At the same time, both films also engage with the definition of ‘work’ itself by juxtaposing its economic exchange value with its potential for independent creative self-expression. And once again, while Bhumika shows the impossibility of any reconciliation between the two, Mandi appears to playfully celebrate the creativity that underpins sex-work. How are these differences to be understood? Are they merely a reflection of the very different source texts from which these films are adapted? Or can these differences be examined within a comparative framework to provide an insight into the ‘feminist’ vision of Benegal as a filmmaker? This chapter attempts to answer these questions through an analysis of the political economy that structures and shapes the performance of labour in the two films.