Dev.D through the Gender Prism

By: Aditi Srivastava - September 8th, 2009  Filed under: Art & Culture 16 Comments

aditi

“IN A WORLD ORDERED by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness. Woman displayed as sexual object is the leitmotif of erotic spectacle” … “she holds the look, and plays to and signifies male desire. Mainstream film neatly combines spectacle and narrative.”

Laura Mulvey[1]

Although a bit simplistic, it would not be untrue to say that the most dominating genre in the Bombay mainstream commercial cinema, popularly known as Bollywood, is song and dance woven around a common thematic undercurrent in the story: romance between the hero and ‘his woman’, culminating in marriage, a happily-ever-after conclusion. To this structure, Anurag Kashyap’s most famous film, Dev.D complies broadly. But it causes too many dents, and too deep, to go unnoticed.

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Hair

By: Priyanka Joseph - July 21st, 2009  Filed under: Art & Culture, Body & Sexuality 9 Comments

priyanka

That girl at twenty-

her black hair ripples

through the comb

in the pride of spring –

such beauty!

(sono ko hatachi kushini nagaruru kurokami no

ogori no haru no utsukushiki kana)

- Yosano Akiko, Midaregami: The Poetry of Yosano Akiko, 1952.

2005. THE L’OREAL SALON in Chennai. I was at the eye of a storm, all because Susan (one of the head stylists) and I had bonded instantly over the fact that I wanted my hair cut, as short as possible. Something with an edge, I said. Susan’s smile on hearing the word “edge” was the biggest I had ever received in a salon. She went to work with razors, clippers and two vats of colour, one copper, the other fire-engine red. Considering every other female there was getting a “trim” with the odd blonde highlight or two, Susan and I had unknowingly provided entertainment and conversational fodder for the next two and a half hours. From that day onwards, the fire-spikes got me more than just a little attention. A nun at my college (yes, it was a catholic institution) hinted that I might be setting a bad example, but found it hard to explain herself when I asked her why.
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Markers of marriage

By: Meena Kandasamy - July 6th, 2009  Filed under: Art & Culture, Relationships & Marriage 16 Comments

Meena Kandasamy

RECENTLY, I PARTICIPATED in the launch function of a documentary film Pottu about the hardships and social humiliation faced by widows and deserted women in Tamil Nadu. Produced by the Kalangarai Trust which works among the widows in the southern district of Nagappattinam (particularly in Vedaranyam, Sirkaali and Poompuhaar), the 50-minute documentary attempts to describe the torture that widows are forced to undergo in the name of tradition. The documentary started off with a young girl’s story: the gaudy ceremony surrounding puberty, her early marriage (to prevent the chance of the family name getting “spoiled” if she were to be left “free”), the dowry that her parents are forced to pay, the hard work that she is forced to do in her husband’s home, his alcoholism and domestic violence, his death and finally, her enforced widowhood. Although Pottu seemed to make of every cinematic cliché, some issues highlighted by the documentary deserve to be taken up for debate.

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The Fear of Feminism

By: Oishik Sircar - June 30th, 2009  Filed under: Art & Culture, Law & Institutions, Self 10 Comments

oishik

ON A RECENT VISIT to a Ivy League university in the US with scholars from across the Global South, we came across something strange. A book on feminism from its library had a bizarre tag pasted on it. The tag was brought to our notice by Elizabeth Weed, one of the editors of the acclaimed journal of feminist cultural studies called ‘Differences’. She was delivering a talk to us provocatively titled ‘Against Gender’. Before I reveal the name of the book and what the tag said, it might be useful to touch upon why she used this title. Weed raised some critical questions about how the journey of feminism in the academy – from women’s to gender to feminist studies centres and departments – has had to continuously confront attempts of being depoliticized, appropriated and domesticated. While she was referring to experiences in North America, it had resonances for Feminists from the Global South as well.

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Remembering Kamala Das

By: Sharanya Manivannan - June 12th, 2009  Filed under: Art & Culture 4 Comments

ONE OF INDIA’S most beloved writers, Kamala Das, passed away after a long illness on the morning of May 31  2009. A poet and memoirist, she died at the age of 75, after a long and conflicted career.

Predictably, many of the obituaries focused on the more controversial aspects of her writing and life, particularly where sexuality was concerned, including this one in The Hindu and this one in the New York Times. But as with all lionized public figures, the tendency to reduce a complicated life and body of work to a few choice elements does little justice to the figure her/himself.

Without further comment, then, here is a short documentary in which Das reads and discusses her poems and their inspirations.

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‘Your Name is Justine’

By: Aparna Singh - June 8th, 2009  Filed under: Art & Culture 17 Comments

Apu

LAST YEAR, when I read Lotus’ review of The Road of Lost Innocence, just the review was enough to send shivers down my spine. I doubt I have the stomach for the entire book. The Road of Lost Innocence is a survivor’s account, the memoir of Somaly Mam who survived the brutality of the Cambodian sex industry and lived to help other girls caught in that hell. Closer home, it is common knowledge that many, many Nepali and Bangladeshi (as well as Indian) women find themselves sold into sexual slavery. What kind of world do we live in where girls as young as 10 are viewed as commodities to be used for a man’s pleasure?

Yesterday, I chanced upon a Polish/English movie, ‘Your Name is Justine’ that explores this subject using a focuslight on one young Polish woman’s ordeal as she is betrayed by her boyfriend and sold to a ruthless and brutal pimping gang in Germany. Mariola is held in captivity while her captors tell her that she is now “a piece”, and try to break her resistance through rape, beating and starvation.  [Read More]

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Weekend Protest Details

By: Anindita Sengupta - March 6th, 2009  Filed under: Art & Culture, Govt & Politics Add Comment

Saturday, 7th March 2009, 3.30 pm – 4.30 pm
Meet Director General of Police for Karnataka, Ajay Kumar Singh: A crowd will gather outside the DGP’s office while a delegation goes to in to present him with a memorandum. More details at Bangalore Aware.

Sunday, 8th March 2009, 6 pm onwards
Take Back the Night Walk: The main event will bring people together in different locations across the city between 6 pm and 9 pm. All groups will meet at Majestic at 9 pm where there will be a small performance and much boisterousness. More details at Blank Noise Project.

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Responding to the Bangalore Attacks

By: Guest Contributor - March 4th, 2009  Filed under: Art & Culture, Body & Sexuality, Govt & Politics, Society 7 Comments

Team Maraa responds to the series of attacks on women in Bangalore.

Seven attacks in the last ten days! In response to the recent attacks against women in the city of Bangalore, many individuals and organisations have come together to form FEARLESS KARNATAKA or Nirbhaya Karnataka to reclaim public spaces and promote safety for all.

In the wake of a series of attacks in Mangalore (the latest one was reported on February 24, 2009), women have been targeted in the name of morality, culture and “public decency”. In Bangalore, the reasons for the attacks have been on similar lines — during the attacks, the girls were insulted for wearing jeans, sleeveless shirts and speaking English. We believe that the attacks in Bangalore then are a continuation of those that took place in Mangalore and coastal Karnataka regions even though the identity of the attackers (and the organizations they belong to) could have differed. [Read More]

Evil As She Does

By: Amrita Rajan - February 26th, 2009  Filed under: Art & Culture, Media 7 Comments

gc1

Pity the female villain.

Male villains can look forward to world domination, tons of moolah and all the power they can handle; females, on the other hand, spend all their time scheming to sabotage various weddings when they’re not forcing their daughters-in-law to mop floors while dressed in rags or nagging their husbands to death. And if somehow they manage to stumble onto a bitchin’ gig, they might just find themselves laboring under gallons of body paint and CGI because God forbid they show an actual live woman having the sort of fun men having been having for ages now (before getting blown up or dissolved in a vat of acid, naturally).

Male villains get cool names, all the chicks they can bang, and fly around the world like the billionaires they frequently are; female villains are typically the mom or the wife from hell, nobody loves them much less wants to bang them, and all their plotting and planning usually leaves them with a wrinkly face.

Chee. Who’d want to be a female villain? [Read More]

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The Secret Lives of Women

By: Aparna Singh - February 20th, 2009  Filed under: Art & Culture 10 Comments

Apu

THE HADEES he had read yesterday talked about how it was Shaitan who always tried to corrupt us. If we escaped his attempts, we would surely go to Heaven. In Heaven, rivers of milk and honey flow, thousands of Houri women serve the men and make them happy. As she remembered this, she wondered, if there were Houri women for the men, wouldn’t there be Houri men for the women too? (From Irandaam Jaamangalin Kadai by Salma; my translation) [Read More]

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