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Representation
of
Women
in
Bhoomika
and
Mirch
Masala
Ranjani Mazumdar
The post emergency period in India witnessed the production of a number of films dealing with women's issues
particularly by those who came under the category of New Wave directors. This article attempts a textual and
contextual reading of two New Wave films, with the objective of proving or disproving the argument that cinema
on women within this category is constrained by dominant ideological discourses on women and falls prey to
the liberal epistemology of mainstream feminism which has always tried to perceive the women's question as only
a gender war
A N Y genuine attempt to understand and
analyse the representation of women in artistic practice must insist upon the social
character of all practices. Cinematic practice like any other form of artistic practice
is also shaped by concrete social relations
and works within and on socially produced
ideologies. Cinema is a complex structure
which brings together various elements in
a dialectical unity, ideas, themes, compositions language, etc' Therefore the relationship between the formaJ mechanism of film
to ideology must be considered seriously.
The representation of women in cinema has
been a major issue of debate amongst
feminist film theorists. In India the postemergency period witnessed the production
of a number of films dealing with women's
issues, particularly by those who came under
the category of the 'New Wave' directors.
This essay is an attempt towards a textual
and contextual reading of two New Wave
films, Bhoomika (The Role) and Mirch
Masala (Spices). The primary objective is
to prove or disprove the arguments we are
trying to raise that the cinema on women
within what is considered the Indian New
Wave is constrained by dominant ideological
discourses on women and, that in spite of
their feminist aspirations they fall prey to
the liberal epistemology of mainstream
feminism which has always tried to perceive
the women's question as only a gender war.
(Mirth Masala is possibly one of the few
exceptions.) While recognising the contributions of the liberal feminist movement in
focusing on the specificity of gender oppression, a Marxist feminist analysis operates
within a wider notion of the 'social* where
gender oppression overlaps and is informed
by that of caste and class.
As we proceed, we will try to show how
in Bhoomika, the 'act of liberation' is not
ony distorted but reduced to the struggle of
the individual. The process of self-liberation
involves simultaneously both individuals and
groups. It is absolutely central to political
analysis to understand that while the struggle for women's emancipation also takes
place at the level of individuals, this struggle is one which cannot successfully be completed by individual women in isolation since
it is the identity as members of social groups
which are under attack. Bourgeois feminism
has successfully managed to ignore this by
creating a dichotomy between the 'public'
and the 'private' : the public domain being
the world of waged work, industry, production for the market, politics, warfare, etc, and
the private domain as the domestic world
of the family and self. A study of the use
Economic and Political Weekly
Bhoomika is the story of the Marat hi actress Hansa Wadkar. The film was acclaimed as one of the major feminist films of its
time. Using the traditional narrative format,
Benegat traces the life of Hansa from her
childhood to her acting days. The main
focus of the film centres on her relationships
with different men and through each of
these relationships, he tries to show the
psychological conflicts that Hansa undergoes, between her role as breadwinner, her
sexuality, her image as an actress, her
cultural and traditional background, etc
Sexual difference and female subjectivity are
the pillars around which Benegal situates his
analysis of women's subjugation. He moves
from an exploration of the self to an exploration of subjectivity. The relationship between
self and society seems to get deliberately
subverted and here lies his failure to comprehend the complexities and the essence of
women's problems and see only the phenomenal level of what appears to be the issue
at stake. What Benegal fails to realise is how
a woman's gender identity has to be viewed
and understood through an array of social
categories, the most important of these being
class (and in the Indian context caste). In
Malini Bhattacharya's words
Class is a category which enables us to
historicise 'gender' to trace the development
in time of the concept. The evolution of the
man-woman relationship in society or of
gender politics, while it has its own internal
logic and seems at times to operate i n dependently of class differentiations can
nevertheless only be understood in the con-
hansa Wadkar came from a caste or community whose cultural tradition totally differentiated their women from the women of
the rest of Hindu caste society, and certainly from the Muslims and Christians. By the
traditions of this caste, the women were not
supposed to marry because their caste occupation was a totally public one. This community produced the singers, the musicions
and dancers. This was their caste occupation and the practice of this occupation
meant constant contact with a primarily
male audience. The traditions of marriage,
chastity, etc, were in their case irrelevant. The
women of this caste had their sexual lives
but this was through temporary relationships
with different men who occasionally set
them up with properly. But being the
mistress of a man was a secondary aspect
of their lives, the primary one being their
art which was a public occupation and yet
they were a part of Hindu caste society,
shared their religion and some of the other
cultural norms. 'Akhand saubhagyavati' (the
bearer of indestructible fortune) was the title
given to the women of this caste because
since they never married, they could never
be widows. 4 The children belonged to the
women and so this was a woman-centred,
mother-centred community. The women
were also the main source of earning.
What Senegal tries to show as unconventional (Hansa's relationships with men) was
in reality totally traditional by Hansa's caste
norms. The tension begins in her life with
her increasing entry and acceptance as part
of the rising new middle class.5 The implicit
acceptance of her public career being the
most important thing in her life and every
thing else as secondary begins to clash when
she starts comparing herself with other
middle class women. If Hansa faced conflicts in her personal life, they were a result
of the social expectations and value system
of a particular class that she was becoming
a part of.
Benegal fails to grasp this point and
through a systematic manipulation of the
link between the public and private space of
the protagonist removes her and the
audience from relating her experiences with
the enormous web of many different social
relationships. However, he prevents himself
from entirely ignoring the public spaceissues of what is considered the public arena
WS-81
Saraswati's character.
Saraswati's initial conflict with her
husband (mukhi) is because he has a mistress
and very often does not return home,
However, the conflict takes on a different
expression when she comes into contact with
'master sahib' (the Swaraj activist) and
influenced by him admits her daughter to
the village school. Saraswati's daughter is the
only girl going to school. Mehta relates
Saraswati's subordination at home to the
overall subjugation of women. When the
mukhi gets to hear of this, he is furious and
drags his daughter back home. The panchayat meeting at her house to discuss
Sonbai's plight seems to be Saraswati's final
undoing. Mehta visualises this brilliantly.
Since only the men are allowed to attend
the meeting, Saraswati watches through the
heavily gril'ed window. The impotency of the
panchayat forces her out of her house to
organise the other village women. She is able
to feel a sense of solidarity with the women
trapped in the factory. The symbolic protest
of the women making a noise with (he
rolling pin and steel plates is evidence of
their utter contempt for their husbands, who
drag them back home. The mukhi throws
Saraswati into the house and locks it from
outside. But the protest remains a
courageous act. When the men are leaving
the village to talk to the subedar, Saraswati
hits the grilled window in anger and frustration. With dramatic lighting, Mehta shows
her profile in the foreground and the men
walking past in the background, she is inside
the house and they are outside. This focus
on her aggressive action reveals Saraswati's
final realisation that as long as she is locked
in the house literally or figuratively there will
be no change in her situation. Only by
relating and associating her experiences with
those of others can she have any hope of
changing her life,
Mirch Masala also introduces several
techniques to draw the attention of the
audience to the cinematic apparatus. Mehta
uses effective distancing devices to make the
spectators conscious that they are watching
a film. When Sonbai is at the river washing
clothes, the subedar comes on his horse and
looks at her through a telescope. Mehta cuts
from a shot of the subedar to a shot of the
telescopic view of Sonbai focused on her
back. The subedar's gaze which sees her only
as a sexual object is obvious, but Mehta also
makes another point about the gaze of the
cinematic apparatus itself.17 By doing this
he tries to keep the narrator of the text alive
so that the audience is never confronted with
images that give the impression of 'reality'
or 'truth'. The illusion of reality is created
when the narrative or the film which should
act as the mediator between the audience
and reality seems to disappear. This creates
a transparent style which diverts the attention of the spectator from the 'mediating
narrative' and produces the effect of the
spectator being directly confronted with
reality.18 Mehta successfully avoids falling
into this trap. He uses slow motion and
dissolves as specific techniques in cinema to
foreground the cinematic specificity of the
film. Theatrical acting, unreal pretty clothes,
WS-83
Notes
1 Karel Kosik, The Dialectics of the Concrete
Reidel Publishing Company, Boston, 1982,
p 78.
2 Part ha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and
the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse
(see Preface), Oxford University Press,
Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, 1986.
3 Malini Bhattacharya, 'Women's Studies and
Textual Evidence: Some Preliminary Notes'
in Samya Shakti: A Journal of Women's
Studies, Vols IV and V, 1989-90, C W D S ,
p 277.
4 The word 'saubhagya' literally means good
fortune. In common parlance saubhagyavati
is used to describe women whose husbands
are alive, since widowhood under patriarchal dispensation is equated w i t h the toss
of all fortune. Ironically even a community
which attached no significance to the
institution of marriage sought to flaunt the
status of its women as those who could
never be widowed. One may read a symbolic
defiance of the patriarchal norms of caste
and class society in the adoptation of this
title by a group considered to be on the
margins of Indian society
5 The common tendency of upwardly mobile
groups to imitate the social norms and
values of the upper classes to which the
former is seeking entry, in the Indian context is compounded by the wide differences
in social norms relating to women's roles
in different castes. Domestication is a luxury
and a norm that was imposed only on upper
caste and upper class women, expected to
be emulated by upwardly mobile caste or
class groups.
6 Michelc Barrett Womens Oppression Today:
Problems in Marxist feminist Analysis,
Verso Editions, London, 1980, p 9).
7 Lukacs, Georgy, Studies in European
Realism: A Sociological Survey of the
Writings of Balzac, Stendhal, Zola, Tolstoy,
Gorki and others, M e r l i n Press, London,
1972.
8 Toril Mod Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist