Posts Tagged ‘Feminism’

The Dangal Debate : Khan-ism, Realism, Feminism & Patriarchy

Posted: December 24, 2016 by moifightclub in bollywood, cinema, In Defense
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Aamir Khan film. Trailer looked great. Inspiring story of Phogats. These were the top 3 reasons why we booked FDFS tickets of Nitesh Tiwary’s Dangal. When we say we, it means 4 of us. But as we came out of the theatre, we found ourselves on different sides of the fence. As we are quite down in the bollywood food chain (say ADs/Assistant Directors and such), we asked mFC if our discussion can be posted anonymously. Nobody wants to hear the bad words. So why burn our blood and careers so early.

Read it only after you have seen the film, and let us know where do you stand.

dangal

SPOILER ALERT

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Yes, the film is good and it really excels in performance and direction. I was riveted throughout except the cringe worthy climax. And I did feel it was really long.

Anyway, I have been thinking about it and there’s something that has been bothering me in the way women are presented in the film. I am aware that my reading is a little too ultra feminist but I did feel strongly about certain things. Here goes:

Though the film harps about being pro-feminist, it does so by still putting the men in control of the women. Sakshi Tanwar’s character completely shadows Mahavir. I would have loved to see some sign of revolt or at least a conscience. She is devoid of one and only allowed to play her strength through looks. The only time she is shown to have genuine anger and a rebel is when Mahavir is cooking chicken in the house. To a certain extent, I buy this because women from this world don’t have a say. But there could be a take, there could be a way to show some indictment. One example: She could have gone to Commonwealth Games to watch her daughter play. It’s in Delhi, not very far. Even the chicken seller shows up with his daughters with prasad to see Geeta wrestle. That bit of fiction would have been redeeming for the consistent lack of importance given to Sakshi’s character. But no, because nothing can come in the way of Mahavir’s glory.

One thing was smart that they used humour to hide the torture that Mahavir inflicts on the girls. You cringe when the boys make lewd comments at Geeta playing in a local match but find it utterly cute when Haanikaarak plays. Imagine watching the Haanikaarak video without the actual song and those cute lyrics. Watch the video imagining it with a empathetic violin piece. Add the cutting of the hair and the cousin being slapped at the wedding to the song montage. Aamir would have then sounded like the way his character actually is – a tyrant imposing his dreams. But then he has to be the hero. So yeah, smartly played.

The girls are constantly instructed what to do and how to play. Their personal transition of being forced to play to actually wanting to play seriously is given just a mere exposition scene. It feels so untrue. Aamir’s motives and choices are neatly etched out but the girls only hear their friend talk about freedom and have a change of heart. Their change is not so organic. And you can’t suddenly show your docile girls to be tomboys beating up neighbourhood kids. Least of parents see it. If they had shown Mahavir observing his daughters showing a streak of becoming wrestlers over the years, it would have been nice. Here in one scene they become nose breaking tomboys.

I felt so nice that Geeta revolts and questions Mahavir’s technique. The father daughter wrestling is the best scene in the film. It would have been so nice to see that Mahavir could go wrong. Like show a culmination of old ways realising there is some good in the new ways. But Aamir is right all the time. The film talks about less support from the state. But the institution such as the National Sports Academy is rendered completely useless and evil. Showing a caricature of a villain only heightens Mahavir’s heroism. It feels so deliberate/clever and not organic for a coach to behave like that. I would have loved it if Mahavir is shown agreeing to there being some merit in Geeta’s new techniques. It would have really emphasized the need of formal institutionalised training that this country so badly needs.

And then the final match: the coach and Mahavir are constantly playing on their egos to steer her match. Shut up! Stop confusing the girl. If she has willfully become a champion, she would have developed craft by herself. She may have her own technique. She is shown completely as a robot playing on the ego of these two men. The film realises it should have a conscience and gives one scene where Geeta plays on her own technique/volition. But even this is shown by a flashback where a drowning Geeta is told by Mahavir to become independent and her father is not going to be there all the time (by the way when you are under water you can’t hear from the outside). She remembers this and fights back. Even that show of individual drive is Mahavir’s glory. Imagine a scene where she would have remembered being bullied by some boys and she fights them all by herself. If she remembers this and had fought back in the match, it could have been her volition and not Mahavir’s conscience dictating her.

Even her win felt more Mahavir’s victory than the girls’. Yes the film is played through Mahavir’s point of view but I was constantly being bothered about the women showing no conscience. Yes, it is a true story and that’s how this part of the world is but as the makers you got to show some take. Even a sense of an indictment. The only flaw the film revels in showing is that Mahavir is stubborn and ego headed maniac but only to hammer down the point that Mahavir NEEDED to be that way to have won the medals. As if the film is saying that girls will have to listen to the men around them in order to become heroes, because if you are known as a weaker sex, you don’t have a conscience too.

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But read any inspiring sports story where one has achieved anything. PVSindhu (she wakes up at 4am, doing that since she was a kid) or Agassi, without tyrant parent (starts with parents, kids – how will they know what potential they have) or coach (mostly dad/male coach), nothing is possible. It’s life of a monk. There is really no other way.

Easy to see everything through feminist prism. But if it was a guy wrestler and his dad/coach was being tyrant, it wont be a big thing, right? Parents thrusting their choices remain.

But the point is in most individual sports, all athletes are like blind runners without their coach. Starting from 0 to 100, every step belongs to coach/dad/whoever. Again, there is no other way. At least i have never read any story.

Aamir becomes that gyaani baba in 3 Idiots, PK, TZP, but here i don’t agree.

And if that meat seller has come with his daughter to see the match, why is that character not worthy of feminist lens? The meat seller, daughter, both.

Also are you forgetting the entire first half – Aamir’s character fighting against entire system, society, men, office – just the idea that women can wrestle.
Do you realise how daring and daunting thought that is? That’s the most feminist thing one can do. The thought to empower the girls.

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I am not at all questioning the tyrannical way of coaching a sports person. We are saying it is smartly done in a commercial film. Nahin toh agar Whiplash jaisa karte toh you won’t sympathise with Aamir.

I am not so sure about coach being everything. Yes, off the match/game, surely. But once they are on the field, it is just them, right? Would you say that all boxers do exactly as told by their coach (just comparing for proximity with the player)? Initially, yes. But over the time, they will have developed instinct/technique, which is why they become what they eventually become. In that case we would have manufactured so many Usain Bolts and Muhammad Alis by now.

Meat seller – I will not argue about why he came to the match. Surely it is a nice touch but just that Geeta’s mother can’t make it but meat seller can make it to the match is what I felt odd about. This may be too much of nitpick, I agree.

And not denying at all that Mahavir didn’t fight the world but it was to satisfy his ego. To ensure his daughters gold on his behalf. I don’t think it came from a pro-feminist place. I am talking about other things in the film. Read Tanul Thakur’s piece. He has also spoken on similar lines. https://tanulthakur.wordpress.com/2016/12/22/review-dangal/

On casting, Girish Kulkarni was a total misfit for me. I just couldn’t buy him as the coach. He just didn’t have the personality. The character was anyway so stupid. Also the guy Aamir wrestles right at the start. I also think that the credit goes to their accent and wrestling training more than casting.

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I read his piece. You too talking the same. I don’t agree. Except that pre-climatic twist, I didn’t have much problem with anything.

Why is it ego? Why is it not aim or ambition or dream? Because ego has negative connotation. Why isn’t even Phogat celebrated as a feminist hero. Because he is not urban or smart or suave or articulate or he doesn’t know the F-word. The starting point might have been his dreams of gold but what that has done for girls there, I don’t think any govt policy could have.

Haryana has the worst sex ratio.

Haryana also has the biggest Olympic contingent of female athletes.

Compare the two numbers and read a bit.

It’s amazing what sports has done. That too in the worst patriarchy society.

It’s not fair to put white man’s feminism definition in the context of Phogat. It’s like demonetization idea. Look at his context. His education, society, culture, upbringing, gender sense. I am saying in that place even to think that his daughters could go out and wrestle, that thought is much stronger than bra burning feminism ideas.

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Oye! Don’t go out of the context of the film. We are only reading him as a character. You guys are clubbing him with the real life of Phogat.

Ego because you are making someone do something without their willingness. Replace sport with say, aeronautical engineering. Or let’s say my dad forced me into becoming IAS officer because he could never become one. That doesn’t remain ambition alone.

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But he is based on real character! If he was fictional, you could have asked the writer director. Here it’s him only. How can you separate the two.

Sports kids starting early? It’s grey area for sure. And it always happens in all sports. Don’t think this film is even aspiring to find the answers to those questions. So why burden it?

Are we going in loop?

We need to hear more voices.

Have you seen Dangal? What do you think? Do join our debate in the comments section.

Anurag Kashyap Explains His Stand – On Rape, Feminism, His Short Film and more

Posted: July 7, 2014 by moifightclub in Guest Post, News
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anurag--300x300Dear All,

When I am not making movies – which is thankfully rarely – my favourite pastime is to get fundamentally quoted without the context. Blame the lack of space in newspapers today with all those advertisements accounting for most of it. It helps to keep our conversation going, you see. And it has happened again. My whole conversation has been reduced to one line that’s being knocked around, “rape is a bad accident says anurag kashyap”

Fun though it is, I think it’s time I speak for myself and not let some out-of-context quote in a paper, or an edited version of a half-an-hour conversation do the talking.

Sitting here in Karlovy Vary I have been inundated with texts and mails about an interview of mine, that has of course, as always, been completely misread.  It does not help that a long conversation has been reduced to a paragraph, but credit to the writer that he does mention that the now-controversial paragraph is the point of view of a woman and not my own.

The reactions on various social platforms do prove that in anger the opinionists also turn blind, and they actually read what they want to, so that they can rage over it, rather than seeing it and arguing healthily over it.

I don’t mean to spoil the rage party, but let me try to bring some context here.

Recently, I was in conversation with a woman, who quoted an old article she had read in The Times of India oped page, years ago.  That article profiled a courageous rape survivor, a European woman living in India, who after being gang raped, actually fought for a fair trial for her rapists and a lighter sentence. She strongly protested any baying for blood or vengeful mindset. She was in fact ridiculed and vilified for standing up for justice for her own rapists. When asked why she did it – she said that she would treat the trauma of her rape the same way she would treat the trauma of being in a terrible car crash. She would try to heal from it, she would want the irresponsible perpetrators punished, but she would not allow the crime to gain greater significance than she felt it was due. Any greater assignment of meaning to her own rape would be to give in to a male view of the female gender. She also believed that her identity and her dignity did not reside between her legs, but between her ears.

The woman friend of mine who told me about this case, also mentioned that this article made her rethink the concepts of honour, izzat,  dignity and personal identity, for years to come.

What was read as my comment or statement in the HINDU were actually “questions” raised by the survivor, which were then subsequently narrated to me by another woman and by me to Sudhish Kamat who writes it like it is but not all of it, which by now is attributed to me as my quote. Those questions stayed with me and bothered me, and made me question things, because I felt that there was a certain truth to them.

I am not so good at articulation without my camera, but let me try and elucidate the point my female friend was making: No woman invites rape, rape is never ever the woman’s fault, and no woman would chose it – if the choice was a viable one. But in a situation where the choice is between life and rape, a woman might just choose the latter. If her choice is ‘life’, why is that very life taken away from her, once she is raped? Why is she called stuff like ‘zindaa laash’ and why does the entire focus shift to ‘honour’ rather than to ‘healing’? To ‘punishment’ rather than to ‘rehabilitation’? When does the male gaze take over, such that even the extent of the victim’s physical and mental bruising is decided for her by others?

Why is she never granted the quiet she so sorely needs? She is frequently dragged out by the social worker to narrate her story again and again, she relives the trauma again and again, she is used to make a point. should that not be a choice. the choice of the survivor.

The woman who told me this story also said that she often puts a very difficult binary choice to her female friends: Such as: burnt alive, or rape? Dismembered, or rape? Acid attack, or rape? Horrible though it sounds, when given a choice like this, many women went quiet. The horror of rape, when pitted against other ghastly horrors, acquired a perspective. Not that of being ‘fine’ or ‘acceptable’ but often, of the lesser evil – if other brutalities or violence was not involved.

Does this mean any of us is trivializing rape here? Far from it. It is a violent, traumatic, battering, violating experience. All I want to say is that let us not add male notions of honour and purity to it. That is like adding insult to the injury.

The point is about not having a choice. When one is raped, there often is no choice. When one has the option of fight or flight one uses it but often neither option is available. It is the same in a bad accident. You do not have a choice but you go through the brutality .

However, what happens afterward is telling. When in a bad accident, the victim goes to the doctor or a hospital, tries to recuperate, allows oneself to heal, the victim is rehabilitated or allowed to rehabilitate.

And the one who causes the accident is punished.

My distress with our social network-ists is that they assume they understand rape simply because they are women. Rape is not that easily understood and it is not a gender’s prerogative to do so.

In this world men are raped too and more so in our society, in this part of the world. I am also a victim of rape and I have healed a lot more than most because the world was not fussing over me.

Suddenly there is a new term being thrown around, VAW (violence against women) well, coming to VAW, VAW is not the same as rape, VAW includes rape but rape has a much broader bracket that includes the other gender too and also the one we most often don’t consider a gender, the transgenders, who are the biggest victims of the said crime..How I look at Violence? You can’t wish it away, laws will not and can’t control it, it has existed since the mankind has existed, violence against animals, violence against humanity, all kinds of violence exists and will continue to as long as people are not equal. as long as two people will have different strengths and ability, there will always be a power struggle and there will be violence. The weak will always be violated by the strong and it is not gender specific. You can police it. regulate it .. there is violence in sport but is regulated. the perpetrator is always shown a yellow card, then a red card and then is barred from the field and if he/she continues, is banned from the game for life. Only physical assault does not constitute violence, emotional blackmail is also violence, mind games are also violations, misusing nirbhaya laws is also violence and rise in that VIOLENCE AGAINST MEN since those laws have been constituted, was even commented on by the Supreme court just last week. Every solution will create a new problem. anyway i am digressing here..its a never-ending discourse.

If I had to discuss or argue about rape, I would much rather do so with the victims and survivors than with a feminist.Why? Because I get a strong feeling that the Indian feminist is very hard to talk to, because he/she doesn’t listen. He/She has a fully formed opinion etched in stone and will give no space to accommodate any other point of view.

Indian feminists start with the agenda already defined, and hence there is no room for any other opinion or position. Feminists are always eager to adopt any woman with a strong voice as their own. We saw our film “Queen” being immediately adopted by them as a feminist film. Let me say here that neither is Vikas Bahl a feminist, nor am I, and we both love and respect women as we do men: as people, as human beings. Isn’t that the way it should be?

Queen was not intended to be a feminist film, it was the love and respect for this human being and her story that came through, the film was not pro woman or anti men. It was a story of a girl finding her own self and how she does it on her terms.

I know a lot of women who the feminists project as their own and these women hate it, they hate it because they don’t see themselves that way but don’t say it out loud because they are mortally afraid of offending the feminists. The fear that the feminists inculcate even in women is especially peculiar.

Next. coming to my short film – well everything we do is not always a statement. The purpose of the film was not to offer a solution but to tell a story. I made a deal where I was obligated to do a short film for the platform it provided to five other young filmmakers around me who I think deserve more and so that they can showcase what they are capable of.  They made their shorts and the time came to do mine, we were running out of time, I was already late by a month. We were to do a short film and I had two days and the script was chosen from a bunch of scripts and purpose of the film was not to offer a solution. Purpose of the film was to tell a story, and this was the best of the lot, it had its issues but we did not have time to iron out the issues and in that story we tried to shoot it in a way , that one feels the harassment. The ending was meant to be light hearted. We had no idea that it would go viral and that’s our shortcoming probably, we had no idea that it will be taken as my opinion and even after it was, it helped to bring forth so many points of view – and that wouldn’t have happened if that short did not exist.

I responded to and engaged with some sensible points but the angry, short sighted judgemental ones that came from twitter anger we chose to ignore. I refuse to take the responsibility of making a statement on behalf of a half baked -ism of this country through my work. I am not your voice so please stop expecting me to be, I am on my own journey and constructive points of views help me grow and understand things more, I have been taught not to be afraid to sound like an authority before I speak, I have been taught to speak freely because until and unless you don’t do that, there will not be debates and discussion and arguments.

I am my own voice and I speak for myself, and my life is an ongoing process, I have not come to any conclusions about anything in life, about you or me or cinema or rape or women or anything. I react, I think, I over react, I think too much and I think aloud. I am what I do and not what I am expected to do.

I don’t think I am that important in any scheme of things and I write this letter for the sake of the few people I actually care about, who are distressed, and  who urge me to have my say.

– Anurag Kashyap

(ps – To avoid further misunderstanding, let us clarify that he didn’t send us that profile pic of his to go with this post, we just googled and put one. Because just text looks bit drab)

‘Gulabi Gang’ and The Many Genres of a Documentary

Posted: March 1, 2014 by moifightclub in cinema, Documentary, film, Guest Post, Indie, Movie Recco, Must Watch, reviews
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gulabi

It’s a great time for desi documentaries. In the recent past we have seen some pretty terrific ones- Malegaon Ka Superman, The World Before Her and Katiyabaaz to name just a few. Which is why it’s a pity that Nishtha Jain’s powerful documentary Gulabi Gang hasn’t quite got the audience it deserves- yet.

Perhaps the makers ought to have employed the Gulabi Gang themselves to whack our lazy, torrent-savvy audiences into theaters. 😉   The film is now running in its second week in a select few theaters/cities with ticket rates further slashed. There’s no good excuse to miss this one, really.

Anyway, here we have an interesting post by Prashant Parvatneni on Gulabi Gang and how genres usually associated with (fiction) cinema can find their way into the documentary format as well. Over to him:

Gulabi Gang by Nishtha Jain is undoubtedly a rigorous study of a women’s movement in the deep interiors of Bundelkhand where a group of women networked between several villages have formed a ‘gang’ to fight against the oppression of women and dalits. They drape themselves in Pink sarees and carry pink lathis that becomes an image of the identity that binds these women. There are complex issues that these women are dealing with and fighting. Young brides are being burnt, dalit activists murdered and certain high-caste Choudharies have concentrated all power in their hands suppressing any and every dissent using gun and muscle power. It is this nexus of power and oppression that the Gulabi Gang is trying to tear apart under their feisty leader Sampat Pal.

Sampat Pal inevitably becomes the ‘hero’ of this film, her infectious zest and fearlessness naturally grabs the attention and it’s hard not to root for her like we would for the angry underdog taking on the system in a Bollywood film. It only helps that Jain adopts a form of narrative that is simple in structure but quite inventive. It follows 2-3 cases that Gulabi Gang encounters and as it does so, quite curiously these cases turn to a kind of whodunit with the Gang acting as detectives trying to uncover the truth behind the violence inflicted on women.

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Like in one of the cases, a young wife is found burnt inside the house. When Sampat reaches the spot, the in laws of the woman claim that she got burnt while making rotis but Sampat in true detective spirit, deduces that it cannot be a mere mishap. There wasn’t any stove at the spot, nor was any other part of the house burnt or even charred. Sitting in the audience even we also could start the process of knitting the clues together and deducing while also being acutely aware of entire machinery which includes the panchayat and the police trying to push this crime under the carpet. Sampat Pal’s own relative burns his wife but she wants the truth to come out. When the director’s voice asks her will you fight against your kin as well, she replies inspiringly ‘I just want to find out the truth’. Quite fittingly then, Anand Gandhi (director, Ship of Theseus) called this film a ‘reinvention of detective genre’.

This is a welcome change as the problem with most documentary films dealing with social evils, people’s movements, subaltern issues etc. is that they have sort of reached a saturation of form. While they do deal with a variety of issues, they follow the same old form – interview of key players, a bit of commentary, a bit of field action all merged seamlessly to ‘illustrate’ and ‘explain’ and thereby ‘document’ the problem. Such a form has turned even more uninteresting with its derivatives populating news channels through their ‘human stories’.

Thankfully the film doesn’t stop short of also pointing towards the limits of such genres that evidently end with a resolution a climax arrived at through carefully plotted series of events. Unlike in a detective genre film, we do not get to know whether the culprit was caught or not. Often the battles are lost and the guilty gets away. But like the truest of detective stories, the importance lies in questioning what one gets on face value rather than solving the puzzle and Gulabi Gang does point our attention towards the need to inquire and shakes up the static status quo.

Instead of a gradual convergence towards a resolution of problem, the film starts to spread in and out of such inquiries of cases and looks at the varied other forms of struggle that a people’s movement engages in – organization, activism, mobilization, planning etc. One of the most charming and equally thought provoking sequences involves the meetings and the practice sessions of the Gulabi Gang. As a ritual Gulabi Gang practices lathi fights with a playful zest as two women take on each other while others on the periphery cheer and clap. It quite casually points towards a ritual- even a ritual of violence (though more for protection in this case) that is involved in any people’s movement.

The entire movement also resembles a theatrical performance. There is backstage practice and rituals and there are costumes and props – the pink sarees and pink lathis juxtaposed against the dry, arid brown and gray landscape is an image that gives tremendous gravitas to the Gang and binds them into a community. In fact the saree and the lathi are the first things that are given to the women who join Gulabi Gang and they have to change into the ‘costume’ right away. There is a slightly comic cut in the film where we see Sampat Pal encouraging the mother of the burnt bride to fight her case and in the next shot the frail creature of the mother is draped in bright new pink saree as she is on her way to the court with the Gang. It’s a terrific reminder of how a bit of theatre and performance is a part of every movement or revolution. It also reminds us how such performativity can be appropriated for contradictory causes – for assertion of justice or for religious or political fanaticism.

Gulabi Gang ends with tragic human drama as the documentary manages to trace a character arc of sorts of one of the Gang’s members – Husna. Husna, a hardworking and passionate activist and member of Gulabi Gang takes a position completely contradictory to the movement when her own brother kills her sister for marrying out of love. When she supports him instead of condemning in the name of culture and tradition, one is hit by the extent to which such fundamental, patriarchal ideas can deride compassion and human justice and what a difficult battle Gulabi Gang is fighting – not just externally but internally. For me, the film was special because it shows how certain genres – like detective, political, social drama, human drama genres – can seep into documentary also; in-fact they come from the reality that the documentary often deals with. But, it also shows how cinema can avoid using genre as a trope and move in an out of genres to question the complexity instead of using such genre games to manipulate sentiment and to take an easy position of a sympathizer. The last sequence shows Gulabi Gang members waiting for a train on the platform and few men looking at these women clad in Pink Sarees with contemptuous humor. For them they look nothing short of fancy dress. One of the men asks the man who moves around with the Gang – ‘kuch milta hai issse’. The director shows amazing empathy here as she cuts to the image of Sampat Pal staring into the camera or perhaps into the far horizon, sitting amidst other women with eyes filled with acceptance of difficulty but shining with a rare honest hope. All the contempt of the scene just washes away and we are filled not with sentiment but with emotion – an unsaid but urgently felt hope and a desire at least to think.

 

(This post was originally published here.)