Gender Representations in Women's Cinema of the South Asian Diaspora
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Universidad de Salamanca Facultad de Filología / Departamento de Filología Inglesa HYBRID CINEMAS AND NARRATIVES: GENDER REPRESENTATIONS IN WOMEN’S CINEMA OF THE SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA Tesis Doctoral Jorge Diego Sánchez Directora: Olga Barrios Herrero 2015 © Photograph by Sohini Roychowdhury at Anjali Basu’s Wedding Ceremony (Kolkata, India), 2015. UNIVERSIDAD DE SALAMANCA FACULTAD DE FILOLOGÍA DEPARTAMENTO DE FILOLOGÍA INGLESA HYBRID CINEMAS AND NARRATIVES: GENDER REPRESENTATIONS IN WOMEN’S CINEMA OF THE SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA Tesis para optar al grado de doctor presentada por Jorge Diego Sánchez Directora: Olga Barrios Herrero V°B° Olga Barrios Herrero Jorge Diego Sánchez Salamanca, 2015 1 INDEX INDEX Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……………………………………………………………… 5 INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………………….. 13 CHAPTER I THE MANY SOUTH ASIAS OF THE MIND: HISTORY OF THE SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA …………………………………………………………………..………….. 27 1- Inwards Flight to the History of the South Asian Subcontinent ………………………. 32 1.1 The Indian Palimpsest. A Fractal Overview of the Historical Confrontations in the South Asian Subcontinent until the Establishment of the British Raj ………………………………………………….. 33 1.2 The Jewel of the Crown: the Colonial Encounter as the End Of the Integrating Diversity and the Beginning of a Categorising Society ……………………………………………………………… 38 1.3 The Construction of the Indian National Identity as a Postcolonial Abstraction: the Partition of the Religious, Linguistic and Social Distinctiveness ………………………………………………………….…. 43 2- Outwards Flight of South Asian Cultures: The Many Indian Diasporas …………….... 49 2.1 Raw Materials and Peoples: Indian Diaspora to the UK, Caribbean and East and South Africa during Colonial Times ……………..…….. 50 A. Arriving at the British Metropolis: Cotton, Labour Force and Colonising Education (1765 – 1947) …………………….. 51 B. Working for the Empire: Indentured Indian Diaspora in the Caribbean (1838 – 1917) …………………….….. 52 C. The Empire’s Officials: Indian Diaspora in East Africa and South Africa (1848 – 1945) .……………………. 54 2.2 Contact and Conflicts beyond Two Cultures: Postcolonial South Asian Diasporas to the UK and the US ………….………….. 57 A. Postcolonial South Asian Diasporas to the UK …………………………………….. 58 B. Postcolonial South Asian Diaspora to the US .………………………………………. 63 3- Gurinder Chadha and Mira Nair’s Personal Histories and Diasporas ………………… 66 3.1 Gurinder Chadha. From Kenya to Queen of the Multi …………………………… 67 2 HYBRID CINEMAS AND NARRATIVES: GENDER REPRESENTATIONS IN WOMEN’S CINEMA OF THE SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA 3.2 Mira Nair. From Documenting Bombay to the Name of the American Masala …. 70 CHAPTER II DIASPORA, HYBRID CINEMAS AND GENDER REPRESENTATIONS ……….. 77 1- Diaspora: A Theoretical Contextualisation …………………………………… 82 2- Postcolonial Film Theory and Hybrid Cinemas: an Overview ……………….. 91 3- Gender and Feminist Theories in Postcolonial Film ………………………… 115 3.1 Gender and Feminism in Postcolonial Studies ……………….…..……... 116 3.2 Representation of Women in Hybrid Cinemas: The Cases of Gurinder Chadha and Mira Nair …………..…….……… 121 CHAPTER III HYBRID NARRATIVES IN WOMEN’S CINEMA OF THE SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA: PERFORMING ARTS TRADITION AND POSTCOLONIAL LANGUAGES OF ARTISTIC CREATION ……………………………….…………. 133 1- South Asian Tradition in the Performing Arts ………………………………. 142 1.1 A Performing Arts Compilation of Plurality and Unity in Diversity: Bharata Muni’s Natyasastra …..………………………………………………….. 148 1.2 Performing Arts as Empathy and Communion: The Experience of Rasa . 158 1.3 The Art of Connecting with Emotions: Carrying Bhava through Abhinaya ……………………………………….…. 165 2- Representations of the Sacred in South Asian Performing Arts …………….. 169 2.1 The Sacred in the South Asian Subcontinent: A Vedanta Approach …… 170 2.2 Dance in South Asian Tradition: Features of a Postcolonial Holistic Language ……………………………………………….…………………… 178 2.3 Bharatanatyam Dance: An Example of The History of a South Asian Performing Arts Language …………………………………………………. 185 3- Contemporary Use of South Asian Performing Arts: Postcolonial Acts of Historical and Gender Subversion through Hybrid Narratives ………….…… 195 CHAPTER IV GENDER CONFLICTS IN WOMEN’S CINEMA OF THE SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA ……………………………………………………………………….….… 209 1- Educational Attainment in the Diaspora ……………………………….……. 215 3 INDEX 2- Arranged Marriages and Interracial Relationships in the Diaspora ………… 230 3- Weavers of a Nurturing Space: Empowering Female Main Characters in the Diaspora ……………………… 246 CHAPTER V HYBRID NARRATIVES: TOWARDS A NEW DEFINITION OF WOMEN IN THE CINEMA OF THE SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA ……………………………….…... 261 1- Rasa in the Diaspora and the Homelands: Defining a New Identity through South Asian Expressive Performing Techniques ……………………………………… 267 2- Sacredness in the Diaspora and the Homelands: The Subversive Role of Dance …………………………………………………. 301 3- Talking Anew from Literary Classics: The Empowerment of South Asian Women in the Diaspora and the Homelands . 317 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………….……… 335 SUMMARY OF SELECTED FILMS .………………………………………..……… 345 GLOSSARY OF TERMS …………..…………………………………………..……… 359 APPENDIX OF IMAGES ……………………………………………………..………. 371 WORKS CITED..…………………………..…………………………………………... 405 1- Literary and Critical References …………………………………………….. 407 2- Film References ……………………………………………………………… 435 3- Referenced Illustrations ……………………………………………………… 442 4- Recommended Websites……………………………………………………… 443 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Some years ago I understood that the acknowledgements’ pages should be circular. Today I feel them as a part of a linear path that feels fast, slow, constant, ever-changing and open. In between many adjectives that are, have been and will be here and there. This PhD dissertation started as a life anecdote at a bookshop in Salamanca where I tried to find Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway because Stephen Daldry’s The Hours was to be released. It was my second year at university and I found many questions and two books: Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies and Woolf’s The Waves. Woolf became a lighthouse for the everyday and Lahiri’s interstices accompanied me silently ever since. I made a commitment to follow and share what Woolf had given me. Later it was Irish poet Eavan Boland. Then it was British playwright Sarah Kane. Salamanca, Dublin and London. Back to Salamanca. Lahiri, after five years, was always in my backpack. Then I started my PhD. Costa Rica. And then it was beyond Lahiri. South Asian Subcontinent. India.Hyderabad. Salamanca. Amwan. Salamanca. Rabindranath Tagore. Kolkata. Amwan. Salamanca. Madrid. Always India. The world altogether. This is how I started this PhD, by chance, and with a question that was ever present although it was invisible. What made me grab a copy from Lahiri’s The Interpreter of Maladies? I could not identify where she was from, what she would talk about, which country she was from, which culture the book related to. Somehow I answered questions about Woolf, Boland and Sarah Kane. But I still had more and more questions about Lahiri’s background and about the dilemmas of their characters. It is probably twelve years 6 HYBRID CINEMAS AND NARRATIVES: GENDER REPRESENTATIONS IN WOMEN’S CINEMA OF THE SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA since I bought that book. It is a random coincidence that made me question about my passion for books, film and human rights. This is how Gurinder Chadha and Mira Nair appeared. I still have questions; I guess I will always have. But I have a clear commitment, maybe the same as before, that is personal and academic: South Asian art, characters and women deserve study and acknowledgement. This is why I started all these pages as a path that has an open ending and a long list of other acknowledgements that need to be made to people who kindly walk with me. Firstly, I need to thank from the heart the fervent attempt that my family have constantly developed to understand what “I was up to”. I have always felt their companionship and care but I am afraid that sometimes I have not been able to give them anything in return. In this regard, all the love, gratitude and admiration that could be in these pages go towards them. I started to write this for them and so they should be mentioned all along. My sister María is light, smile and companionship. She has been a silent support, a constant spiritual uplift, an angel. She has taught me that I should always be as I am. Her true hugs and smiles, along with our music and dances, comfort and encourage me to go on. Thank You. My mother Sofía reminds me that honesty and true love should always be my two sole feet. She has constantly cared about me and my health and, emotionally and physically, I could not have walked it all without her constant SMS and visits to the fruit shop. I cannot offer all the words they deserve because a bond as the one we share can only be felt. Thank You. My father Marcelo is the strong pillar that I always feel. He has been the source of my questions and so all of my steps have been possible because of how he holds my hands. And how he always held them. I love you and thank You for everything. Furthermore, I also have to thank the presence of all my family, who have always been behind this process, whether in silent worry or in active soothe during all those 7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS moments of stress, hard work and certain desperation that I have gone through. They have always believed in me and so I have felt their companionship, whether in the moments of siesta and salad at high school or in the phone calls during my night-walks at college. Just as they all know what these abstract and vague references stand for, they should know the support I have found in them. I feel and love art because of them so these pages are all theirs. Secondly, it is that I am finally writing these acknowledgements because I have always felt Professor Olga Barrios’ constant concern, contagious commitment and absolute esteem. I can honestly claim that this work is half hers because she has been twelve years by my side. Olga Barrios has always shown to me the professional excellence of Professor Barrios when my mind was too much beyond the Ether, in the same way Olga has sent me light from her own spiritual realm when I was stuck in the mere academic criticism.