CIA 3 1324125

Christina Alex

1324125

MEL 232

Contemporary Critical Theory

Anil Pinto

16 February 2014

CIA III

An Analysis of the Malayalam Movie Urumi

            Urumi is a 2011 historical-fantasy film directed and co-produced by Santosh Sivan and written by Shankar Ramakrishnan. The film is set in the backdrop of the warrior clans of Northern Kerala in the sixteenth century and focuses on the cult of Chirakkal Kelu Nayanar, a man with a mission. His mission is to kill Vasco da Gama and claim vengeance for the brutal killing of his father and hundreds of other natives by the same. The film received international attention with the screening of its trailer at the Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum. The reason I chose this movie for a literary analysis is because it tells the tale of a history long forgotten in the pages of a soiled book. It also makes us think of an alternate history that might have been, had Kelu succeeded in killing Vasco da Gama. Also, unlike the recorded history, this movie attempts to tell the tale not from the victors but the victims point of you and this makes the movie a lot more interesting. For the purpose of this assignment, I shall attempt at showing how this movie can be considered to be written in the style of an epic. Though largely looked at as a post-colonial study, I shall also aim at an archetypal reading of the film.

            The film is spread between the second and third visit of Gama to India and chronicles a varied version of how he could have met with his death in AD 1524. It also captures the seamless conflicts between the kinsmen and a warring Muslim warrior princess Ayesha of the famed Arackal Sultanat. The character of Ayesha is said to be a strong portrayal of feminist virtues because of her strong will power to fight and literally get down on the battlefield to protest for all the wrongdoing’s done to her. The name of the movie has been taken from Kelu’s legendary golden Urumi, a long sword with a whip-like blade. The urumi is considered to be one of the most difficult weapons to master due to the risk of injuring oneself. The urumi is handled like a flail arm but requires less strength since the blade combined with the centrifugal force is sufficient to inflict injury. This choice of the weapon and using the same name for the movie can be considered as a reassertion of the phallic symbol, or rather the strength and perfectness of the main character, Kelu. His urumi is specially made from the ornaments of the dead women and children who were burnt alive in the massacre of a Mecca ship, commanded to be set on fire and drowned by Vasco da Gama during his second visit to Kerala. The film also takes a dip into magic realism with mystical characters like Makkom, a displaced Devi Deity in the Oracle form. The Delphian Oracle finds an expression through the Devi here: Makkom mystifies the male duo and through a dance recital prophesises the future. Also, the last scene of the film and the character of the modern-day Genelia also hints at an attempt towards magic realism. Again, the movie is no doubt written on the lines of an epic as is evident from. To qualify as an epic, a work needs to meet the following criteria: a long narrative on a serious subject, told in a formal and elevated style, and cantered on a heroic quasi-divine figure on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe or a nation. The movie fits this description correctly. It has its lot of comedy too with Prabhudeva’s brilliant performance as Vavali. Again, the archaic language used in the movie is of interest as well. The protagonist also, comes off as a perfect candiadate for a chivalric knight.

            Dennis Walder, in his famous work Post-Colonial Literatures in English stated, ‘The histories of colonozing process (like all histories) have continually to be rewritten. But at the centre of that rewriting from the post colonial perspective, is the reclamation of thevoices and experiences of the other.’ As Nandy says in his famous book, The Intimate Enemy; Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism, colonialism is nevertheless a psychological category. We have to develop a more psychological or cultural view of colonialism. Even the colonizers were small in number to us we hesitated to fight against them at first. By using intelligence, they made our hesitation into fear. They frightened us with the threat of violence like Gama tried when he burned the ship ‘Miri’. Every ruler uses this technique to gain power and subjugate others.Along with  Gama’s cruelty, Urumi also presents an image of hanging bridges to show this threat of violence which is used by the colonizers upon the colonized. Portuguese empire built hanging bridges in each and every corner of the villages in Cannanore. They hanged the ones, who raised their voice against the empire, in front of others. Through this they sowed the seeds of fear in every child who born to this land. In the film, Kelu saves a brave warrior Arackal Baliya Hassan, whom the Portuguese soldiers dragged to the hanging bridge, by cutting the rope. It is the very first act that made by Kelu against the foreign empire. There is another scene in which Kelu and his companions go to the interiors and uproot the hanging bridge there. At first the villagers hesitate to join Kelu,Vavvali and Ayesha in there endeavour but then they abandon their hesitation and join them. The scene symbolizes Kelu uprooting the very fear in the minds of the rural mass. It is this act of uprooting helped him to win their support. Urumialso projects this idea of violence in its theme. The warrior Kelu and his comrades use violence as their mean to find the end. Kelu introduces the peasants’ weapons and trains them to face the battle. With the help of this trained militant group he manages to fight with the Portuguese about three times. By accepting Fanon’s notion, the film seems to reject Gandhi’s decolonization strategies of ahimisaand satyagraha .

In Urumi an interesting fact is that actors take double roles that are also contradictory.the film is designed in such a way that it talks about the present an the past. For example, it is Prithviraj who appeared in the roles of both Kelu and Krishna Das. Nithya menon plays the role of princess Bala of Chirackal as well as the CEO of Nirvana who represent the multinational corporate. It is sure that Santhosh Sivan deliberately makes this to indicate the changes that happened before and after colonialism. Kelu and Bala are people who stand against the foreign invaders while Krishna das and the CEO of Nirvana deliberately support new invasions. It is also worth to mention that the characters of Chenicheri kurup and the minister of forestry in modern Kerala are done by Jagathy Sreekumar. It shows the modern minister is nothing but a continuation of old minister who stood for the invaders for his selfish needs. Madayi Kavil Yakshi and NGO worker Bhoomi are characters who invoke both Kelu and Krishna das against foreign invasions respectively; Vidya Balan enacted both these characters. There is a tribal boy who joins first among the villagers in Kelu’s endeavor to pull out the hanging bridge, in modern age the same boy reappears in the film as throwing his slipper to the minister of forestry who speaks for Nirvana, when Krishna Das refuses to sign the papers. It is important to note that in modern times the protest begins from the peasant (tribe). But the director did not make any changes in the costume of this character in both parts. It indicates that no matter what happened in the name of decolonization and so called ‘independence’, the peasants’ situations remain the same. 

Filmmaker Shankar Ramakrishnan, who has written the story and screenplay for Urumi after doing an extensive research, said that the film presents history from a different perspective. "Even a small child in Kerala perceives Vasco da Gama as an explorer, who made the first-ever colonial invasion in any part of the world. But there's more to him than that. Urumi is an attempt to portray or rather discuss the many realities that could have affected the course of our history," he said. Shankar added that the title is not just suggestive of Kelu's Urumi, but the feeling of vengeance that we carry in our hearts. The gorgeous design and the finely tuned quality in imagery should make 'Urumi' one of the best stylized visual extravaganzas ever shot in Malayalam. This visual panache that is exceptional retains an aura that could easily be associated with an unreachable past; a past that is heartily revered and yet one that remains so mysteriously distant. Sankar Ramakrishnan cautiously places the supporting characters all around Kelu, and at times the screen looks flooded with them. Yet there is an individual streak that runs through each one of them, that simply doesn't let them stray away and be a mere embellishment. “Urumi is more than a weapon that carries the identity of Kerala. It symbolizes that armoury which yields to you; it need not always be a weapon, it can be the pen; one has to find one’s Urumi’s forte,” was how Shankar Ramakrishnan, the scriptwriter, explained the title of the movie.

References:

Sivan, Santosh, dir. Urumi. August Cinema. 2011. Web.

Abrams, M H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 6thth ed. Cengage Learning, 2009. Print.

CIA - 3 A Psychoanalytic Analysis of the Selected Stories from the Marathi Short Stories Collection - Ghusmat

Thekkekara Livea Paul

Reg. No. - 1324153

ABSTRACT

 

            The purpose of this paper is to prove the thesis statement – “The Unconscious Mind has led either to the rise or the downfall of the Protagonist”. Method employed is Textual Analysis. The methodology used is the Unconscious Framework propounded by the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. This is executed by analyzing the lives of  the three protagonists of the three different stories and evaluating these characters on the basis of the Unconscious. My primary text is Ghusmat – a Marathi Short Stories Collection written by Kalyan Jadhav. This research will assist in understanding the lives of the Dalit people in Maharashtra. This will be my possible implications from this research. There would be limitations to my research as I have done textual analysis. This method has its advantages and disadvantages. I presume that the disadvantages would cripple my research. Nevertheless, the textual analysis along with the Unconscious Framework is best suitable for this paper.

Keywords: Dalit, Suppression, Unconscious, id, ego, superego, Dalit Literature

INTRODUCTION

 

The Dalit people were or better to say are exploited by the social and the economic traditions of the nation. This essence is captured in the Dalit Literature. India is now majorly populated by the youth people. They are the citizens who are going to or are transforming the face of our country. They are having many aspirations. The Marathi short story writer Kalyan Jadhav has captured these aspirations of the Dalit youth in Maharashtra and picturized in the stories.

In the wake of natural calamities, our people stand united and help the people in need. But imagine if at this crucial juncture instead of lending a hand of support we discriminate people on the basis of their caste; how demeaning it is to the affected. This is captured in the story “ Hadra”. Even in the face of adversities some see the footprints of Untouchability and do not step forward.

The union between the two persons on the basis of love is a beautiful manifestation of humanity. But the factor of caste comes in between and the two gets separated. Caste factor must never come in between the couple. A curious fact is when people fall in love they do not see the caste factor but when the time comes to move forward in life they see it and makes it a hurdle themselves or by their family.

 

 

 

Literature Review

 

          Dr. Darshana Trivedi points out that Dalit Literature is a journey from main stream literature to marginal literature, from grand narrative to little narrative, from individual identity to group identity, from ideal to real, from vertical literature to spiral literature, from self-justification to self-affirmation. This is the “celebration of difference”.

 

            S.K. Paul claims that society is immovable. The caste structure are based on the economical and the ascriptive nature of the social status which the individual acquires and which could not be improved or changed. Its restrictions have different meanings for different economic and caste groups. They are considered as closely interrelated, almost inseparable, basic processes of social life.

 

            D. Padmarani puts forward the idea that the term ‘DALIT’ encompasses the hapless segment of India : the untouchable communities, Adivasis, nomadic tribes and the suffering masses who were made to lead dehumanized, degraded lives and were denied the basic fundamental rights by the hegemony of the stratified, rigid caste system of Hinduism.

 

 

 

The 3 Stories In A Glance

 

(1)   Hadra –

The story is set in a village bordering the state of Gujarat. The time is set after the Gujarat Earthquake. There was devastation everywhere. Many people died. Thousands were trapped in the debris. Houses were destroyed. Dead bodies were lying everywhere. The Central Reserve Police Force as well as the Maharashtra Reserve Police were helping the people.

At that time, the Sarpanch of the village was giving burial of the bodies handed over to him by Police Forces. But the Commander of the Police Force noticed that he was not doing the same to some of the bodies. He questioned and found out that those uncremated bodies were of the Dalit community.

The Commander got angry and gave him a tight slap. Everyone was looking at them. The commander said that when earthquake occurred, it did not see the caste of the people and when the Reserve Police helped the villagers, even they did not asked the caste of the people while helping. But the Sarpanch denies burial of some people due to their caste. It is shame as well as pity. In the end the Sarpanch realizes his mistake and gives proper burial to the remaining bodies.

(2)   Sushma –

The protagonist Sushma loved a fellow student, a Dalit from the same college. But when the time comes to move forward in life Sushma cites the caste factor and also the money factor of her beloved and leaves him. She marries a rich man.

Her beloved gets heartbroken but he recovers himself studies and becomes a prominent lawyer of the city. Sushma’s marriage with her husband breaks down due to dowry issue and she becomes poor due to paying the legal fees. She shifts to a slum and one day goes to see her beloved but the latter insults her and sends her away. In the end she commits suicide.

(3)   Nava Surya –

The protagonist is a small boy who comes from a Dalit background. Her Father works as a factory worker and is a drunkard. He use to spend his money on alcohol and hardly gave his money to his family. He even beat his wife and caused a lot of mental stress in the minds of his son.

One day his teacher tells the story of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, how his childhood was and how he emerged from his poor background. The boy gets encouraged by teacher’s words. He comes back home and sees his father beating the mother. He gets a stick and starts beating his drunkard father. He warns him not to beat his mother and to give his salary to the expenses of the house.

 

 

 

The Unconscious Framework

 

The great Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and his disciples formed the idea of the Unconscious mind. It is a very important factor in psychoanalysis. Freud developed hierarchical as well as vertical architecture of human consciousness – the unconscious mind, the preconscious mind and the conscious mind.

 

The Unconscious is that part of the mind which a person is unaware of.  In the opinion of the Freud, it is the Unconscious that is the treasure house of true feelings, thoughts as well as the emotions of an individual. According to Freud, human beings are not conscious of all their feelings, urges and desires because most of mental life is unconscious. He compared the mind to an iceberg: only a small portion is visible; the rest is below the waves of the sea. Thus, the mind consists of a small conscious portion and a vast unconscious portion.

Freud’s famous tripartite model of the mind in brief:

id – irrational, instinctual, vital, unconscious (contains our secret desires, darkest wishes, intense fears). Driven to fulfill wishes of pleasure principle.

superego – internal censor but derived from societal control, driven to fulfill demands of morality principle

ego – rational, logical, mostly conscious part of mind. Regulates id and comes to terms with superego. Driven by reality principle, the ego is the battleground for forces of the superego and the id.

  

Analysis of the Framework in the Short Stories

 

(1)   Hadra –

In this short story, we can see that the Sarpanch did not give a proper burial to those who are Dalits. Deep down his psyche, he has a strong resentment against the community. Therefore, during the aftermath of the tragedy when it is expected from everyone to help each other in crisis, the Sarpanch was discriminating. This was his superego. It was his internal censor but was derived from societal control. No one said him to act accordingly but his Unconscious made him to do that.

(2)   Sushma –

We can say that when Sushma loved her beloved she was following her id that is the pleasure principle but when the time came for her to take the relationship forward she was driven by her ego. She became more practical. She realized that marrying a Dalit would make her life miserable. But her fate was different and had a very pathetic ending.

(3)   Nava Surya –

The protagonist of the story, a school boy was disturbed because of his family atmosphere. He was angry against his father.  Hearing the story of Ambedkar from his teacher, his id became more strong. His secret strong desire of harming his Father came to the fore and he beat his Father. It was not a preplanned attack instead, his Unconscious mind took over his decision making ability and thereby, he did so.

As a result of this study, my thesis statement –

 “  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

Therefore, we conclude that The Unconscious mind plays a very prominent role in the characters of the stories. There is always a battle between the superego and the id. Sometimes, the ego takes the place. These factors have strongly shaped the direction in which the story has taken shape into.

The concept developed by Sigmund Freud is very valuable in understanding the characters of the story deeply. It gives more clarity to the actions that led to the various events in the story. Thereby, it is strongly recommended that characters of any literary piece be analysed in this framework so that it would lead to better understanding of the characters.

As a result my thesis statement –

   “The Unconscious Mind has led either to the rise or the downfall of the Protagonist”.

holds true.

           

 

           

 

 

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

 

Gabriele, Griffin. Research Methods for English Studies. Jaipur : Rawat, 2007. Print.

Jadhav, Kalyan. Ghusmat, Jalgaon : Atharva publications, 2012. Print.

“Psychoanalytic theory” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Web. 15 February 2014

Trivedi, Drashana. Dalit Literature. New Delhi : Swarup & Sons, 2007. Print.

“Unconscious Mind” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Web. 31 January 2014.

A Structuralist Analysis of the Stories of Vikram and Betal

Mala Krishnamurthy

CIA III

A Structuralist Analysis of the Stories of Vikram and Betal

Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp (Russian: Владимир Яковлевич Пропп; 29 April [O.S. 17 April] 1895 – 22 August 1970) was a Soviet formalist scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements.

Vladimir Propp broke up fairy tales into sections. Through these sections he was able to define the tale into a series of sequences that occurred within the Russian fairytale. Usually there is an initial situation, after which the tale usually can take 31 different functions. Vladimir Propp used this method to decipher Russian folklore and fairy tales. First of all, there seems to be at least two distinct types of structural analysis in folklore. One is the type of which Propp's Morphology is the exemplar par excellence. In this type, the structure or formal organization of a folkloristic text is described following the chronological order of the linear sequence of elements in the text as reported from an informant. Thus if a tale consists of elements A to Z, the structure of the tale is delineated in terms of this same sequence. Following Lévi-Strauss (1964: 312), this linear sequential structural analysis we might term "syntagmatic" structural analysis, borrowing from the notion of syntax in the study of language (cf. Greimas 1966a:404). The other type of structural analysis in folklore seeks to describe the pattern (usually based upon a priori binary principle of opposition) which allegedly underlies the folkloristic text. This pattern is not the same as the sequential structure at all. Rather the elements are taken out of the "given" order and are regrouped in one or more analytic schemas. Patterns or organization in this second type of structural analysis might be termed "paradigmatic" (cf. Sebag 1963:75), borrowing from the notion of paradigms in the study of language.

Respectively equivalent to syntagmatic and paradigmatic are the terms "diachronic" and "synchronic." Diachronic is the analysis that gives the reader a sense of "going through" the highs and lows of a story, much like the pattern of a sine wave. The second term, synchronic, is where the story is taken in all at one time, like in the pattern of a circle. Most literary analyses are synchronic, offering a greater sense of unity among the components of a story. Although both structural analyses convey partial information about the story, each angle of analysis delivers a different set of information

When studying mythology a mytheme is the essential kernel of a myth- an irreducible, unchanging element, a minimal unit that is always found to be shared with other, related mythemes and reassembled in various ways- 'bubdled' was Claud-Levi Straus' image- or linked in more complicated relationship, like a molecule in a compound. For example, the fairytales we read are all similarly structured myths, with similar elements, making some scholars believe they have a shared source.

Images passed down in cultures or from one to another, being ascribed new interpretations of the action depicted aswell as new names in various reading of icons. Levi-Struas, who gave the term wide circulation, wrote "if one wants to establish a paralled between structural linguistics and structural analysis of myths, the correspondence is established, not between mytheme and word, but mytheme and phoneme."

The structuralist analyser of fairytales, Vladimir Propp, considered that the unit of analysis was the individual tale. The unitary mytheme, by constrast is the equivalent in myth of phonemes, morphemes and sememes into which structural linguistics divides language, the smallest possible units of meaning within language system.

In 1950s Claude Levi-Strauss first adopted this technique of language analysis to analytic myth criticism. In his work on the myth systems of primitive tribes, working from the analogy of language structure, he adopted the term mytheme, with the assertion that the system of meaning within mythic utterance parallels closely to that of a language system. This idea is somewhat disputed by Roman Jakobson, who takes the mytheme to be a concept or phoneme which is without significance might be shown by sociological analysis.

Narreme is the basic unit of narrative structure. According to Helmut Bonheim (2000) the concept of narreme was developed three decades ago by Eugene Dorfman and expanded on by Henri Wittmann; the narreme is to narratology what a morpheme is to morphology and the phoneme is to phonology. The narreme however has yet to be persuasively defined in practise.

Narrative structure is generally described as the structural framework that underlies the order and manner in which a narrative is presented to a reader, listener or viewer. Narrative structures are the plot and settings. A non-linear narrative is one that does not proceed in a straight-line, step by step fashion, such as where an author creates a story's ending before the middle is finished.

 

Panchavimshati (Sanskrit: वेतालपञ्चविंशति, IAST: vetālapañcaviṃśati, "Twenty five tales of Baital"), is a collection of tales and legends within a frame story, from India. It was originally written in Sanskrit.

One of its oldest recensions is found in the 12th Book of the Kathā-Sarit-Sāgara ("Ocean of the Streams of Story"), a work in Sanskrit compiled in the 11th century by Somadeva, but based on yet older materials, now lost. This recension comprises in fact twenty four tales, the frame narrative itself being the twenty fifth. The two other major recensions in Sanskrit are those by Śivadāsa and Jambhaladatta.

The vetala stories have been popular in India, and have been translated into many Indian vernaculars. Several English translations exist, based on Sanskrit recensions and on Hindi ("Baital Pachisi" is the Hindi title), Tamil, and Marathi versions. Probably the most well-known English version is that of Sir Richard Francis Burton which is, however, not a translation but a very free adaptation.

The legendary King Vikram, identified as Vikramāditya (c. 1st century BC), promises a vamachari  (a tantric sorcerer) that he will capture a vetala (or Baital), a celestial spirit who hangs from a tree and inhabits and animates dead bodies.

King Vikram faces many difficulties in bringing the vetala to the tantric. Each time Vikram tries to capture the vetala, it tells a story that ends with a riddle. If Vikram cannot answer the question correctly, the vampire consents to remain in captivity. If the king knows the answer but still keeps quiet, then his head shall burst into thousand pieces. And if King Vikram answers the question correctly, the vampire would escape and return to his tree. He knows the answer to every question; therefore the cycle of catching and releasing the vampire continues twenty-four times.

On the twenty-fifth attempt, the vetala tells the story of a father and a son in the after-math of a devastating war. They find the queen and the princess alive in the chaos, and decide to take them home. In due time, the son marries the queen and the father marries the princess. Eventually, the son and the queen have a son, and the father and the princess have a daughter. The vetala asks what the relation between the two newborn children is. The question stumps Vikram. Satisfied, the vetala allows himself to be taken to the tantric.

On their way to the tantric, Vetala tells his story. His parents did not have a son and a tantric blessed them with twin sons on a condition that both be educated under him. Vetala was taught everything in the world but often ill treated. Whereas his brother was taught just what was needed but always well treated. Vetala came to know that the tantric planned to give his brother back to his parents and Vetala instead would be sacrificed as he was an 'all- knowing kumara' and by sacrificing him the tantric could be immortal and rule the world using his tantric powers. Vetal also reveals that now the tantric's plan is to sacrifice Vikram, beheading him as he bowed in front of the goddess. Then tantric could then gain control over the vetala and sacrifice his soul, thus achieving his evil ambition. The vetala suggests that the king asks the tantric how to perform his obeisance, then take advantage of that moment to behead the sorcerer himself. Vikramāditya does exactly as told by vetala and he is blessed by Lord Indra and Devi Kali. The vetala offers the king a boon, whereupon Vikram requests that the tantric's heart and mind be cleaned of all sins and his life be restored as a good living being and that the vetala would come to the king's aid when needed.

Vlademir Propp's theory – a tale consists of a standard set of functions in a standard sequence. All plays move to a closure. Evil gives way to good.

Time and space remain a constant in most of the stories. The kingdoms in which the stories are set are usually fictitious. The period of time in which the stories are set remains constant throughout all the stories.

Certain events such as tests of valour, a son lost in the forest, accidental deaths are used in many of the stories making them a narreme in themselves. These events may seem to exist in isolation but structuralism would identify them as a pattern.

Propp states characters as a separate category to the functions in each tale. But these characters also can be seen as similar or structurally bound.

The king- The meta-narrative of king Vikramaditya stresses the appearance of a king in each of the stories narrated by Betal. The kings in the stories usually looking for a husband for their daughters. They in themselves play small roles, and are not seen performing many actions displaying valour.

The princess- The daughter of the king, like the real princesses of the 1^st century, are all trained in battle. They are in search of suitors who can equal them at skills they have learned at court. They are often seen as difficult to please as they don't see any man as equal to themselves.

The Brahmin-The Brahmin is another constant character in all of the stories. The Brahmin is usually depicted as a poor but powerful man. He too usually has a daughter who needs to be married off. He uses his magical powers in many of the stories to curse the other characters. He also uses magical powers to reverse death in many of the stories.

All stories have the roles of daughters and sons in relation to their parents. The idea of marriage can be found in all the stories and the marriage is decided after testing the suitors by making them perform death defying feats to prove their valour, commitment and love.

As mentioned before, every story ends with Betal asking the king a quizzical question based on the facts of the story. Because of this, each story invariably has an open ending.

Reference :

http://www.educationalservice.net/2011/september/TALES_OF_KING_VIKRAM_AND_BETAAL_THE_VAMPIRE.pdf

A History of Literary Criticism and Theory, M. A. R. Habib,  Literary Theory: A guide for the perplexed, Mary Klages. 

Gender Dynamics in Mahesh Dattani's "Dance Like a Man"

Nalini Narayani Subramania Iyer

1324139

20 February 2014

Contemporary Critical Theory/MEL 232

Anil Pinto

 

                    Gender Dynamics in Mahesh Dattani’s “Dance Like a Man”

 

There is no original or primary gender a drag imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original.

—Judith Butler

 

Demarcations of gender are becoming flexible/ambiguous as it is, be it in terms of roles, inclinations or beliefs. Where is the line to be drawn for a woman or man? Is there something, an origin or a starting point may be, that is especially manly or from which the woman deviates? This has been a strong matter of debate for long and still is.

 

Cixous in“ The Laugh of the Medusa” finds the need for separate writings that stand for the masculine/feminine distinctly, so that each can write the gender he/she experiences subjectively and not speak for one another. Except as knowledge for exchange she advocates a clear need for separate writing. But what is this separation? How can it be distinguished as particularly male/female? Based on this framework the play is discussed.

A two-act play, Dattani’s “Dance Like a Man” is the story of three generations, set in Tamil Nadu, who stand for the dominant beliefs and sensibilities of their times and shows how they markedly differ from each other.

 

ACT 1

 

Vishwas and Lata are in love and would like to be married and therefore the scene opens with Lata getting Vishwas home, to meet her parents, so that things could be taken to the next level. In the beginning of the first act it is quite clear that Lata has the upper hand in the relationship and Vishwas is the “pliable” one. A cultural unconventionality !!!

 

In the dialogues they share, gender dynamics is almost frictional and very palpable.

It starts with the discussion of Lata’s Parents’ profession. “Dancing!!!”

 

When Lata mentions that her parents have gone out on an emergency; without caring to know what it is, Vishwas remarks

 

 “Only doctors and firemen go out for emergencies. Dancers stay at home till its showtime….”(3)

 

Here there is a condescending tone, when Vishwas finds out that Lata’s father too dances. The profession is clearly shown as having feminine attributions and therefore does not occupy an important position in the daily affairs of the world.

The next section occupies the dialogue on coffee. Vishwas is not sure if he wants coffee and chides Lata on not being able to make tea, and warns her that as North Indians, his family would expect her to make tea every day. This shows more of a cultural difference of daily preference, than anything else, yet the kitchen space has already been set as the woman’s space in the family dynamics.

There is the clear mention of the men being pliable in this case, be it Ratna’s husband (Lata’s father) or Vishwas. Therefore there is the constant rebellion that is seen in the women trying to reverse and take over. Taken this, the characters are unconventional as the women are seen as portraying stronger roles, even in terms of career in one case.

Amritlal as the fiery freedom fighter and the epitome of all that was considered masculine is introduced in this act. Even when just taking his name, his attributes exude terror and fear.

So masculinity here takes over an almost demi-God status and all alike are respectful of it.

Even when Vishwas is going around the house and making comments on the wood and the general strength of the building and the contents inside are referred to as weak and old (worn out),it’s almost as if the situation at home is being depicted, that the exterior might veil what’s inside (Jairaj’s effeminacy)

   

      Lata. “ ….the pages will crumble if you touch them”  (11)

 

Amritlal’s splendid brocade shawl, that he wears when important people come to meet him, in stark contrast to the books and other items of dance, depicts raw masculinity and its wearability pointing towards ‘a man of the world’. The shawl plays a role of , one can say, personified masculinity in the play and this fact is reiterated when “Vishwas wears it ,and mocks an imaginary Jairaj as Amritlal Parkeh and admonishes him for his taste in dance. Even Jairaj for that matter, when re-thinking old times and his father is seen as wearing the shawl. This helps understand that the shawl stands for ‘the man’, or the concept of masculine and all that it holds dear .

 

 

Next we see Ratna and Jairaj, enter and witness Vishwa’s little mock act of the two and the embarrassed silence when Vishwas realizes that they had seen the whole thing. Then the fight between Ratna and Jairaj ,indicated a sour past between the two and how Ratna seems very prone towards ignoring Jairaj,in everything she deems dear to herself and Jairaj is having to correct the “my(s) to Ours(s)

 

“ Ratna. ‘This has never happened before in all my life.

  Jairaj. In all our lives…” (15)

   

It is unclear at this point as to why she seems bent on talking of only herself to the exclusion of her husband, but the slips strongly suggest a desperate need to detach from her husband and thereby indicating an unhappy married life. Only later does it become clear as to the why of it and  the gender implications thereof.

Then for a while there is the heated discussion between Jairaj and Ratna about Shreenivas who has broken his arm and cannot accompany Lata for her performance as her mridangist. When it comes to finding and alternate solution, Ratna is far from trusting her husband  and calls her husband incapable of doing anything significant with the following words

 

Ratna.   “….You are a spineless boy who couldn’t leave his father’s house for more than forty-eight hours.” (21)

 

At this juncture the whole foundation starts to expose and the gender conflicts come to the fore. Ratna admonishes her husband for not being able to take care of her without his father’s financial support, and by doing so,sort of backs the notion of him being not equal to a man. Though at this point it is not clear, later in no unclear terms it is found that even Ratna (at the influence of her father in law) starts to believe that dance has made her husband effeminate and boneless, depriving him of the courage of a man. More of this will be discussed later.

 

Jairaj (on what his father thought of him) “The craft of a prostitute to show off her wares-what business id a man have learning such a craft? Of what use could it be to him? No use. So no man would want to learn such a craft. Hence anyone who learnt such a craft could not be a man. How could I argue against such logic?”

 

Here it’s evident that Jairaj was mocked to be more like a woman for having inclinations towards what was considered then an art for women and that too of the lowest stature in the ladder. And Jairaj’s question in the end sort of emphasizes the indecisiveness he suffers from throughout the play. He wants to be a better dancer than his wife at the same time does not know how to stand his ground as a man in his father’s eyes. Dance and effeminacy are intertwined throughout. And Jairaj suffers from a crisis between what he wants and what is expected of him as a man.

Here the body and the celebration of it is seen as womanly and as belonging to her sensibility. She writes her body differently and when a man uses the same way,he is as out of place and condemned.

When there is a flashback towards the young Jairaj and Ratna, Ratna seems to be approving of her husband’s love for Bharathnatyam and even cites that she married him for his passion for dance, though agrees that she primarily married him as he would allow her to dance after marriage. But later when when Amritlal tells her why it is important to pull Jairaj out of dance, she ,though does not tell out, is clearly moved by the idea.

Here it is made quite palpable that though she married Jairaj, so that her career wouldn’t stop, she would rather see her husband play his gender in the society and be her ‘man’aka protector than spend the day with her, competeing in dance.

Due to pressure from his father to give up dancing, Jairaj leaves home with his wife only to come back in two days. This shows how dependent he is on his father for money and protection, thereby taking up nothing more than the role and importance of a household woman himself.

ACT 2

Amritlal (To Ratna).”  A woman in a man’s world may be considered as being progressive. But a man in a woman’s world is Pathetic” (50)

 

Here when they come back and Jairaj has gone to his room , Amritlal is quick to point out to Ratna that Jairaj can never be as good as she is at dancing as she is beautiful and also better than him in grace. Thus he claims grace and beauty to be a womanly trait .

This is close to why Cixous think it imperative to have a different body language even in writing for men and women separately. One in the other’s sphere is not good .Especially, for the man who has the Freudian fear of the feminine and the abhorrence in becoming like her, which the woman in turn does not go through.

In the climax all loose ends are tied. In the flashback of the last encounter between the young Ratna and Jairaj, just before finding out the death of their son, Ratna makes it apparent that though she regrets how its turned out, even she always felt that Amritlal was right about him being boneless and had to be changed and that she wanted him to be what her father-in-law expected of him and protect her and the child.

Was she afraid to see herself, in his eyes? As Cixous puts it, a perpetual hatred for womanhood by woman herself created by the man? There is almost a suggestion as if the theme propounds that there has to be a clear mark between what a man has to do and what a woman is expected to perform. Though Beauvoir argued that women have been defined by men, in course, men have defined themselves and created a marked distance between who they are and what they are running from.

 

 

 

In the end, it is clear that the both are able to solve their differences as man and woman ,only after their death in heaven,(Surrealism used to portray transcendence of bodily differences).This puts forward that as man and woman, there is always separation at one level or the other and inevitably comes out and a complete transcendence can be gained only after death.

 

 

 

 References

 

Cixous, Helene. "The Laugh of the Medusa." . N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Feb 2014. <http://www.dwrl.utexas.edu/~davis/crs/e321/Cixous-Laugh.pdf>.

 

Dattani, Mahesh. Dance Like a Man. 1. Navi Mumbai: Penguin Books, 2006. 1-74. Print.

 

"Feminist and Gender theories." Sage Publications. 312-380. Web. 19 Feb. 2014. <http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/38628_7.pdf>.

CIA - 3 Research Paper

Sir,

     I am very very sorry for sending the research paper late. Please accept this paper.

                     thank you,

                                                                                         Sincerely,

                                                                                         Thekkekara Livea Paul

                                                                                            I MA English

                                                                                             Reg. No. - 1324153 

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)