Apotheosis Or Apparition? Bombay and the Village in 1990S Women's Cinema

Technological University Dublin ARROW@TU Dublin Books/Book chapters School of Media 2007-01-01 Apotheosis or Apparition? Bombay and the Village in 1990s Women’s Cinema Rashmi Sawhney Technological University Dublin, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://arrow.tudublin.ie/aaschmedbk Part of the Film and Media Studies Commons Recommended Citation Sawhney, R. (2007) ‘Apotheosis or Apparition: Bombay and the Village in 1990s Women’s Cinema’, Film Studies (special issue on ‘Visualising the City’ ed. Marcus, A.), Winter (11): 1-13. This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Media at ARROW@TU Dublin. It has been accepted for inclusion in Books/Book chapters by an authorized administrator of ARROW@TU Dublin. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License FS_1101.fm Page 1 Friday, October 19, 2007 10:27 AM 1 2 Apotheosis or Apparition? 3 4 Bombay and the Village in 1990s 5 6 7 Women’s Cinema 8 9 10 • Rashmi Sawhney 11 12 13 In the text City Flicks (2004), Moinak Biswas perspectives of women filmmakers on the much 14 suggests that contemporary Indian cinema puts studied issue of the modern Indian nation.4 15 an end to the representative tropes of east/west, 16 city/country, police/criminal.1 Ravi Vasudevan 17 Nation and Theories of Indian Cinema expresses a similar view, stating that the ‘image 18 19 of a depressed and dystopian urban subjectivity Cinema and the nation exhibit a strange 20 only conjures the most fleeting of residual relationship in India. OnPROOF the one hand, it is 21 utopian energies in its reference to a country almost impossible to conceptualise an Indian 22 idyll as an object of longing’.2 The changing national cinema, in the way it is conceptualised in 23 representation of village and city in Indian films many Western nations.5 On the other hand, most 24 over the last twenty years or so has roughly Indian films, across the twenty odd languages of 25 coincided with the state and corporate-led drive production, display a significant engagement 26 towards a ‘globalised’ and ‘liberalised’ India. with visualising the nation.6 The nation as seen 27 In Indian films, the city and the village have by Indian cinema is an entity which results from, 28 ‘performed’ the narrative of national identity, as well as enacts and contains, the dialectic 29 30 particularly within a developmental or between modernising and traditionalising forces. 31 modernising role. This paper examines the Madhava Prasad uses Fredric Jameson’s term 32 representation of urban and rural India, and ‘ideologeme’ to describe the pervasiveness of 33 therefore of the Indian nation, in two films made the tradition-modernity binary in Indian films.7 34 by women at the turn of the decade marking Indeed, much of the scholarship of Indian 35 liberalisation.3 Aruna Raje’s Rihaee (1988) and cinema has emphasised the dominance of 36 Sai Paranjpye’s Disha (1990) are films which, viewing cinema through the framework of the 37 by virtue of their thematic and formal treatment, nation-state, and therefore, as an enactment 38 to some extent, enable the conceptualisation of the process of modernisation.8 39 of the aesthetics of women’s cinema in India. The viewing of Indian cinema as a contestation 40 41 The two films thematically bridge a moment of over the form of the nation-state is supported, 42 disjuncture in Indian socio-cultural history in either directly or tangentially, by, what could be 43 the late 1980s and early 1990s, recreating an identified as the three main schools of Indian film 44 imaginary cinematic nation combining past and criticism: the experimentalists, the traditionalists, 45 future visions of development. This paper argues and the third, for want of a better word, the 46 that Disha and Rihaee portray a vision of specificists. The first, represented by film-makers UNCORRECTED47 modernity which is markedly feminised in the and critics like Chidananda Das Gupta, Mani 48 Indian context through their visualisation of city Kaul, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Kumar Shahni, 49 and village. By way of discussion of these two aspires to an ‘evolved’ form of film-making that 50 films, it raises questions about the theorising of draws from the realist as well as the avant-garde 51 52 Indian women’s cinema and hopes to draw traditions of Western films, along with influences 53 attention to the frequently overlooked from Indian folk traditions. Their concept of Film Studies • Issue 11 • Winter 2007 • 1 FS_1101.fm Page 2 Friday, October 19, 2007 10:27 AM • Bombay and the Village in 1990s Women’s Cinema 1 cinematic sophistication is influenced by a desire Migration, Modernity, and Transitions 2 to be locally grounded, yet at the same time 3 to fashion a cinema in line with the ‘national’ One such process is the process of migration. 4 avant-gardes of Europe. The second group, Migration has been one of the central themes in 5 spearheaded by political scientists and the social history of India over the last century or 6 psychoanalysts like Ashis Nandy and Sudhir so. When migrations acquire significant volume, 7 Kakar, see the Indian cinema as a ‘slum’s eye they trigger off corresponding social 8 9 9 view’ of Indian politics , or as the enactment transformations in a society, affecting the 10 10 of a collective democratic fantasy . character of the nation-state, demography, civic 11 The third group, whose role in the last fifteen society, politics, economy, culture, language and 12 years or so, in pointing out the specificity of people. The act of migration in cinema, or the 13 Indian cinema has been very significant, has journey from the village to city, and from the city 14 instilled a new contemporariness to the study of to the village, is a narrative device which 15 Indian films, freeing it from the association performs the complex negotiations involved in 16 between a ‘pre-modern’ form and a ‘third world’ arriving at a fictive understanding of national 17 aesthetic, as well as from the romanticising of modernity and identity. The protagonist’s journey 18 tradition.11 In the work emanating from this is a crucial component of narrative cinema and 19 20 group, the cinema has been seen as a formal has been pictured asPROOF traversing geographic 21 encoding of national identity using theories of barriers, boundaries of nationality, race, class, 22 modernity, and linking politics and history with caste, or gender, metaphysical encounters with 23 aesthetics. While a number of scholars have been the self, or fantastical forays into outer-space and 24 associated with this venture, the work presented imaginary lands.14 Journeys have played an 25 by Madhava Prasad and Sumita Chakravarty is especially critical role as mediators between 26 particularly significant for this essay. Prasad familiar and unfamiliar territories, including those 27 and Chakravarty both identify a site of struggle, between tradition and modernity, self and other, 28 unresolvedness, in the form of Indian films – real and imaginary. It is for this reason that the 29 Chakravarty describes this through the metaphor representation of the rural and the urban, as well 30 31 of the ‘bahurupi’ or the masquerade, a changing as the representation of migration by women 12 32 and fluid entity; Prasad calls it the process of filmmakers becomes exciting in its potential to 33 ‘passive revolution’ – a condition that generates generate a women’s notion of self and society. 34 (or tries to) an equilibrium through the The conventional idea of progress in cinema is 35 opposition between the drive to modernisation of moving from village to city, and more recently, 36 and a simultaneous disavowal of modernity on from India to the West, or to ‘modern’ East Asian 37 an ideological plane.13 Both authors emphasise locations like Singapore and Hong Kong. The 38 the form of the nation-state as the form in village, as bearer of tradition, takes on a dual 39 question, which reveals (and is revealed through) symbolism – first, as that which must be left 40 the form of the Hindi film. The nation-state, behind to attain a modern state of being, and 41 42 therefore, is seen as a constituent of a number of second, as the psychological fantasy of the 43 forces that endow it with a fluidity, a transitoriness innocent state of existence, the paradise lost. 44 – however, one that withholds the process of real The city, on the other hand, symbolizes the 45 change, which has the potential to bring about a attractions and threats inherent in discovery, 46 transformation in the form of the nation-state. isolation, uprooting, and the adventure of illicit UNCORRECTED47 However, it can be debated that the micro-processes romance. The upward mobility or sanskritisation 48 which generate fluidity and impermanence, also that the move from the village to city promises is 49 generate new sites of meaning within the larger visualized through greater material possessions – 50 umbrella of national identity, which eventually accrued through the loss of innocence, through 51 lead to the evolution of newer political formations hard work, as well as physical and emotional 52 53 as well as newer forms of expression. exploitation. Within the city-village binary, the 2•Film Studies • Issue 11 • Winter 2007 FS_1101.fm Page 3 Friday, October 19, 2007 10:27 AM Bombay and the Village in 1990s Women’s Cinema • 1 matter of romance and sex takes on much An emphasis on the process of transformation 2 significance.

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