India Cabaret

In her contribution to She, the Inappropriate/d Other, a 1986–87 special issue of Discourse edited by Trinh T. Minh-ha, Mira Nair reflects on the questions that drove the making of India Cabaret, a film depicting the lives of cabaret dancers in Mumbai: “Why was I there? I wanted to tell a story that would go beyond the stereotypes in my society of ‘respectable’ women and ‘immoral’ women. What makes a woman considered one or the other? What are these distinctions based on, and in whose interests are they perpetuated?” Nair accords special attention to the tensions between the women’s daytime existence and their nighttime employment. As she puts it, the film is “about the unshakeable inviolability of double standards, of patriarchal values, of the strong conditioning of women never to question or challenge.”