Construction of Gendered Realities through Cinema - Shyam Nair (1324110)

Introduction:

Immanuel Kant suggested a radical notion of the dichotomy of reality in his work on transcendental aesthetics. According to Kant we can never experience reality, rather we have access only to our perception of reality. Kant followed Hume in believing that man’s ‘knowledge’ is necessarily limited and distorted, because it is mediated by the senses

The dichotomy that this understanding generates is that between “Phenomena” (which constitute the immanent world of common experience) and “Noumena” (which constitute a transcendental world to which we have no empirical access, which is reality.) The dichotomy is of importance to the study of the construction gender in a phallogocentric system of meaning making.

Cinema is a medium that has had a stronghold over the Indian population for the longest time. This visual medium surrounds individuals and create a unified common experience of the world, which becomes the perspective lens that people use to view reality.

The male language that structures cinema will be studied in detail in this paper through a critical analysis of the Malayalam movie Pokkiri Raja directed by Vyshak. The reason for the selection of this movie is because of the evident nature of the construction of gender power asymmetry in the movie and due to the popularity it enjoyed. The movie was a blockbuster in 2010 and has been dubbed to Tamil (Raja Pokiri Raja) and remade in Hindi (Boss).

The paper will conduct an in depth analysis of the scenes where the female lead appears in the film and study the manner in which the woman has been objectified by this medium of communication.

Theoretical Framework:

Jacques Lacan in ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function I’ suggests that a child undergoes a process of identification during the Imaginary stage, which transfers her/him from the Real to the Symbolic. The Gaze is a psychoanalytical term to describe the anxious state that comes with the awareness that one can be viewed. The psychological effect is that the subject loses a degree of autonomy upon realizing that he or she is a visible object. 

The Symbolic Order is phallocentric and hence the gaze that constructs the individual is the male gaze and the female gaze is negated. In her 1975 essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", Laura Mulvey introduced the second-wave feminist concept of "male gaze" as a feature of gender power asymmetry in film.  Mulvey stated that women were objectified in film because heterosexual men were in control of the camera.

Film and all other visual medium of representation that influence our perceptions of reality are constructed in a male language where myths have been essentialised and women, objectified.

Scene1; Actor sees actress for the first time:

The actor is travelling in a bus along with his new neighbor who is engrossed in constructing a novel around the life of the young actor. The novelist suggests that the story will be incomplete without a heroin and starts describing various physical aspects to describe a beautiful woman. The actor who is gazing out of the bus window suddenly realises that the words uttered by the novelist can be see in a girl who is walking down an alley. The shot begins with the actor gazing out uninterestedly. The next few shots are close shots of the actress; the camera captures her feet, fluttering strands of hair, eyes and smile before we get a complete image of the woman.

The objectification of the woman occurs here at different levels. The male gaze is established when the camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man. Here the woman is displayed on two different levels: as an erotic object for both the characters within the film, as well as for the spectator who is watching the film. 

The camera lingers over the woman’s body and creates a desire in the male spectators to attain the object on screen. What is interesting is the female gaze is visually negated; women viewing the ad are not exercising the ‘female gaze’ but rather they are viewing the ad through the male gaze constructed by the camera’s gaze (directors gaze), the editorial gaze (the editing that draws out attention to only certain aspects) and the intra-diegetic gaze (the gaze of the male actor).

Scene 2; Anti-hero clicks a picture of the heroin without her permission:

The gaze is not only that constructed by the hero’s perspective but also that the anti-hero’s perspective. Here there is an evident violation of the woman’s autonomy through a gaze, which is technological at two levels. The anti-hero clicks an image of the woman using his mobile phone and the viewers partake in this objectification through the viewing of the film. The woman is gazed upon at different levels. The scene ends with the hero rescuing the passive heroin. The passivity of the woman character is established in this scene and it continues till the end of the film. The woman is always depicted as a figure waiting ideally to be rescued by her man. This is one of the myths that has become a fixity in dominant visual narratives due to the phallogocentric language used in the production of cinema. These fixities are often normalized and consumed by the audience as the unified truth and it in turn distorts their perception of reality.

Other instances where the woman is constructed in passivity are:

Scene 3: 

The hero’s brother barges into the heroin’s home and challenges her father saying that he will make sure that the two of them will get married whether the father likes it or not. The heroin appears on screen only when she is called for and remains silent throughout the sequence. Her responses are limited to gestures and her presence on screen is merely for the purpose of ornamentation.

Scene 4: 

The hero and his brother defeat the father’s goons and the hero gets engaged to the heroin. The myth of the need for a savior and the incapability to stand up for the self is glorified in this scene. The scene ends with the brother threatening the father saying, “Nothing should happen to the girl before the marriage”.

After a lot of drama the movie ends traditionally with the marriage of the hero and the heroin. There is nothing fascinating about the construction of the narrative as it is a classic Malayalam narrative that involves a boy, a girl and relatives who make life difficult for them.

What fascinates the researcher is that the method of objectification of the woman that this movie executes is similarly present in most mainstream Malayalam movies. Aaraam Thampuran by Shaji Kilas, Devasuram by I.V. Sasi and Ravanaprabhu by Ranjith are some typical examples for the construction of gender power asymmetry in cinema.

Heteronormative Men are at a considerably privileged position in this system of objectification and othering because the loss of autonomy at understanding that they are susceptible to the gaze is glossed over by the fact the gaze is male and that complying to the system will allow autonomy of a kind, of course this is nothing but false consciousness that stems from being closer to the phallic center.

Women and non-normative men on the other hand are objectified and forever denied the hope of attaining autonomy within the system. According to Kant the Phenomena is the only reality we know and we have no access to the Noumena. This could be true insofar as we understand that the phenomena is constructed in a particular manner and there is always a possibility of deconstructing the normative and hegemonic perceptions in favour of a new set of perceptions devoid of hegemonic gender power asymmetry.

Being pushed to the periphery has its advantages and disadvantages. It denies a position of autonomy with this system and perception of reality but it also presents a fluidity that results from the fading influence of the center, which affords space to experiment and construct a new notion of reality using other sets of perceptions. Feminists refer to this as play and by exercising their fluidity have been able to write in a new language that deviates from the established notion of reality.

The process is difficult but not impossible, the visual world is entrenched in a male language and sees only through the male gaze but the understanding that this is not a unified reality and the questioning power that this provides could result in radical changes in the visual medium.

Recent attempts made in the Malayalam industry reflect these possibilities. 22 Female Kotayam by Ashik is one such movie where the woman is not constructed in passivity. The initial phase of the movie focuses on the traditional understanding of women and the later half projects the possibilities that women can attain. The gaze remains male and the notions are still constructed in the male language but breaking the myths regarding the passivity of women propagated by visual media is the first step towards changing our distorted view of reality into a more gender inclusive perception of reality.

Scope:

Though the paper concentrates on the Malayalam film Pokkiri Raja to study construction of gendered realities, the ideas discussed in the paper can be exported to almost all visual industries in our nation. A structural analysis of the Malayalam movie and its Hindi remake could throw light upon cultural differences and similarities that inform visual representation of the same narrative in two spaces.

Sources:

A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present By M.A.R. Habib

Wikipedia

Youtube (Screenshots)

CIA 3: The concept of 'new woman' in Mohan Rakesh's 'Aadhe Adhure'.

Ayushi Malhotra

1324121

1 MA English with Communication Studies

Contemporary Critical Theory / MEL 232

Mr Anil Pinto

16th February 2104

CIA 3

The concept of the “new woman” in Mohan Rakesh’s Aadhe Adhure

“The crisis of identity and breakdown of communication in human relations and resultant tragic effect of boredom and despair constitute the theme of Rakesh’s play, Aadhe Adhure, which is by far is best play, devastatingly exposing the fragmented personalities and broken images in a disintegrated society.” — N.Choudhuri, (Hindi Drama, Contemporary Indian Literature)

The social awareness that characterized the age of Premchand was followed by an age in which individual became cultural and his social linkages peripheral. Such was the age carried forward by Mohan Rakesh. He analysed deeply the problems and psyche of the individual highlighting the feelings, desires, and frustrations of middle class man and in doing so he gives a portrayal of the women who is sexually emancipated and socially empowered. The stories written by him dealt with personal problems at various levels of a man-woman relationship. He took the movement of Nai Kahaaniyan forward with Rajendra Yadav and Kamlesh. In his own words “My stories are about the people living through torture of relationships in loneliness… loneliness that comes from living in the society.”

Mohan Rakesh’s “Halfway House” (Aadhe Adhure, 1959) can be viewed as an exploration of meaning and identity in the turmoil of changing social and familial structures. Although the play seeks to construct the search for identity within the unfulfilling, incomplete nature of bourgeois existence as a universal non-gendered experience along Existential lines as its primary concern, it eventually deals with many questions on a broader socio-economic context on realist lines focusing mainly on the construction of femininity in the portrayal of the female protagonist ‘Savitri’. In comparison to the female characters in the play, the male characters are weak and lack a certain sense of agency. This was relatively a new concept where the focus shifted from the male to the female character that had been given much of agency and power in the society in general and in the play in particular.  The concept of the ‘other’ is as primordial as consciousness itself. In the most primitive communities, one finds the expression of a duality, that of the ‘self’ and the ‘other.’

Whenever there is a perceptible change or decline in social, moral, economic or religious values, a writer comes forward and focuses on malady that is causing wide spread constriction in the society. The play by Rakesh is one such attempt to bring to the light the sociological problems of its time. The play starts with a compound of acrimoniousness, rancorousness and an irascibility that stays till the end. The play is a scathing criticism of unfulfilling, incomplete nature of bourgeois existence and preoccupation with the upper middle class. The matriarchal household shakes up the very edifice of the patriarchal structures. The character of Savitri which by the name itself is very ironical stands apart in the whole play. Savitri was a figure in Indian mythology who fought against the Yama for the life of her husband. In the play on the other hand, she is the one who does not stand by her spineless husband but against him. She is often seen snobbish and debauch by various critics who feels pleasure in hurting her husband. This magnificent character of Savitri raises umpteen questions on the expected gender roles of the woman. Mohan Rakesh could be called a pioneer in the revelation of this “new woman” who was nothing but the opposite of what society expected out of the other sex. Rakesh took this zeal of feminism imbibed in the character of Savitri a step further by making her exert her own will and her attempt to come out of the ‘Sisyphean plight’. She is the breadwinner of the family and builds up the matriarchal household by taking care of everyone. Play represents the contemporary modern women’s struggle to define and attain an autonomous selfhood. Her female protagonists are at great pains to free themselves from stultifying, traditional constraints. The social and cultural change in the post- Independence India has made women conscious of the need to define themselves, their place in society, and their surroundings. Her character stands for each and every woman in the society who has been tied in years of pain and unsatisfied institution of marriage.

Her search for identity and meaning in marriage is best articulated when she seeks fulfilment and reason in marital bliss –

“Why does one get married? In order to fulfil a need….an inner….void, if you like; to be self-sufficient….complete.”

Since her own husbands fails to fulfil this inner emptiness, Savitri seeks marital happiness beyond conjugal relations in men who possess the qualities she had always aspired for in Mahendranath. Dilip Kumar Basu observes, “The desire to look for “completeness” in the “other” may look like Everyman’s essential and unresolvable problem, and may vaguely place her in the centre of an Absurdist drama where the search may be considered tragic/ridiculous.” Although the concept of Savitri seeking meaning in life being defined in terms of her relations with men seems problematic in itself, the play tries to trick us into the generalisation that this is nothing but an existentialist quest for meaning in life. She is reported to be overwhelmed by Juneja’s power, affluence and sense of reason, Shivjeet’s intellectual prowess, his university degree and numerous trips abroad enamoured her. Jagmohan understands nature, sense of humour, modernism, elite lifestyle and masculine pride held immense appeal for her. She was supposed to be attracted to her now son-in-law, Manoj too, as his influential status had charmed her sufficiently. Savitri moves from one man to another in search of the perfect partner. The play tries to portray this search as an illusion, an Absurdist attempt by denying Savitri the happiness she is looking for and making her realise that all men are the same and they all of them as in Kirti Jain’s words “want to evade responsibility and to exploit her.”

The female self is seen as the other but the very fact that Mohan Rakesh creates a magnificent persona of Savitri in the play speaks volumes about the female consciousness at large. Celebration of femininity by the practical culture is actually a subjugation of female autonomy. In order to destroy the supremacy of patriarchal culture, human beings should be identified as male and female based on their sex and not as men and women. The term ‘woman’ connotes the quality of woman, which the society attributes to a female. She should be obedient, patient and servile in her behaviour towards others. The moment a woman does something different than the society would call her either a bad woman or lunatic. Human beings are not products, which come out of a factory to be alike. It is high time that the patriarchal culture ceased to exist for the all-round development of women.

 

In Halfway House the husband-wife relationship has a special importance in the psychological and mental development sense. Savitri's husband, Mahendranath is an image of morality that indirectly convinces her wife to stick to traditional morals. He is a moving and living virtue and tradition. He does not like the entry of Savitri's boss, Singhania in the house so he always finds opportunity to leave house whenever Singhania comes. However, Savitri is not ready to accept Mahendranath as he is. She fails to understand the meaning of conjugal life and love. Savitri breaks the traditional image of the chaste wife and looks for relationships outside marriage. She stands on equal terms with the husband. Savitri exposes and shatters conventional notions of family values and the man-woman relationship within marriage. The feminist approach of Rakesh displays Savitri and Binny (her daughter) as lonely figures facing the experiences of loveless marriage like any modern woman of contemporary elitist society where men folk are busy with making money and fame. The agonies of the modern lone woman are not much different. Therefore, Savitri's confession of her betrayal and her forceful justification of it to her friend is enlightenment of the modern woman. The facets of familial relationships with all its variegated forms have been intensively explored in Rakesh's play, Halfway House. In the play family is portrayed where woman (Savitri) is neglected and is subjected to isolation, wrath and ill-treatment. Thus, Savitri is pushed into the arms of other man by the negligence of her husband, the humiliation of her family members and her loneliness. Her negligence by her family members is the sole cause of her extramarital relations. Halfway House deals with clash between the egos of the husband and wife, the tension, suffocation and disintegration of a relationship in the context of traditional Indian culture and modernity. To conclude, the portrayal of family in the play bears strong relevance to the present day family structures and challenges of disintegration. Love and compromise offer as remedies to preserve the Indian family system.

 O.P. Sharma Prakash, an eminent critic says that, “Halfway House is the crisis of dignity of the individual. Modern man demands individual dignity as well as honour of is choice... It represents the modern sensibility in all its intensity, form and dimensions.” The fact that Manoj blames ‘something’ in Binni’s maternal house as the cause of all trouble and then prevents her from working establishes that the ‘something’ is in reference to her mother’s promiscuity which leads him to infer that letting women out of the house would always come with the threat of her infidelity. Moreover, Mohan Rakesh’s juxtaposition of a monogamous husband with a woman whose defining feature is her promiscuity ironically at a time when the ‘Hindu Marriage Act (1955)’ came into force outlawing polygamy to protect the rights of Hindu women reflects the extent of male anxiety generated by women’s emancipation, whose right to work meant the dissolution of the public-private dichotomy necessary for the maintenance of the family as a private sphere. This anxiety is further elaborated in terms of portraying Kinni as an uncared neglected kid, who returns to a home without the mother and feels lonely and alienated.

Rakesh’s play deals with the rising of the middle class in general where the woman now demanded for their own agency and where they are not shy to explore their sexuality. Various instances in the play give a hint towards the sexual advances of the Savitri. Though she is a mother and should technical embody the maternal characters, her life is inextricably linked to the idea of this new woman which Rakesh explored.

    ***********************************************************************

References:

Rakesh, Mohan. Aadhe Adhure. 1959. Print.

http://survivingbaenglish.wordpress.com/%E2%80%9Chalfway-house%E2%80%9D-by-mohan-rakesh/

Nayantara Uma, ‘Indian Women writer’s at the Cross Roads’, Pen crafts, New Delhi, 1996. p. 243.

 Kumar, Radha. "Contemporary Indian Feminism." Palgrave Macmillian Journals. 33. (1989): n. page. Web. 16 Feb. 2014.

Cia 3

Pearl Pallavi Sahu

1324142

I MA English with Communication Studies

Contemporary Critical Theory/MEL 232

 

A Feminist Perspective of the Oriya novel Gambhiri Ghara by Sarojini Sahoo. When translated, the novel was known as 'The Dark Abode'

 

The Dark Abode

The novel 'The Dark Abode' was originally an Oriya novel written by Sarojini Sahoo in Oriya. The originally name of the novel was Gambhiri Ghara (ଗମ୍ଭିରି ଘର) whose exact translation would mean the dark house or home. Hence through this the novel got its name translated in English as 'The Dark Abode'. The novel was translated by Mahendra Kumar Dash. The novel was first published in Oriya in 2005 and was translated to English in 2007. It was also translated in Bengali and Hindi and attained great popularity in Bengali when it was sold in Bangladesh.

Sarojini Sahoo, along with being an Indian feminist is also an Orissa Sahitya Academy Award winner. She basically writes novels and articles that are feminist in nature and openly and frankly speaks on concept such as sexual discourses. Her outlook towards women and the society give her novels and works, the touch of honesty.  Her novel Gambhiri Ghara or The Dark Abode has been a bestseller in Oriya literature. In most of her novels including this novel she very normally brings out situations that any girl would hesitate to reveal so openly. She is often addressed as the Judith Butler or Virginia Woolf of Oriya literature.

Plot Synopsis:

Before looking into the novel in depth, it is important to know what the novel is all about. The novel is a love story of a girl named Kuki. Kuki is shown to be a typical Indian house wife from a Hindu family who is totally devoted to her husband and household chores. She had a love marriage and married Aniket. The two though had a happy life there was always something void in their relationship. All they could do was try to hold the strings of their relationship together for as long as possible. Kuki always found this void and could not very well express it. Staying as a housewife she did nothing much to distract herself from any sort of stress or tension.

The novel shows how this totally classical housewife comes in contact with a Muslim man from Pakistan, through the net. She comes in contact with him and begins to exchange mails with him. She does not find it a necessity to tell her husband about this because she knows he is too busy to even listen to her mere distractions. She continues to talk to him through the net seeing a companion in him who would keep her from her loneliness. At the very beginning of their conversations she finds that he is a man who has always taken women for granted. For him women have always been instruments of lust. He tells her about his relationships with women and she scolds him calling him a caterpillar with a hunger for lust and sexual pleasure. His name is Safique and through their conversations Kuki comes to know that he has a second wife. Not much does he talk about his first wife but picture that Kuki gets about his second wife Tabassum is that of an independent outgoing women. She is a lustful woman with a lot of boyfriends. She goes to parties and night clubs. Kuki seems to identify herself and her loneliness with Safique. The 'net' couple slowly start opening up to each other and begin to appreciate and understand each other. The bond of love slowly seems to be building itself between the two. The two discuss their lives with each other and Kuki comes to know of Safique's arrest. He was suspected to be a terrorist after a bomb blast in London. He also tells her that one of Tabassum's boyfriends had offered her to his boss and this activity put her into severe depression. When he raises a voice against this injustice he becomes a victim of military junta. The whole arrest was a plot by military junta as a revenge on Safique. The novel ends with a tragic end where her husband leaves her after she herself reveals her relationship with Safique to him and Safique also under arrest cannot come out. Though he calls her to tell her about how much he loves her and that his love will always be true, she knows the fact that it is only her loneliness that will remain with her.

A Feminist Study:

The novel along with being a love story brings out different themes such a love, betrayal, an extra-marital affair, injustice and terrorism. Through the novel we are exposed to the frankness of Kuki of revealing her relationship after marriage with and other man of another country and religion. Though she had always been a housewife, the novel tells us about a lady who has stepped out of the boundaries that have been set up by the society for a woman. Though Kuki knows that all she has is her loneliness she still does not beg or plead. This is what Sarojini tries to convey all through the novel.

The novel is actually revolves around the life and emotions a woman goes through when she has to look beyond what boundaries have been set for her. The writer has taken a typical Indian setting with a husband and wife, leading a normal life with stagnant emotions. The heroine of the novel is shown to be a normal married woman with a child and a husband. When we look at the novel from a feminist perspective there are lot of things and aspects of the novel that we can look into. Right from the beginning we see a lady who though married the man she thought she loved, is not very happy with her married life. The Indian view of an ideal married is lady is that who would serve her husband and family. There are parts of the country that still believe in the saying, 'man for the sword and woman for the hearth'. The writer of the novel starts with this describing how people thought that she had a perfect life. They forget the point that no human can stay within such limited boundaries that have been built by other and not themselves. To point out some instances from the novel, the very first instance could be the way in which the two address each other. When the woman address, no matter how her mood is she still addresses him with respect while when he is angry with her he addresses her as tu, which though means you, is not a very preferred way of addressing someone.

The whole point of looking at the novel with a feminist perspective is not picks the faults of the life of the characters but to also show the image of an independent woman. To begin with describing the situations right from the beginning, Kuki due to spending her time at home all the day doesn't really have anyone to talk to in the urge to prove herself as a disciplined wife, she tries to suppress her emotions and finally when she finds someone like her she begins to explode. This shows that as a woman she had always been taught to be a perfect wife but midst all of this, she did not have the space to be herself. We are, in this novel, introduced to two women in the same body, the first is disciplined wife while the second is a lover. She could never really be herself with her husband as she felt she could wrong him but with Safique, she had always been her original self. The interaction between the two began on casual terms and hence she really did not have to worry about what he would think of her as she felt I really did not matter about what he thought. In the novel it is very important to understand that the two women are really different from each other. The writer has very finely knit two totally different personalities in one body. This means that where Kuki, the wife, portrays a very disciplined and submissive person, the same way, Kuki, the lover, portrays a very independent woman, strong and firm. The two personalities though belong to just one person, it is also important to know that the two men have a lot of impact on the two personalities.

When Kuki takes the step of accepting the fact that she is in love with Safique that is the moment when Kuki, the lover is born. She turns so bold that despite the fact of having a child and a husband, she continues to maintain a relationship with that man. We see that the hesitance in her face is no more visible and she also has the ability to love the man to such a great extent that she changes him from being a Casanova to a true lover. She shows the courage that usually men dare to show of having an extra-marital affair and stepping into the zone of falsehood of her own married life. The novel shows how the depression of a girl after marriage, when expected to follow the norms that the society has built for her, provokes her to take a step so bold just so that she gets a place in the large world to be her original self. Even towards the end of the novel we see that she seems to have let her husband go and not plead or beg for him to reply. She also is ready to wait for her lover to come back to her even if the wait was so long that her hair began to grey. We see that she had the strength and courage to walk out of the norms that the society had built for her such that there is no sign of helplessness or any form of regret of walking out of family bonds and doing what her heart wanted her to do.

Conclusion:

In the feminist perspective the novel has very clearly shown two types of women, the one in the beginning to be a woman following everything but her heart while towards the ends, we find a woman who lets everything go so that she can follow her heart. The gradual change and growing of a woman is what the writer tries to draw our attention to. She tries to show us that giving a woman her own space and letting her follow her heart was what the society was missing out. Today, we have made woman a symbol but have forgotten that she too does breathe. After marriage, a woman is burdened with duties such that she is made to act in a particular way which blocks her own freedom. The possible result of the novel have been that had her husband treated her like human being and given time for she, she would never have even thought of getting involved and linking her life to that of Safique.

The truth of the time is that a woman is made to behave in a certain way that confined her real self with a self that she has to project. And it is this that makes her feel suffocated. The novel also shows that when a woman decides to take a step, she has the courage to maintain it no matter what the consequences could be. The novel gives a feminist perspective of a woman, showing both her helpless and her courageous side that gets differentiated with a span of time. The writer also extensively discusses the life of a woman and her sensibilities and her ability to walk out of the norms set by the society for her to keep her own independence by breaking her marriage with a man she had actually loved but realized that it was never true. The perspective that the novel tries to take us through is quite different from what feminism usually does. The writer though a typical feminist looks at feminism in the novel projecting the possible lives that a woman can lead if she makes a choice. The writer also tries to let the readers think for themselves the possible ways the story would have turned out had there been different ways in which Kuki was treated and giving a point for the readers to ponder about. Hence, this is the feminist perspective of looking at an unusual love story.

 

References:

·         "The Dark Abode : an Indian (Oriya) novel of Sarojini Sahoo." red room. N.p., 10 october 2008. Web. <http://redroom.com/member/sarojini-sahoo/reviews/the-dark-abode-an-indian-oriya-novel-of-sarojini-sahoo>.

·         Dr. Sarojini Sahoo. N.p.. Web. <http://www.sarojinisahoo.com/novels5.htm>.

·         "The Dark Abode." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. N.p.. Web. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Abode>.

Piyali Sarkar (1324143)

Piyali Sarkar

1324143

1 MA English with Communication Studies

CIA III

 

I have done my research on the movie: Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish. It is a 2012 Bengali-language film written and directed by Rituparno Ghosh. The film premiered on 25 May 2012 at the New York Indian Film Festival. I have tried to apply the Queer theory framework in my analysis.

 

Key Words: Queer theory, Judith Butler, gender transformation, crossing boundaries, social construction.

 

Queer Theory:

The word "queer" in queer theory has some of these connotations, particularly its alignment with ideas about homosexuality. Queer theory is a brand-new branch of study or theoretical speculation; it has only been named as an area since about 1991. It grew out of gay/lesbian studies, a discipline which itself is very new, existing in any kind of organized form only since about the mid-1980s. Gay/lesbian studies, in turn, grew out of feminist studies and feminist theory.

 

Queer theory emerges from gay/lesbian studies' attention to the social construction of categories of normative and deviant sexual behaviour. But while gay/lesbian studies, as the name implies, focused largely on questions of homosexuality, queer theory expands its realm of investigation. Queer theory looks at, and studies, and has a political critique of, anything that falls into normative and deviant categories, particularly sexual activities and identities. The word "queer", as it appears in the dictionary, has a primary meaning of "odd," "peculiar," "out of the ordinary." Queer theory concerns itself with any and all forms of sexuality that are "queer" in this sense--and then, by extension, with the normative behaviours and identities which define what is "queer" (by being their binary opposites). Thus queer theory expands the scope of its analysis to all kinds of behaviours, including those which are gender-bending as well as those which involve "queer" non-normative forms of sexuality. Queer theory insists that all sexual behaviours, all concepts linking sexual behaviours to sexual identities, and all categories of normative and deviant sexualities, are social constructs, sets of signifiers which create certain types of social meaning. Queer theory follows feminist theory and gay/lesbian studies in rejecting the idea that sexuality is an essentialist category, something determined by biology or judged by eternal standards of morality and truth. For queer theorists, sexuality is a complex array of social codes and forces, forms of individual activity and institutional power, which interact to shape the ideas of what is normative and what is deviant at any particular moment, and which then operate under the rubric of what is "natural," "essential," "biological," or "god-given."

 

Queerness, in the work of theorists like Judith Butler and Eve Sedgwick, is as much a semiotic as it is a social phenomenon. To say that someone is "queer" indicates an indeterminacy or indecipherability about their sexuality and gender, a sense that they cannot be categorized without a careful contextual examination and, perhaps, a whole new rubric. For gender to be, in Judith Butler's words, "intelligible," ancillary traits and behaviours must divide and align themselves beneath a master division between male and female anatomy.

From people's anatomy, we can supposedly infer other things about them: the gender of the people they desire, the sartorial and sexual practices they engage in, the general elements of culture that they are attracted to or repulsed by, and the gender of their "primary identification." While in practice each of these categories is rather elastic, it is usually when they do not line up in expected ways (say, when a man wears a dress and desires men) that one crosses from normative spaces into "queer" ones. In Butler's view, queer activities like drag and unexpected identifications and sexual practices reveal the arbitrariness of conventional gender distinctions by parodying them to the point where they become ridiculous or ineffective.

 

Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish

Rituparno Ghosh’s Chitrangada is a film which addresses the gender, gender transformation, crossing bodies and boundaries of mind and body, physically, psychologically and emotionally in a compelling way. It is not the Rabindranath play as the name suggests. The play ‘Chitrangada’ is used as a metaphor of a man’s life. He goes through a similar ordeal of ‘Chitra’, the leading role of musical play of Tagore. As the ‘English’ title suggests, Chitrangada is movie about a wish. A wish that is hard to materialize physically, socially and mentally. Chitrangada, like many of Ghosh’s earlier films has a ‘film-within-film’ narrative structure; only this time the film-within is Tagore’s epochal epic Chitrangada – the saga of the Manipuri princess who was brought up as a son by the King and who after meeting Arjun desired to reincarnate in her primordial gender state. Ghosh understandably dabbled with Tagore’s own interpretation of the Kurup-Surup dichotomy and re-interprets within the rubrics of Gender identity and more importantly the question of ‘Wish’. In the very initial stages of the film, while rehearsing the dance drama (the film-within), the director Rudra (played by Ghosh himself) proclaims that Chitrangada’s interpretation is that of the ‘Wish’ – the birth, death and re-birth of it. The Tagorean narrative is used henceforth less as a fulcrum and more to give a pleasant visual and aural experience.

In this movie Ghosh has tried to demonstrate how the parental agencies find it difficult to accept and pass through the five stages of grief as observed in psychiatry – Denial, Anger, Bargain, Depression and finally Acceptance. These all are the steps towards the ‘self’. Not only the parents move through them, so does Rudra in his acceptance and rejection of Partho (the Arjuna). Like the mother confesses that they never allowed Rudra to be himself, they always wanted him to be someone they would have liked to see. Most scenes involving the parents – the bridge with them and to one’s own self misplaced at some point but regained in the end, are riveting and laden with emotional undercurrents. his parents, who through their own struggle to come to terms with the fact that their son is gay, must still have another battle to win - his need to transform his gender to the opposite reality of a woman. Through tears and anger, they are still able to find peace in themselves, knowing that the ‘the nature of a being, has its own desire to express its own reality’ and no matter what, Rudie is their son/whoever else he feels comfortable to be. His mother is profound – I gave birth to this body, which is yours, I have a right to know, whatever goes on in this body. I have a right to know, if it is changing, transforming…”

            This is indeed intriguing since here the person coming out of the ‘closet’ is not the gay individual. Rather it is the patriarchal agency which opens up. This role reversal of the agencies of patriarchy demands an insightful reading of the text which as I mentioned above is a re-interpretation of the Tagorean classic.

Ghosh never appears to be acting; this is raw, real, and deeply emotional as his character evolves from an autocrat in rehearsals to a somewhat needy, relationship-obsessed woman. It's an authentic and memorable performance, often punctuated by extended silences, by an actor at the pinnacle of his career. Sengupta, the wild-eyed impulsive lover, offers an ideal foil, responding in unexpected ways to Rudra's decision to go under the knife. The dilemma of wanting to change from a man to a woman, the selflessness of being able to go under the knife for the sake of love and then face rejection only to be able to reach out to the same person again.

There is that struggle at the psychological level. The Counsellor/friend/alter ego, Shubho, who helps Rudie in his decisions often playing the devil’s advocate, But as the last day dawns, or as the light of Usha burns close to dawn, the viewer is taken to yet another paradigm, where psychology, body, emotions meet the last gate before one steps over threshold of ordinary understanding and enters the philosophical.

In 1869, the German homosexual rights advocate Karl Heinrich Ulrichs introduced the idea of self-disclosure as a means of emancipation. He claimed that being unheard was the primary problem of being accepted in the public domain and he insisted that gay and homosexuals need to reveal their same-sex affinity for a larger societal acceptance. The situation hasn’t changed much in the exterior. In the inside however there are occurrences like in Chitrangada where we as audience embark on the next level where the disclosure of ‘self’ comes pre-defined. The crux lies in confronting the ‘self’. Thus Subho, the counselor is the alter ego of Rudra who tries to place him in front of alternatives like a pack of cards to pick up from, and most importantly the sex change decision of Rudra. The journey of self-identification and belief, in disclosing the inner voice is crucial to lift the problem from sexual orientation to gender identity. Rudra in the end did understand that the sex change will not change the gender and just like gender is subverted in an individual’s identity, so is his/her sexual orientation. Hence the betrayal of Partho doesn’t affect the soul since in Partho’s rejection of the physical sexual organs lies the bigger betrayal of not recognizing Rudra’s gender identification and in the larger context, the notion of ‘home’. Rudra had been homeless so far and now (s)he wants to go back to home – ‘home’ stands as a metaphor here, the place one yearns to live in sunshine as opposed to the dark ‘closet’. Rituparno, the writer, hence, uplifts the narrative to a more philosophical journey of quest and longing. Intending to say that all is impermanence, things are always changing, the reality we know now is no more in the next, everything is in fleeting. Change is the only permanent thing and therefore, if in the body of a man, exists a woman ready to take birth, then in that new body too will be another reality, that will seek its birth and so on and so forth, on and on, because, not that the body is changing, transforming, but reality is forever, changing, and what is ‘natural’ today, may not be the same tomorrow, or even in the next minute, for truth is an ever changing reality. And hence, what then is the meaning of the new realities, for they too are in transition, here, now and gone the next. The wandering soul must find its Home, here and now.

 

Conclusion:

Having travelled though a mire of thoughts, actions, Freudian psychology, for me the film ended in a rather philosophical note and brought home the point that that there is no better ‘home’ than what is available now, and all else is but the mind which must chance upon different domains of reality, in order that it may finally arrive home. Thus without a doubt, Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish will be seen as a classic in examining the trans experience and gender expression.

 

 

References:

Green , Adam. "Queer Theory and Sociology: Locating the Subject and the Self in Sexuality Studies ."American Sociological Association. 25.1 (2007): 45-26. Web. 16 Feb. 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20453065 .

       

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. 1990. UK: Routledge, 1990. Print.

CIA 3- Zakaria John

Zakaria Vargis John

1324113

1st MA English with Communication Studies

Contemporary Critical Theory/ MEL 232

Anil Pinto

16^th February 2104

CIA 3

The construction of femininity in Ismat Chughtai’s Sorry Mummy

 

 Feminism interrogates patriarchal structure of society and it opposes women’s subordination to man in public and private spheres of life. Women have often been called upon to make sacrifices and suppress their personal desires. They have often been left on the margins of the social set-up as far as their personal desires and fulfilment of those desires is concerned. Women are not a minority in our society but their “lives, experiences and values have been treated as marginal” (Sherry) and men’s experiences have been assumed to be central to society. One also needs to contest the often stated view that in India women have always enjoyed a place of respect and dignity, that they have been respected as ‘devis.’ It needs to be seen that “the respect and privileges which accompany the position of a ‘devi’ (Goddess) are not only anti-individualistic,” they are also anti-humanistic and “deny women a personhood” (Jain). Describing woman as a ‘devi’ amounts to negating her normal human life and demanding from her a ‘divine’ kind of behaviour where she blesses others and bestows favours on others. On the other extreme in our society, women are just treated as sexual objects or things of exchange, again denying their humanity, their wishes and desires, their individual self. The present paper focuses on selected short stories of Ismat Chughtai to examine how these depict suffering of women in a patriarchal set-up.

The whole concept of feminism focuses on the idea, movement and ideologies, which aims at giving equal political, social and economic rights to women. Ismat Chughtai was born in the year 1912. She was known for Urdu writings and her writings spoke for others through short stories. In her collection of short stories The Quilt and Other Stories, Ismat Chughtai portrays the limited options available to women, whether single or married, under an oppressive patriarchy. In these stories the options available to women are that either the characters are dissatisfied by the lack of emotional fulfilment available to them within marriage or they suffer communal criticism because of their unwillingness or inability to conform to traditional standards. In each case, Chughtai dismantles the notion that marriage, the institution society prepares women to expect, is the culmination of a woman’s life “Sorry Mummy” is one of those books, which has few short stories in it. The name of the book and the name of the first chapter is the same. This Hindi story by Ismat Chugtai starts of by describing a woman, whose name is Ms Michelle. Due to her wealth and status, she woman was well known in the society. Her house was known as a party place for all the youngsters and other famous personalities. The description about this woman and her daily life tells us as to how one can influence others through wealth and status. The neighbouring families would call her as their mother on one hand but, the wives of the surrounding houses would look at this woman with jealousy and anger. The party at her place would be filled with all prominent guests and couples. This was the time when film industry was booming in the city of Pune. Ms Michelle would be busy supplying dance girls to these industries for their growth. From all the four corners of life, Ms Michelle was given high importance due to her status and wealth. Ms Michelle’s husband had passed away few months back in an accident and due to the big loss she went romancing with other men. All was in vain as she could not find anyone like that of her husband. Just to remove the pain, she would spend some time with young men and after some time again she would break her own heart. Time and again Ms Michelle used to make new love and give a grand party to very well-known people. Ismat Chughtai explains that this woman would be a help to couples and other men who needed help in such matters as love. Her happiness was in the pathetic life she was living in and she would call herself a sinner, with a happy face. The story continues further and it describes how she was linked with Mr Verma, who was a great film director. The story tells the reader about how Ms Michelle used her life in a wrong way. She made friends with many known people. On one side she impressed people with her wealth but on the other side she was getting trapped. The story takes a turn when it describes about her downfall. She fell for many other men and they took advantage of her. The story has a very sad ending because in the end, Ms Michelle is raped.

The whole story talks about a woman and her orientation. She was easily able to attract anyone she wanted. A woman, who does not have a husband can take various roads for further living. Here, this lady, to seek pleasure fell into a trap. In this story, there is not much mention of any male character. The whole story revolves around women. Ismat Chughtai brings in one or two male characters but, does not give a detailed description about them. She talks about wives of the neighbouring places, wife of the film director, dance girls and the protagonist herself. This gives us an idea of the writing pattern of Ismat Chughtai. Every story of Ismat Chughtai shows the condition of a woman. More than the physical condition, it is the inner struggle which a woman faces in her day to day life. Mostly these struggles come up due to a harsh treatment by the husband or by any individual of the opposite sex. The condition becomes pathetic due to social isolation and subjugation. In all these cases, one tries to fulfil the hidden desires through some or the other way. In this story, Ms Michelle, who was in deep love with her husband, tries to fulfil that desire through getting involved with other men. She uses her wealth and fame to invite them. When we look at the modern perspective, she tries to modernise herself and become like a young woman in order to attract younger men.

Through this story, Ismat Chughtai reminds the reader about Sigmund Freud’s theory. As Freud explains in his “interpretation of dreams” that transference is a form where a person’s repressed desire or suppressed emotions embedded in their unconscious, are projected in various other forms. In this case the death of Ms Michelle’s husband left her unsatisfied- a void in her heart and a sense of incompleteness to her body. She transferred these supressed desires into flight flirtation with other men. This could be seen as an immoral act but, to adhere to Freud’s interpretation, it is only a manifestation of her internal being.

Woman is not only considered inferior to man but is largely perceived by man only as an object of sexual gratification. Ismat Chughtai candidly reveals in her stories, the working of sexuality in middle-class Muslim households. Behind every story lies a specific intent but Ismat Chughtai’s stories do not preach, they just present some images of reality in our society. Female sexuality is kept invisible or mythologised as passive in patriarchy, more so in Muslim families where ‘purdah’ is an additional custom to keep the woman’s physical person hidden. Ismat Chughtai not only exposes the abuse of woman’s body for man’s gratification but she also delineates woman’s sexual desire – a theme or subject considered forbidden in the patriarchal set-up.

Mrs Michelle’s body has been seen as an object in itself. Although she is sexually emancipated and uses her sexuality as an agency but the very violation of her body in the end of the story shows the subjugation of women to the patriarchal norms. The narrator feels sorry for the magnificent arena of Mrs Michelle which ultimately ends in the hands of a man. She through her life kept the men waiting and in the end had to be brought down by the other.

Hence it could be rightly said that Chughtai explores the various dimensions of what she sees as a woman and it comes up beautifully in the aforementioned short story. This focus on woman’s sexual desire and its fulfilment in a relationship with a woman is Ismat Chughtai’s way of asserting the protagonist’s humanity and her basic human needs. A woman’s identity is not defined only by her relation to the male world and male literary tradition.

 

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References:

Chughtai, Ismat. Sorry Mummy. 2005. New Delhi: 2007. Print.

Katoria, Megha. "Woman and Sexuality: Gender-Class Interface in Selected Short Stories of Ismat Chughtai." n. page. Print.

rajakumar, mohanalakshmi . "Dismantling Patriarchal Marriage in The Quilt and Other Stories." n. page. Print.