Vigilantism and the Pleasures of Masquerade: the Female
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INDIAN CINEMA AND THE URBAN EXPERIENCE EDITED BY PREBEN KAARSHOLM rB O O M % LONDON NEW YORK CALCUTTA CONTENTS vn Acknowledgements 1 I'RF.HKN KAARSIIOI.M: Introduction Unreal (lily: Cinematic Representation, Globalization and the Ambiguities of Metropolitan Life 26 l'KTKR l.ARSKN Urban Legends: Notes on a Theme in Early Film Theory Seagull Books Editorial offices: 40 1st Floor, Angel Court, 81 Si Clements Street, MOINAK BISWAS Oxford OX4 I AW, UK The City and the Real: Chhinnamul and i Washington Square Village, Apt HI, New York, the Left Cultural Movement in the 1940s NY 10012, USA 26 Circus Avenue, Calcutta 700 017, India 60 SUDIITA KAVIRAJ Seagull Books 2007 Reading a Song of the City— Images of the City in Literature and Films 1 his collection © Seagull Books 2004; individual pieces with the authors. This volume is a revised and updated version ol Occasional Paper Number 22 82 published by International Development Studies, Roskilde University, 2002. M, MADIIAVA I'RASAI) Realism and Fantasy in Representations of ISBN 1 9054 2 2,'Ui 9 Metropolitan Life iti Indian Cinema British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record (or this book is available from the British Library 99 MARTIN ZKRI.ANG Typeset by Seagull Books, Calcutta, India Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddies Ltd, Kings Lynn A CIosc-Up on Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children References VIGILANTLSM AND THE PLEASURES OF MASQUERADE Ghosh, Shohini (2001), 'Streets of Terror: Urban Anxieties in the THE FEMALE SPECTATOR OF VIJAYASANTHI FILMS Bombay Cinema of the 1990s', Paper presented to the workshop 'The Exhilaration of Dread', Sarai, 29 November-1 December. Gopalan, Lalitha (2002), A Cinema of Interruptions, MS, n/a. TEJASWINI NIRANJANA Mazumdar, Ranjani (2001), Urban Allegories: The City in Bombay Cinema 1970-2000, New York University, New York. Mehta, Monika (2001), Selections: Cutting, Classifying and Certifying in Bombay Cinema, Ph.D thesis, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. In the first sequence alter the credits in the Telugu film Slreetfighler (dir. B. Gopal, 1995), we are shown a top-angle shot, of a street, blocked by dozens of tnnda.s.i The hero is lying on the vessels, head cushioned on one arm, right ankle casually crossed, surrounded by the multi- coloured plastic bindas; we can see the jeans and shirt, the sports shoes. The water tankers drive up. The coloured vessels block the road with the women lined up behind them, sari pallus tied around their waists. The tankers come to a halt. We see a pair of shoe-shod feet plant, itself on the ground. Camera moves slowly up from shoes to trousers to flowered shirt knotted over an orange T-shirt. The face of the hero is covered with a brass vessel which is about to be thrown at. the tankers. In the next shot the vessel goes crashing through a wind- screen. The tanker drivers jump out, of their cabins and demand to know what's going on. 'How dare you do that? Who are you?' they ask. Camera pans to Vijayasanthi's ponytailed face as she produces a few cheeky aliases. 'Do you know whose tankers these are?' one driver asks. She replies that the tankers belong to the builders who are illegally diverting the water meant for her locality to their construction site. 'Give us the water or else . .' Vijayasanthi thumps the vessel menac- ingly. 'Use drivers turn hosepipes on the women, and then the fight breaks out. Somersaulting and kicking, jumping on top of parked cars, Vijayasanthi disposes of the men, two at a time. A young man on 232 CITY FLICKS a bicycle comes by, and places his camera to his eye to record the masculinized one (Mulvey, 1975). This assertion is premised on the to- scene; he later appears as the besotted suitor of the star. The dramat- be-looked-at-ness and glamorous/seductive framing of the female star'. ic entry of the 'hero'—with the camera tracking from feet to face, fol- Doane takes this argument further- in her 1982 essay 'Film and the lowed by the eruption into action—is in no way different from the Masquerade', pointing out the close relationship between theories of entry of a male star into the cinematic narrative. Other Vijayasanthi the image and theories of femininity, and calling for a dissection of 'the films too follow this convention with minor variations. episteme which assigns to the woman a special place in cinematic repre- My interest in Vijayasanthi dates back to discussions over the last sentation while denying her' access to that system' (Doane, 1991:19). decade in women's groups about film and media, to our embarrass- Drawing on the work of the psychoanalysts Joan Riviere arrd ment about weepy women, anger against the 'degradation' of female Jacques Lacan (and those writing in the wake of Lacan, such as Luce bodies, and our discontent regarding female stereotypes. Our reaction Irigaray arrd Michele Montrelay), Doane talks about how theories of was to seek positive images of women, to read for character and plot, femininity constantly foreground the almost 'claustrophobic closeness' which would 'empower' women viewers. Our attention was drawn to of the woman to her body/image, a closeness that has severe implica- the popularity of the Vijayasanthi figure, and we wondered if our tions for the ability to see herself. The necessity of creating a distance applause for a woman beating up the villains would be wholly unqual- between self and image allows for the possibility of understanding ified. We noticed that both feminist and non-feminist women specta- femininity as masquerade. The masquerade is seen as a reaction tors for different reasons felt some discomfort at watching against the persistent female desire to be a man, a desire at the heart Vijayasanthi, and were confused about the compulsion to celebrate of the cultural construction of femininity, according to Doane via the vigilantisni. My paper is an attempt at exploring the reasons for that psychoanalysts (Doarre, 1991:25). The excessive femininity represent- discomfort (did it have to do with the replication of male violence, or ed by masquerade is seerr as a form of 'resistance to patriarchal posi- with the fluidity of sexual identity in the films?). Are characters and tioning' (Doane, 1991:25). Thus, by 'flaunting femininity', the woman plot the most interesting aspects of these films? Or would a focus on is creating a distance between herself and her image, denying their the problems of spectatorship yield a more nuanced reading of our seeming convergence. As Doarre rightly points out, in her case this admittedly ambivalent responses? analysis is still at the level of the cinematic representation, arrd needs to be extended in the direction of the speclatorship question. Let us Masquerade stay with the flist level for a while arrd see what is happening there in In this paper my main concern will be to work out a theory of mas- the Vijayasanthi films. querade, which can account for both representational issues and those 1'he screen image of Vijayasanthi in the films studied here is hard- of spectatorship in the 1990s vigilante films of Vijayasanthi. While this ly one of masquerade as feminine excess; on the contrary, it appears paper will desist from making claims about empirical spectators of to disavow almost every aspect of the socio-cultural construction of these films, having not (yet?) embarked on the more properly ethno- Indian femininity. Given that Vijayasanthi is shown as a biological graphic enterprise that would yield information about such spectators, woman dressed in men's clothing (but. not passing for a man), there is it will however' suggest that an analysis of the spectator' positions cre- clear evidence here of the presence of masquerade, defined not as pre- ated by the films extetrd, even challenge, itr interesting ways the theo- tending to be something other than what one is, but behaving contrary ries of female spectatorship put forward by writers like Laura Mulvey to public expectations (here, those expectations attaching to one who and Mary Ann Doane. Mulvey has famously asserted that in classic appeal's to be female). Perhaps we can consider defining masquerade, Hollywood cinema the gaze of the camera is congruent with the male then, as consisting in this case of the disavowal of femininity. ga/.e, and that the spectator position of popular narrative film is a 234 CITY FLICKS THE PLEASURES OF MASQUERADE 235 Even as I attempt to put forward a theory of masquerade, I will What, makes Vijayasanthi a phenomenon in lelugu cinema? The assemble the kinds of information that might help us contextually his- popular journal Sivaranjani dated 29 July 1994, carries air article with toricize the vigilante female figure in male clothing. This information the title—'"Mr" Vijayasanthi—Confined to "Magaraayudu" Roles?'3 is varied, ranging as it does from data about Vijayasanthi's career to The article went on to quote sources in the lelugu film industry which more general issues relating to Telugu cinema. Vijayasanthi is a six- said she 'lays claim to an image which could hitherto not be imagined'. time Nandi Award winner (the Andhra Pradesh State award for best The sources felt that '. The kind of image that a "top command acting) , as well as the winner of the National Award for Best Actress hero" has in terms of business (referring to the film industry) for her acting in Karlavyam (dir. A. Mohan Gandhi, 1990). Vijayasanthi too has. Her films have the same drawing power.' A pro- Speculations about her imminent political career have been rife. She ducer called her' Mr Vijayasanthi: 'Vijayasanthi herself is the hero of campaigned for the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party in the 1998 my film.