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.

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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.