An Insightful-Rational Analysis on Portrayal of Women in Hero-Centric Tamil Cinema
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology Vol. 29, No. 12s, (2020), pp. 2883-2890 An Insightful-Rational Analysis On Portrayal Of Women In Hero-Centric Tamil Cinema M.Subhiksha TeachingAssociate, Department of Visual Communication, SRM Institute of science and technology, Kattankulathur, Chennai ABSTRACT: The study is to analyze Portrayalof Women in Hero-Centric Tamil Cinema by applying the sociological approach that focuses on depicting the gender. The study investigates the interrelation of gender, women and Tamil Cinema in the context of a few blockbuster movies of 2018 through bechdel test. This is a quality based research that took the form of descriptive method for analyzing the selected films. The narration gives a hint on the position of women in the society and the evolution of Tamil Cinema with special attention to emergence of representation of women on screen. KEY WORDS: Women representation, Tamil cinema, Portrayal, Prime attention INTRODUCTION: Women are underrepresented in film. (Jocelyn Nichole Murphy, 2015) The representation of women in cinema has been a major issue of debate amongst feminist film theorists in India. The complex and fascinating relationship between women and cinema has a substantial literature and some interesting work on third world feminism, which illuminates aspects of the representation of women in Indian films. The representation of women and the representation by women on screen are essential for understanding the interplay between women and cinema in India (Gokulsing and Dissanayake,1998). For analyzing the position and representation of women within power and gender relations in a patriarchal society, we need to consider the role of agency in women’s lives. "Agency" refers to the capacity of individual humans to act independently and to make their own free choices. Agency, thus, generally refers to micro level actors and to macro level collectives that act. In other words, any social being, whether an individual or a collective, can be considered to have agency. (Ritzer,2005). BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY: Movie making is all set to take a new turn. Technological advancements apart, it’s conceptualization that stands first to dive and swim into the sea of change in order to identify the pearls that help make brand new inventions that would pave way to bring up a revolution which in turn, would be acceptable and profitable as well. The need of the study is to create awareness among the next generation to turn away from the habitual movie making norms and get into something new that would maintain and uphold equality in portraying the genders in the movies. OBJECTIVES To dissect if women are still portrayed and categorized as secondary characters in Tamil Cinema To study how women are portrayed in Tamil Cinema To analyze and find if women are observed and treated inferior to heroes REVIEW OF LITERATURE According to Rupapeter(2018),woman is portrayed to be strong, self-reliant and financially independent in Tamil movies. However, she is also sexually harassed and victim of constant male gaze. It is to be noted that new age Tamil movies have gone beyond housewife and teacher roles for women and talk of women in IT and media industry. ISSN: 2005-4238 IJAST 2883 Copyright ⓒ 2020 SERSC International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology Vol. 29, No. 12s, (2020), pp. 2883-2890 According to Jocelyn Nichole Murphy(2015),Gender and racial stereotypes in film are not dead, but they are making progress. The demographics of the audience and their actual preferences should be considered more seriously in production decisions to influence more positive representations and to be more inclusive to the national audience, not just the white males. Calling for a lack of, or turn away from, action/adventure films because they promote hyper-masculinity is not the answer. The answer is pursuing depictions that more accurately represent the audience as a whole. “The ideal approach to female representation, is female representation. RESEARCH QUESTIONS Why women are still portrayed and categorized as secondary characters in Tamil Cinema? Why are they observed and treated as inferior to heroes? How to identify the psychological perspectives on the portrayal of women in Tamil Cinema? METHODOLOGY: This exploratory study analyses popular blockbuster Tamil movies of 2018 to understand how roles of women are depicted in Tamil Cinema. The exploratory study uses qualitative methods to understand how a woman is portrayed in Tamil movies. Thus, the study is included with a Bechdel test to understand and interpret how roles of women are designed in Tamil movies. A list of movies is taken up for analysis to scale up the means of Bechdel test. BECHDEL TEST The Bechdel Test was inspired by cartoonist Alison Bechdel‘s 1985 comic strip ‘The rule’became a basic measure to see if women are fairly represented in a film. It’s is also referred to as the Bechdel- Wallace test. Alison credited the idea for the test to her friend Liz Wallace. The test carries only three questions: 1. It must have at least two strong female characters 2. They both must have names 3. They must talk to each other about something else, other than a male protagonist The Bechdel Test is only a litmus test for character representations and meant to bring attention to lack of complex characters. Since its popularization, authors have been adapting the test to measure other underrepresented character groups such as ethnic minorities and other characters varying sexual orientations. While Johnson was primarily considering television fiction, she and commenters had trouble discerning many examples of science-fiction/fantasy shows that pass the test. While considering the original Bechdel Test, as well as its variations in future research, and in future production decisions regarding the media, it will further expose the discrepancy in well-rounded minority characters and hopefully work toward its reprisal. In this study, 16 Tamil Block-buster movies released during 2018 are chosen for conducting Bechdel Test analysis. ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION RESEARCH QUESTION 1: Why women are still portrayed and categorized as secondary characters in Tamil Cinema? Movie: Sarkar Character name: Nila (Keerthysuresh) Role description: Hero’s love interest. She assists him in his task.Wherever the character appears in the movie, she is portrayed to render support and assist the hero in his endeavours in rectifying the electoral system in the country. Her character is portrayed as someone who follows the male protagonist around like a love struck puppy, always in awe of what he is capable of while we, as the audience, know nothing ISSN: 2005-4238 IJAST 2884 Copyright ⓒ 2020 SERSC International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology Vol. 29, No. 12s, (2020), pp. 2883-2890 about her. The forced love story and the lack of interest of even making her character go beyond the love story are so apparent that it reminds us of how filmmakers would treat an actress of Keerthy’s popularity (and prowess) just because of her present market value.And moreover, she hasn’t a slight opportunity to talk to any other female character in the movie. Character’s name: KomalaValli (Varalakshmi) Role description: Politician’s daughter. She too is a politician operates from abroad. She is portrayed as an antagonist and hence the necessity of sharing her views with another female character doesn’t arise. Her character is designed to just to take revenge of the protagonist who is against her father in his political career. She does all sorts of criminal plays to make her father win the battle but somehow when everything ends up in failure, she decides to kill her father and take herself charge in politics. So as usual she fails in that step too just because of the male protagonist. Movie: 2.0 Character name: Nila(amyjackson) Role description: She enacts the role of a robot created by the scientist. She assists the scientist in his scientific research and related activities. The character, though a robot, has all the chances of sharing her views with the other female characters who appear in a scene or two, it doesn’t happen other than just to talk about the hero’s and his scientific strategies. And again as comes in the other films, she too does fall in love with the robot version of rajinikanth. she helps him in his all mass fight sequences and also when the rajinikanth’s robot version tends to die she will give her neural schema to make him alive. And finally the robots will start living together after all the problems got solved. Movie: Thaana sernthakoottam Character name: AzhaguMeena (Ramya Krishnan) Role description: Hero’s gang commandant. She plays an equally important role with the hero.She is with the hero, supports the hero and does things that support hero in every aspect. She gets no opportunity to talk about anything other than the incidents that swirls around the hero and her own family. She is portrayed in a character that lives in a family that comprises a physically challenged husband and six daughters. This is the reason for her to get involved in this gang of the protagonist. Character name: Madhu (Keerthysuresh) Role description: The heroine of the movie. She pretends as a journalist. She is one of themembers of the gang formed by the protagonist. She does it all well, she is on her own but that doesn’t give her a chance to talk anything out of the box designed for the hero. As usual she also falls in love with the hero and helps him in all his illegal works according to the movie. Though she has only few scenes to perform,she has three songs to dance around the hero.