One of the landmark readings of gendered representation in art, film and media, initiated by John Berger in 1973, emphasized the possible and diverse ‘ways of seeing’, and illustrated how images of men and women operate via different registers. While images of men – generally – exude power, and are ‘capable of doing to you or for you’ things that matter, in comparison, a woman’s presence is marked as the recipient through her ‘gestures, […] expressions, […] surroundings […]’. In short, she does not seem to be an everyday flesh-and-blood person, particularly in publicity images; rather, she often appears as a fragment of (masculine) imagination, through inexplicable sensations such as ‘heat or smell or aura’.1 For instance, Figs. 1–5 illustrate how the woman is framed in a predictable manner – note the ways in which she tilts her head, glances out of the frame, and yet invites the viewer, by means of her physical gestures, to look at her. Indeed, most often presented as an abstract emotion, she is usually placed against an undefined backdrop; therefore, while men ‘act’, women merely ‘appear’. A comparative set of images show the manner in which men carry their heads high, and often hold a cigarette or a gun to arouse a sense of their strength and authority (see Figs. 6–10).
Fig. 11My earlier study of the 1950s–’60s Hindi film publicity images – those created particularly for display, pleasure and projection in the theatre – indicates the gendered prototypes as well as their varying nature.2 Such publicity images, popularly known as ‘lobby cards’, are customarily about 10 × 18 inches (about 25 × 45 centimetres), and include enticing stills from the films. 
Fig. 12These images recurrently underscore the genre, and highlight the face of the star. A focused study of ‘lobby cards’ also draws our attention to the art of such material, alongside its complex relation with other visual material like the art on posters and in songbooks.3 Additionally, the history of exhibition in India, the sites of the film theatres, and accounts of the film industry, genre and stardom become crucial.4 
Fig. 13In this essay I consider the making of the ‘couple’ and the disparate kinds of presentation of men and women through ‘lobby cards’. For instance, while the portraits of women are generally presented in three-quarter profile, their passive gestures, ‘look-at-me’ poses, and uses of ‘soft light’ etc., are remarkably different from the production of images of men, which project power through their postures, the objects they hold, the sharp light on their faces and so on, and thereby construct them as active agents of the situation. Images of the woman in action, which hint at her character, are not all together absent, as in the picture of Kalpana Kartik from Baazi, 1951 (Fig. 11), 
Fig. 14in which she looks straight into the camera and smiles, or the image of Geeta Bali from Usha Kiron,1952 (Fig. 12) in which she dons a cap and looks confidently at the viewer. Nonetheless, certain repetitive gestures – like pointing a finger at the face (Fig. 13 and Fig. 14) – and the sameness of poses is telling and problematical. Typically, placed against a flat or undefined background, women lower their heads, while men hold theirs high (Fig. 15 and Fig. 16). Likewise, while using props or items of costume like a hat (Fig. 17 and Fig. 18), the man may also hold a gun, but the woman continues to point to her face, and in her case the hat does not induce a memory of the action genre. In fact, a woman in trousers, blouse and hat is still merely an enticing picture, while a man wearing a hat and holding a gun seems to be in the midst of action.
Laura Mulvey, in her seminal article titled ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1975), problematizes practices of looking, and stresses the modes through which a woman may be reduced to an ‘image’, while a man appears as the ‘bearer of the look’. She writes,5
[i]n a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. […] In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.
In response to Mulvey’s critical writing, Steve Neale reconsidered issues of gender and masculinity, and in his article titled ‘Masculinity as Spectacle’ (1983) introduced some pioneering debates on masculinity, sexuality and the problems of binary readings.6 Nevertheless, careful interpretation of theories and materials such as these reveal that, while the framings of men and women are not fixed, certain representations yet remain dominant, and continue to influence the all-embracing and popular man/woman genre of Indian cinema, namely, melodrama.7
Moreover, as we analyse film narrative, the melodramatic mode and Hindi cinema in relation to its publicity images, our readings are problematized through the construction and circulation of non-diegetic material such as lobby cards, which often carry re-created or re-staged scenes.8 First, ground-breaking studies of melodramatic films in India and the West comment on the subversive potential of the genre, and describe melodrama as an ‘allegory’ of social transformations, and a mode via which the crises of modernizing societies may be explored. In particular, the Hollywood melodramas of Douglas Sirk, and their range of ‘excesses’, have generated considerable scholarly interest.9 However, the ‘melodramatic mode’ has been revisited by feminist scholars like Christine Gledhill, Mary Anne Doane and others, who re-read popular melodramas as ‘women’s films’.10 Second, while Ravi Vasudevan has written extensively on the melodramatic mode and structure of Indian films of the 1950s,11Madhava Prasad’s seminal project on ‘feudal family romances’ demonstrates how Hindi melodramas of the 1960s highlight a ‘desire for modernity’ alongside a disavowal of the emergent capitalism of the period.12 Prasad specifically writes about the ‘prohibition on the private’ (and the kiss). However, Sangita Gopal’s work proposes that intimacies are often performed in the song sequences (or are ‘sealed with a song’) in popular films.13 Moinak Biswas particularly elaborates on how ‘heterosexual couple formation’ lies at the heart of such narratives regarding ‘our’ evolving modernities.14 The 20th-century, English-educated, urban Indian middle-classes formed the new patriarchy, and became the vanguard of Indian modernity, thereby producing ruptures within the old moral order. This shift, nevertheless, involved its own complications and dilemmas as reflected in the plot of the cult novel Devdas (1917) by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, in which the hero struggles with his father’s dictum as against a new worldview.15 Furthermore, since patriarchy gives fixity to gender roles, it continuously differentiates between the old order and newer ones, and specifically between the new-woman (navina) and the old-woman (prachina).16
Building on such readings, I contend that the processes of formation of the ‘couple’ become a product principally of the male imagination, and enclose the ‘feminine’ carefully and warily. See, for example, Fig. 19 and Fig. 20, in which the male performer either clutches the woman’s face or grabs her hair, thereby signifying a sexual tension between the two. Such de-textualized and extra-diegetic publicity material, circulating precipitously outside the filmic story, in the theatre lobby during film shows, underlines the desire for an autonomous and a formidable world controlled by the alpha-male. Figs. 21–24, in contrast, mirror the ways in which men hold women in a protective embrace, and re-frame her through his gaze. The heterosexual ‘cinematic’ couples offer romantic ideals with regard to intimacy, physicality and relationships; and in the process they produce fantasies of romantic love, of performing bodies, locations, situations, gestures, which are primarily spearheaded by men.17 Thus, men act as active agents and as protagonists, and are often placed ‘on the top’ in such romantic situations. Such poses – of ‘men on top’ – are also played out in the publicity images of Shin Shinaki Boobla Boo, 1952 (Fig. 25), and Noor Mahal, 1954 (Fig. 26), in which either the woman is pushing the man back, or is unaware of his advances.18Intriguingly, the postures and framing of the so-called romantic situations are remarkably similar to the gestures, which suggest sexual violence.
Fig. 27Truly, a thorough study of the processes of ‘couple formation’ shows how Hindi film publicity material draws heavily from the culturally permissible ways of romance. For example, in Fig. 19 and Fig. 20, the male figure is clearly the mediator of the scene; likewise, in Fig. 21 and Fig. 23, men hold women gingerly, and in comparable ways. I argue that such publicity images bestow fixity and generate a wider acceptance of such notions because of the ways in which they circulate outside the filmic texts. Briefly, these images ‘re-frame’ the man and the woman in a specific fashion, and in due course produce coded fantasies regarding intimacy. For instance, these images construct codes of embrace, and those of the (absent) kiss, as evident in Figs. 19, 21, 23 above, and in Fig. 27.
While such formations alter considerably over the decades, alongside the reorganization of genres, the 1950s melodramas clearly inaugurate the modern romantic couple and certain prototypes. For example, Barsaat (dir. Raj Kapoor, 1949) produced the spectacular frame of the (urbane) man holding the (rustic) woman on one hand, and his musical instrument on the other, which was reinforced through publicity images (see Fig. 23 – albeit with erroneous spellings). In the film, Raj Kapoor produced three lengthy sequences to make connections between music and melodrama. In a particular scene, the female protagonist, upon hearing the sound of violin played by the male protagonist, rushes out of her house. She then rows across a lake (while the music plays forcefully in the background), and after she reaches his house, she darts into the room, and embraces him passionately. Kapoor cuts both the music and the action with a top-angle shot of Pran (played by Kapoor) holding Reshma (Nargis) with one hand, and the violin in the other. This shot eventually became the proverbial R.K. Studios emblem, which has circulated in a decontextualized manner in the public domain over the years.
The representation of the symbolic order through the cinematic idiom, and its reflection in the publicity imagery, on the other hand, indicate further complications. In short, while the systematic order presents men as the source of power, it must be noted that both men and women are interpellated within the realm of patriarchy. Hence, while women perform femininity, men struggle to exude masculinity (Fig. 28). Furthermore, neither femininity nor masculinity is monolithic. Family and other institutions, alongside the growth of capitalism, have bestowed powerful positions to men, but not without inner contradictions.19 For instance, as evident from Fig. 29 and Fig. 30, the formation of the couple is often threatened by, and thus visually juxtaposed with, the formidable villain (holding a knife or a gun); or monitored by the domineering (sometimes divine) father figure, re-framing the couple through his controlling gaze.
Fig. 31I argue that such ‘intertextual and extratextual’ materials underscore ideas of love and romance, and relocate the man as the governing figure. The poses in the images, as mentioned earlier, show the ‘man on top’, grasping precariously at the hapless woman; although – now and then – such framings are intercepted by images of couples holding each other or sometimes looking away from each other (Fig. 31). In Fig. 32, the woman appears to be on an equal footing with the man – embracing him affectionately and perhaps singing a song of love; 
Fig. 32similarly, in Fig. 33, the female figure is embracing the man back (even though the picture appears slightly ‘posed’). Moreover, in Fig. 34, involving the 1949 Mehboob cult film Andaz, there is clear tension between the couple, which signposts an incomplete formation.20 Andaz was a film about the new nation, its conflicts and contestations, narrated through the ‘woman question’. Furthermore, Andaz introduced specific signs of modernity, the concerns connected to new India. The female protagonist, played by Nargis, for example, wears pants, rides horses, plays the piano, befriends men and speaks to them freely. Paul Willeman discusses how the film presents a larger anxiety, that is, the weakening of the feudal order, and the rise of a new class, portrayed by Dilip (Dilip Kumar). Hence, even when it appears to be a romantic melodrama, establishing some of the most powerful stars of the period, the film in reality deals with the question of social change and tackles India’s multiple processes of modernization, and the function of women in it. Additionally, note Fig. 35 that presents a rather resolute woman (Suraiya), head tilted firmly, which effectively leaves the man’s hand frozen in inaction.21
Fig. 36Such deviations, certainly, point at the pitfalls of monolithic and unproblematic readings. I also propose that, at the centre of such making is the star body – exemplified by the face of the star – which appears alluring, expectant, well-composed and desirable. This essay demonstrates the manner in which cinema and its publicity forms manufacture the couple, the norms of affect and public expectations. An earlier analysis alludes to the complexities of such figurations, as well as inherent and deep-seated conflicts of modernity and masculinity.22 For instance, in Fig. 36 – a lobby card for the 1952 film Diwana – note the expressions of the actors and the obscure shadow (of doubt) on their faces. The incompleteness of these configurations is correspondingly apparent through the narratives of the films and popular discourses published in magazines, and specifically through such interplay between dominant and residual imageries
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