‘Artemisia’: The Romantic Roots of Rape Culture

The impulse to erase a woman’s testimony, to deny her agency and perception of the crime, while denying society’s victim blaming and bias against survivors of rape — this is the basis of what feminism describes as rape culture. Yet here it is practiced not by a misogynist man, nor by a loyal friend of the alleged rapist, but by a female director aiming to create “emphatically a feminist film.”

Artemisia

Written by Brigit McCone.

[Trigger warning: discussion of rape]


Is it possible to admire a woman’s art while denying its meaning? Certainly, a feminist viewer wants to admire 1997’s Artemisia, a ravishingly beautiful film about a young girl seizing control of her talent and sexuality in the face of a sexist society, filmed by a female director, Agnès Merlet. It tells the story of the first woman to become an official member of Florence’s Academy of Art and Design, the most famous female artist of the Renaissance, Artemisia Gentileschi. Merlet’s Artemisia is a director before her time in the seventeenth century. She oversees the setting up of her studio with minute detail and assertive power, frames her paintings like movie shots, orders men to strip and model for her, and poses their naked bodies with intense interest. Even as a girl in the repressive environment of a convent school, Gentileschi is studying and sketching her naked body with a mirror, with a heroic immunity to social pressures. She has a lively sexual curiosity, spying on a couple having sex on the beach before fitting herself into the imprint their bodies have made in the sand, and watching the older painter Agostino Tassi’s orgies with fascination. It is she who pursues Tassi to be her teacher, who strips and poses him as a model, who dictates the terms of their relationship. The film begins with a close-up of Artemisia’s rolling eyeball and it is shaped by her gaze. To see the beautiful, youthful Valentina Cervi cast as the artist instead of the muse, stripping and studying men for her own pleasure rather than being stripped, should mark Artemisia as a refreshing feminist delight. If only Artemisia herself were a fictional character.

But Artemisia is a historical figure, and transcripts from her grueling, seven-month-long rape trial have survived and are the major source for the film. It is a historical fact that Artemisia Gentileschi accused Agostino Tassi of breaking into her bedchamber and raping her. Merlet’s film follows the rough outline of what the real Gentileschi described, but reimagines it as clumsy seduction. Artemisia’s refusals are a murmured reluctance, not strong or fearful denials. She returns kisses and submits, before gasping in pain and pushing Tassi away, as he mumbles in apologetic confusion at the misunderstanding over her virginity. Not that virginity is a particularly great concern for the unbelievably socially immune Artemisia. The whole event is miscommunication more than violation. Later, the youthful Artemisia will take the controlling and guiding role in their love-making, posing the submissive and adoring Tassi for her signature portrait of “Judith Beheading Holofernes,” straddling him in seduction rather than attempted murder. For the masterful Tassi, who is accustomed to ordering around his naked female models like pieces of meat, to find himself awed and overcome by the strength of Artemisia’s personality is an interesting role reversal. When her father, the painter Orazio Gentileschi, discovers their affair, he tries to force Tassi to marry Artemisia and initiates the rape trial, despite Artemisia telling him that Tassi didn’t rape her but “gave me pleasure.”

Artemisia

Again, one can see a feminist message here, criticizing a society that refuses to acknowledge a woman’s sexual agency or pleasure, yet Merlet is not only twisting the facts but ignoring them, in her need to reinterpret rape testimony as romance. Her Artemisia never accuses Tassi of rape. The fingers of her artist’s hands are bound with chords and torturously squeezed, to force her to confess that she was raped, while Tassi watches in loving agony and confesses himself, merely to spare her pain. In the harsh world of historical fact, Gentileschi was indeed tortured, but it was to force her to withdraw her detailed accusations. Her society pressured women, not to make false accusations but to deny rape. Tassi, meanwhile, defended himself by alleging that Gentileschi was promiscuous and “an insatiable whore.” Whatever their relationship was, it was hardly an epic romance. Why, then, does Merlet, or her intended audience, feel such a need to reimagine it as one? Art historian Mary Garrard and feminist journalist/activist Gloria Steinem protested the film’s inaccuracies at the time of its release. But watching the film, I was struck by more than historical untruth.

I thought about the transformations Merlet had performed on the historical sources: she silenced Artemisia’s testimony, by denying it was ever given; she painstakingly reimagined the circumstances described in the rape transcripts, in such a way that they could have been romantic misunderstanding or clumsy seduction; finally, she reversed an entire society’s values, to imagine a woman pressured by law enforcement to make false accusations, rather than punished for daring to allege rape. The impulse to erase a woman’s testimony, to deny her agency and perception of the crime, while denying society’s victim blaming and bias against survivors of rape — this is the basis of what feminism describes as rape culture. Yet here it is practiced not by a misogynist man, nor by a loyal friend of the alleged rapist, but by a female director aiming to create “emphatically a feminist film.” Why does Merlet feel such a strong compulsion to defend a man who has been dead for over 400 years? Or, is it the image of a vulnerable and exploited Artemisia that she cannot tolerate? What do her rewrites tell us about the mental roots of rape culture?

In an interview by Merlet with the UK’s Independent, two possible reasons are given for Artemisia‘s portrayal. Merlet wanted Artemisia to represent “a more modern kind of feminism, fighting alongside men, not against them,” and she claims that the evidence of the trial can be read in many ways, because there is a “mass of contradictory evidence.” These suggestions need to be considered in more detail. Firstly, what is the contradictory evidence? Perhaps Merlet refers to Artemisia’s testimony that, following her painful rape, she continued to have sex with, and even love, Tassi because he promised her marriage. Regarding this as “contradictory evidence” shows an immaturity in our culture’s understanding of rape, that it must always be the isolated act of a monster, rather than a violation that can take place within a complex relationship. More than that, though, it is a denial of historical context. Deuteronomy 22:28, which claims that a man who rapes a virgin “must marry the girl, for he has violated her,” would have been generally accepted in Gentileschi’s time. To admit that Artemisia could be terrified by the thought of becoming a “fallen” or ruined woman, and could rely on Tassi’s promise to marry her as her only salvation, is to see her as an uncomfortably vulnerable human rather than Merlet’s dominant superheroine. It was during this period, before the trial (not afterwards, as Merlet’s film suggests), that Gentileschi painted her famous portrait of “Susanna and the Elders,” depicting Susanna’s naked body contorted in horror and writhing away from the staring, whispering judgments of the elders looming over her. It is a powerful portrait of female vulnerability under patriarchal scrutiny, but that is precisely the vulnerability that Merlet does not allow Artemisia to feel. So, we return to the question that opened this post: is it possible to admire a woman’s art while denying its meaning?

Gentileschi_Judith

Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Judith Beheading Holofernes,” which she painted directly after her humiliating rape trial, is one of the most violent expressions of female rage in art. In contrast to the timid Judith that Caravaggio portrayed, Gentileschi’s women are filled with strength, solidarity and resolution, dominating Holofernes (whose face resembles Agostino Tassi’s) as the male elders had dominated Susanna. Merlet actually cites the power of this painting, and her shock at its female authorship, as the trigger that began her fascination with Gentileschi. Yet she strives to tame the image, presenting it as a loving collaboration between Artemisia and Tassi. By such painstaking reimagining, Merlet reveals the key feature of the 1990s’ “more modern kind of feminism” (or “girl power”): not its willingness to “fight alongside men” (and why should one rapist be representative of “men”?), but its discomfort with female anger and vulnerability. Like Merlet’s film, “girl power” celebrates the positive sexual freedom of women to desire and seduce, but not their negative sexual freedom to refuse and define boundaries; their positive freedom to take charge, not their negative freedom to protest poor treatment. In that, it resembles the freedoms promised to women by the “free love” culture of the 1960s, whose abuses and exploitations prompted second-wave feminism.

Artemisia’s art is certainly celebrated by Merlet’s film through luscious costumes and Caravaggesque lighting, but without its meaning, the art seems hollow and disconnected from the painter herself. When we see Tassi’s image in the real Artemisia Gentileschi’s paintings, as the sleeping man whose head is about to be chiseled open by a smiling woman in “Jael and Sisera,” as the leering satyr in “Corisca and the Satyr,” and in numerous variations on the Judith theme, are we to ignore the repeated violence, to allow it to communicate nothing about the feelings and intentions of the woman behind the brush? Women threatened by voyeurs, like Corisca, Susanna and Bathsheba; women escaping male clutches through heroic suicide, like Cleopatra and Lucretia; women murdering men, like Judith and Sisera — these are the figures that populate the paintings of Artemisia Gentileschi. To deny her rage and vulnerability is to deny the passion and power of her art. Agnès Merlet’s film Artemisia is a beautiful celebration of the positive freedoms of women, that forms a kind of feminist ideal. But without the willingness to explore suffering, or to express anger, it is only half-alive, and a disservice to the full-blooded achievement of Artemisia Gentileschi.


Brigit McCone is still mad she wasn’t taught more about Artemisia in art class. She writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and getting lost in Vieira da Silva paintings.

How Catherine Breillat Uses Her Own Painful Story to Discuss the Female Gaze in ‘Abuse of Weakness’

The female gaze is more than simply “reversing” the male gaze; it allows for a questioning of why the male gaze is so inherently built into cinema and why women are aggressively sexualised within cinema. With ‘Abuse of Weakness,’ Breillat attacks both of these concerns whilst also actively encouraging identification with Maud – our female protagonist.

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This guest post by Becky Kukla appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.


The name Catherine Breillat is almost synonymous with the concept of the female gaze.

Her works and the female gaze go hand in hand, many of her films providing a platform on which to explore and challenge ideas about sexuality, body image and sexual desire. Romance, A Ma Soeur and Anatomy Of Hell are amongst the most discussed; each film considers our preconceived notions of female sexuality and seeks to question stereotypes about it. Breillat is probably most renowned for this exploration, and the female-centric narratives that her films have. More importantly, her works talk openly from a distinctly female perspective – which is why they lend themselves so well to the concept of the female gaze.

All of this is nothing new, of course. Breillat has earned her title of “porn-auteur” a thousand times over (however ignorant that title is). However, it’s Breillat’s most recent film, Abuse of Weakness (2014), which I think actually pushes our ideas about the female gaze in relation to power and control in onscreen relationships. I was actually lucky enough to (accidentally) buy tickets to a Q & A screening of Abuse of Weakness at the London Film Festival in 2013 (accidentally because I didn’t realize Breillat would actually be there), and she spoke at great length about the biographical nature of Abuse of Weakness. The film itself has a surprising lack of explicitness in terms of nudity or sex. It stands out some way from Romance or Anatomy of Hell, but I genuinely believe it delivers a discourse about the female gaze which is just as interesting, if not more so.

Abuse of Weakness tells the story of Maud Shainberg (the incredibly talented Isabelle Huppert), a director/writer recovering from a stroke. She casts notorious con-man Vilko Piran (Kool Shen) in her new film, and a strange, manipulative relationship begins between the two of them. Somewhere between lovers and colleagues, Vilko begins to exploit Maud–emotionally and financially. Maud, desperate for affection and frustrated by her physical condition, doesn’t stop the exploitation – even though she is completely aware of what is happening to her. It’s an intricate look at relationships and abuse and an autobiographical representation of Breillat herself on making Bad Love. It’s an incredibly uncomfortable film to watch, not only because we know it’s Breillat. Throughout Abuse of Weakness we are aligned with Maud and we not only understand her desires, but can also feel ourselves becoming exploited too.

So where does the elusive female gaze come in? The female gaze is a relatively new cinematic term; traditionally the vast majority of mainstream cinema is aligned with the male gaze. To view and engage with a film, the audience must read the work as a straight, heterosexual male – identifying with the male protagonist and objectifying the women on-screen. Active male, passive female. The female gaze, especially in Breillat’s work, not only allows us to identify with the female protagonist but also allows us to objectify the male characters within the film. As Metz states, cinema is predominantly concerned with pleasure – “The spectator is seen as both the voyeur and viewer who is distanced from the object viewed and who has control over what he sees (and desires).” Breillat’s female gaze enables viewers to actively engage with the female protagonist, and derive pleasure from our identification with her. The female gaze is more than simply “reversing” the male gaze; it allows for a questioning of why the male gaze is so inherently built into cinema and why women are aggressively sexualised within cinema. With Abuse of Weakness, Breillat attacks both of these concerns whilst also actively encouraging identification with Maud – our female protagonist.

The opening sequence of Abuse of Weakness is actually a pretty neat summation of the way in which Breillat exposes the male gaze and actively rejects it. The film begins with a slow pan upward and gradually Maud is revealed lying naked within a large bed. The sheets are white (virginal) and before Maud appears onscreen, there is a familiarity to this type of scene. We expect to see a young, beautiful girl asleep on the pillows – yet we are met with Isabelle Huppert. Huppert is, of course, incredibly beautiful but at 62 she is (by Western standards) far too old to be naked in bed in your local cinema screen. Breillat, naturally, does not care. As we focus on Maud’s face, it is immediately apparent that something is wrong. Maud is having a stroke. As she falls out of the bed onto the floor, she is focused in the foreground of the shot whilst a painting of a naked woman is positioned behind her. This is no mistake; the audience are invited to gaze upon both naked bodies – not to sexualise or fetishisize but as two peieces of art. One is oil, the other is film. As we see in the opening scene of Abuse of Weakness, the audience is invited to view Maud as more than a naked body, or a sexualised piece of flesh, completely contrary to how cinema frequently presents women onscreen. Maud is naked, yes, but it is fear and death which we see in this sequence, not desire or sex. Maud can be naked without being objectified – a feat rarely achieved by women in most films.

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Though Maud and Vilko’s struggle for power is they key theme of Abuse of Weakness, it’s actually Maud’s battle for autonomy that wins out as what the film is actually about. This, even more so, solidifies the film as a product of the female gaze. Although Maud is manipulated and abused, it is through her struggles with her own body – a feeling that most women can probably identify with. On the surface, Maud’s biggest turmoil is the moment where she must admit to her family what has been happening. She seems confused, vulnerable: “It was me…and it wasn’t.” Vilko’s manipulations (the “abuse of weakness”) meant that Maud was unable to have autonomy and live her life the way she desired. However, it was Maud’s stroke that initially took away her autonomy. Breillat often explores female body image within her works (A Ma Soeur instantly springs to mind) and Abuse of Weakness is no exception. Maud’s body has literally failed her, with no warning. The stroke takes away her freedom and her autonomy. Maud’s struggle with her body can easily be read as a comment on body image/representation in modern society. Women are expected to be younger, thinner, more beautiful than ever before – what happens when you can’t be? You lose autonomy and freedom striving to be perfect. Maud proves this in Abuse of Weakness and the question is asked; what can women amount to if their body is not good enough?

Although Abuse of Weakness is certainly the least “sexual” of all of Breillat’s films (physically, I mean), the film still places Maud’s desire for sex as an incredibly important concept. Whilst it’s never clear whether Maud and Vilko have a sexual relationship, there are many sequences where Vilko is topless or nearly nude. He is an attractive man, younger than Maud, and the viewer is invited to share in Maud’s objectification of him. To quote Penley, “Feminist film theory [seeks to] look at ways in which roles are gendered…looking is gendered masculine and ‘being looked at is gendered feminine.'” Breillat encourages the audience to place Vilko in a feminine position of objectification, and forces us to reevaluate the way we gender passivity as female and take a traditionally masculine position when we objectify Vilko.

All of these aspects – sexuality, body image, passive/active engagement and the power struggle throughout the film – combine to create a piece of cinema completely devoted to the female gaze. Viewers can easily identify with Maud and reject the notion of the male gaze. Due to Breillat’s influence as a female director and her rejection of the male gaze, the female (and male) audience are able to establish a relationship with Maud as a woman, a person and not a passive object to be lusted over or desired. Whilst it won’t stir up as much controversy as Anatomy of Hell or Romance (I mean, what can?), Abuse of Weakness is still highly valuable as a text which explores femininity and power – and well worth a watch.


Recommended Reading: France on Film: Reflections on Popular French Cinema by Lucy Mazdon


Becky Kukla is a 20-something living in London, working in the TV industry (mostly making excellent cups of tea). She spends her spare time watching everything Netflix has to offer and then ranting about it on her blog.

 

 

Catherine Breillat’s Transfigurative Female Gaze

Breillat’s complete oeuvre (which certainly demands our attention beyond these three films) delivers continually shocking treatment of female sexuality presented though the female gaze. She wants us to be uncomfortable and to be constantly questioning both representations of female desire and our responses to those representations, and how all of it is shaped by a religious, patriarchal culture.

This repost by Leigh Kolb appears as part of our theme week on the Female Gaze.

“… a person who can find the transfiguration of sex in her life is no longer a person who can be directed.”

– Catherine Breillat

French filmmaker Catherine Breillat has spent her career exploring female sexuality. She hasn’t done so in a comfortable, easy way. When The Woman says to The Man, “Watch me where I’m unwatchable” in Anatomy of Hell, this could very well be Breillat’s message to her audiences as she presents female desire in harsh, jarring narratives that completely subvert the male gaze.

Normally, if we talk about subverting the male gaze and focusing on the female gaze in film, it’s cause for celebration. Finally! We scream. We’re coming!

Breillat’s female gaze is different, though. It pushes us to places of complete discomfort and sometimes disgust, and forces and challenges us to think about the deeply twisted cultural expectations surrounding women and sex.

Sometimes a shock is what it takes to bring us to places of transfiguration. We can’t smoothly transition to the female gaze after centuries of being surrounded and objectified by the male gaze. Breillat delivers shock after shock that serve to transfigure how we see ourselves and our culture. This isn’t comfortable, but it’s powerful.

The grotesque is enmeshed with sexual pleasure and violent death–all images and storylines that patriarchal cultures have been weaving together for centuries. A woman’s sexual desire and her actions stemming from those desires are often presented as horrifying and punishable: “unwatchable.” Much of what Breillat shows supports the reality that female sexual desire is real, and the societies in which we must function are at best, uncomfortable with that desire, and at worst, violently hostile.

A Real Young Girl (Une vraie jeune fille)

 

Breillat’s first film, based off her novel, Le Soupirail, was A Real Young Girl (Une vraie jeune fille). Produced in 1976, it was quickly banned and wasn’t released in France until 1999. The film centers around 14-year-old Alice, who is discovering and attempting to navigate her sexual awakening. A Real Young Girl is avant-garde puberty.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4FXxS9VevE”]

There are moments in the film that are confusing and grotesque (most notably one of her fantasies that involves barbed wire and a ripped-up earthworm). While I found some of these scenes disturbing, I like being disturbed. The worm scene horrified me at first, but then I realized that when I was in high school, the hit teen comedy involved a dude literally fucking a pie. Teenage sexuality is weird and when we are faced with a teen girl’s sexuality–something we are not used to seeing (unless she is a sexual object)–in all of its confusion and vacillation between intense desire and disgust, we are uncomfortable. Breillat wants us to be uncomfortable; she wants to push us to the edge to that visceral experience that will challenge how we see both female sexuality and film depictions of female sexuality.

Fat_Girl_poster

 

Fat Girl (À ma sœur!), released in 2001, follows two sisters–Elena, 15, and Anaïs, 12–as they vacation with their parents. Elena is conventionally beautiful, and while she likes boys and has experimented sexually, she wants to remain a virgin until she’s with someone who “loves” her. She quickly develops a relationship with a young man who is frustrated with her desire to not have sex. He pressures her into anal sex (which hurts her), tries to force her to have oral sex, and finally convinces her he loves her and she has sex with him. In all of these instances, Anaïs is in the room–feigning sleep, asking them to stop, or, when they finally have sex, crying.

Anaïs’s views on sex are very different than Elena’s. She is starting to feel sexual–she’s not a teenager yet, but she’s not a child. Her desires range from banana splits to having sex just to get it over with. She has sexual desires, and her responses to Elena’s sexual experiences show both naiveté and jealousy. Their ages, their exterior looks, their sexual experiences (or lack thereof) all inform Breillat’s treatment of the sisters’ relationship with one another, with their own burgeoning sexuality, and with a culture that insists on sexualizing Elena and ignoring Anaïs. Their desires–Elena as internalized (and then disappointed) object, Anaïs as frustrated subject–are common categories for adolescent girls to fall into.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHRJRbM2EAg”]

Fat Girl (read Breillat’s commentary on the title here) is disturbing in its depictions of some of Elena and Anaïs’s experiences. However, the end of the film is shocking and violent. After Elena and her mother are brutally killed at a rest stop, the murderer rapes Anaïs in the woods. The next morning, she tells the police she wasn’t raped, and she looks at the camera, in an ending that clearly reflects The 400 Blows. Like the Truffaut classic, we are saddened and disturbed at the life trajectory of our young protagonists, and have no idea where their lives will go from here. We just have a frozen young face staring at us, implicating us in their fate.

Anaïs, at the end, seems to embrace her rape (as her meaningless loss of virginity that she wanted) and deny its violence. This is made even more traumatic since her rapist murdered her mother and sister (her sister who had just become sexually active, and her mother who wanted to punish her for it).

The message here is that girls cannot win. A patriarchal culture–full of boys who think they’re entitled to sex and men who violently rape and kill women–cares little for female desire and agency. This world is a dangerous place for girls. This world treats pretty girls like objects, and unpretty girls like nothing. Their desires are complicated and real, but are eclipsed by toxic masculinity.

Anatomy of Hell (Anatomie de l'enfer)

 

Released in 2004, Anatomy of Hell (Anatomie De L’Enfer) is a film that pulls together pornography, misogyny, and female sexuality in a way that shocks and disgusts (male reviewers in particular wrote scathingcondescending reviews of the film). The Woman visits a gay bar and attempts suicide in the bathroom–she is tired of being a woman and being hated by men, and surmises that gay men hate women the most. The Man, however, saves her and she offers to pay him to stay in her home for four days to “watch her where she is unwatchable.” What follows is, for some viewers, unwatchable.

The Woman is naked for most of the film (a body double is used for vaginal shots), and The Man is played by an Italian porn star. His homosexuality serves to completely upend the typical male gaze. He’s disgusted by much of what he’s seeing and experiencing, and the understanding that this primal, visceral, shocking female desire is at the focus of the film (and has absolutely nothing to do with male desire) reflects a culture that typically focuses only on the male gaze and male pleasure. In this culture, female sexuality isn’t a consideration.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbFSZiT2-a4″]

When The Man drinks a glass of water with a used-tampon teabag, certainly the audience is meant to feel disgust. Perhaps some audience members actually gagged at the sight. How many scenes, however, in porn (explicitly) or mainstream film (suggested), feature women swallowing male excretions? Do we blink? Or is it just part of what we expect it means to be a heterosexual woman?

Jamie Russell astutely observes at the BBC, “For all the shocks, though, this is a stoically serious movie: it’s anti-porn, a transgressive sex movie that’s not against pornography but against the (male-dominated) objectification of women’s bodies.”

Breillat’s complete oeuvre (which certainly demands our attention beyond these three films) delivers continually shocking treatment of female sexuality presented though the female gaze. She wants us to be uncomfortable and to be constantly questioning both representations of female desire and our responses to those representations, and how all of it is shaped by a religious, patriarchal culture.

In an interview with The Guardian, Breillat articulated that her female gaze should directly threaten the male gaze, and that men should examine their own sexuality in the face of female desire:

“It’s a joke – if men can’t desire liberated women, then tough. Does it mean they can only desire a slave? Men need to question the roots of their own desire. Why is it that historically men have this need to deny women to be able to desire them?”

The reporter points out that Breillat had said “that censorship was a male pre-occupation, and that the X certificate was linked to the X chromosome,” and Breillat goes on to discuss the religious and patriarchal reasons to censor female desire, which is directly connected to keeping power away from women.

Breillat’s 1999 Romance was originally given an X rating (or banned in some countries). At Senses of CinemaBrian Price notes that “Breillat’s statement was echoed in the French poster for the film, which features a naked woman with her hand between her legs. A large red X is printed across the image, thus revealing the source of the trouble: a woman in touch with her own sense of sexual pleasure.”

Romance

 

And that’s always the problem, isn’t it? Breillat’s work pushes boundaries and forces us to live in the intense intimacy and discomfort of a female gaze that we are unused to due to social oppression of women and women’s sexuality (at the hands of patriarchal religious and government systems). The literal and figurative red X over Breillat’s work–and female sexuality–needs to be stripped away to reveal what’s underneath–which isn’t always pretty.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpH-V6kkOwI”]

___________________________

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature, and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

‘Je suis FEMEN’ (‘I am FEMEN’): The Story of Oksana Shachko and a Movement

While they disrupt a game, we see footage of the cheerleaders and female entertainers dancing and performing for male audiences. There were numerous charges filed against the Femen activists after Euro 2012. The scantily clad women that were in those spaces specifically for the male gaze, however, were welcomed.

FEMEN_affiche-595x450

Written by Leigh Kolb.

As a young girl, Oksana Shachko became enraptured in her iconography classes and painted intricate portraits of religious figures. She even planned to join a convent at one point. In the documentary Je Suis FEMEN (I Am FEMEN), we see Oksana painting a Madonna and child, and we also see her painting what has become her life instead: bare breasts, masks, murals, and enormous protest signs. Oksana is one of the founding members of the Kiev, Ukraine-based protest group Femen.

While her vocations in life might appear contradictory (nun vs. topless activist), perhaps her calling has always been clear–to surround herself by women and effect change in heavily patriarchal spaces. Oksana is the “Je” (“I”) in the film–her story, as a dedicated artist and activist–dominates Swiss director Alain Margot’s film. I Am FEMEN refers not only to Oksana’s journey, but also a supportive and sympathetic point of view from behind the camera.

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Oksana Shachko

 

I Am FEMEN is a lovely, powerful film. It delves into the complexity of the movement, showing protests against coddled rapists, mistreated zoo animals, Ukrainian politicians, international sporting events, and Vladimir Putin. The audience gets a sense of the humanity of the women in Femen; Margot showcases their parents, and often shows the women in the more mundane aspects of their lives/activist work–paintings signs, cooking dumplings, working on the website.

There were a few moments that the film seemed be shot with the male gaze in mind. This is problematically, ironically reflected in a POV review:

“Veteran Swiss director Alain Margot’s vastly entertaining film I Am Femen offers an entrée into the FEMEN movement through a profile of Ms. Shachko. Looking like a cross between Simone Simon in the original Cat People and Anna Karina in Une Femme est une femme, Oksana Shachko combines an aloof beauty with a lithe physique, marking her as a natural fighter who seems to relish her endless skirmishes with the police.”

Yet I Am FEMEN seems to fully understand the contradictory nature of the male gaze in relation to Femen’s activism. In a poignant part of the film, the women are protesting the Ukraine-hosted Euro 2012 football championship (not the sport itself, they point out, but what goes in to hosting these events–displacing students to set up brothels, etc.). This comes toward the end of the film, when we’ve seen the women beaten, imprisoned, and held captive, and Oksana is concerned her apartment–which was ransacked–has been bugged. While they disrupt a game, we see footage of the cheerleaders and female entertainers dancing and performing for male audiences. There were numerous charges filed against the Femen activists after Euro 2012. The scantily clad women that were in those spaces specifically for the male gaze, however, were welcomed.

At the end of the film, behind-the-scenes activist and leader Anna and a small group appear in Kiev in 2013. She has been beaten, and they say that Russian and Ukrainian secret services have kept them from protesting. Anna joins her sister in Switzerland, and three prominent activists, including Oksana, seek asylum in France to continue their organization and activist training.

Activist training
Activist training

 

As well-shot, complex, and humanizing as I Am FEMEN is as a film, I couldn’t help but be uneasy. Because I’d seen and written about Ukraine is Not a BrothelI wondered how I Am FEMEN would differ, since the subjects and timelines were similar. Filmmaker Kitty Green embedded herself with Femen–living with them as she shot Ukraine is Not a Brothel–and she famously “outed” Victor Svyatski as an abusive mastermind behind the scenes of Femen, whom the women eventually broke away from. He is interviewed in her film, and tells Green that the women are “weak” and that “getting girls” was part of his motivation for galvanizing the group.

In I Am FEMEN, Oksana flippantly mentions the infamous Victor, saying that he simply “supports our work,” and is a “feminist man.” While Margot told the story in front of him, if an audience member was familiar with Ukraine is Not a Brothel, the fleeting mention of Victor leaves many questions unanswered. Certainly Green’s storytelling was from a different perspective, as she lived with the women and became much more than a director. Green also focused more on Inna Shevchenko‘s journey, and Margot focuses on Oksana.

There is much to appreciate in I Am FEMEN, and much to be inspired by. Feminists in general have conflicting views of Femen, but we cannot deny the power of turning the sexual object into the angry subject. The current aim of the movement–an international reach, dubbing themselves as a “sextremist” group– is fascinating. While there are complex, complicated problems that are inherent in any activist group, attempting to subvert the male gaze–which enjoys provocative dancers yet beats and arrests topless activists–is, essentially, a forceful weapon.

Inna chainsaws down a large cross in Kiev before seeking asylum in Paris.
Inna chainsaws down a large cross in Kiev to protest the prosecution of Pussy Riot.

 

Inna recently penned an op/ed for The New Statesman. She says,

“With Femen’s topless protests, we succeeded in frightening many patriarchal institutions by taking away women’s naked bodies from the shining world of advertising, and taking them back to the political arena. Here, women’s bodies are no longer serving someone else’s demands or pleasing someone else, but are instead demanding their own rights. We revealed and highlighted the double standards of a world which easily accepts the use of female naked bodies in commercials, but roars in anger when topless women bare their political demands.”

It would be most compelling to watch the two Femen documentaries as a complementary pair. Ukraine is Not a Brothel and I Am FEMEN both beautifully delve into the past, present, and possible futures for a group that seeks to push and keep pushing. In an interview with VICE, Inna discusses the Victor revelations, and confidently asserts that they’ve moved on and now they’re independent. All of this–the literal and figurative nakedness of protest, the growth of a movement, the breaking free from the external and internal patriarchal structures–teaches us that in so many ways, the world thinks it owns women’s bodies. I Am FEMEN (and Ukraine is Not a Brothel) show the worth of this organization that’s out to change the world.

I Am FEMEN is available via First Run Features and iTunes.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaVXQVJ1Ct0″]

 

See also at Bitch Flicks: Ukraine is Not a Brothel: Intimate Storytelling and Complicated FeminismPussy Power and Control in Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer

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Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature, and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

‘The Loneliest Planet’ and the Fracturing of Masculinity

Alex is, in many ways, the ideal of the modern man: Handsome, athletic, intelligent, well-traveled, well-off financially but still environmentally sensitive, and with a romantic partner he treats as an equal. Because of this, he has no trouble shrugging off the gendered stereotypes expected of his relationship in the first half of the film. But as soon as he is given reason to doubt his own traditionally defined masculinity, it all falls apart.

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This guest post by Cal Cleary appears as part of our theme week on Masculinity.


It’s a frequently stated truism that the patriarchy hurts men the same way it hurts women. The system of rigid gender expectations can be punishing for anyone who doesn’t conform to its strictures. Those punishments aren’t just external; failure to live up a made-up masculine ideal can cause considerable internal anguish. Few films have dealt with the transformative strength of that failure as powerfully as The Loneliest Planet. Written and directed by Julia Loktev, loosely adapting Tom Bissell’s short story “Expensive Trips Nowhere,” the film is, in part, a powerful meditation on the way a single moment can clash with a man’s internalized expectations to destroy his sense of self.

The Loneliest Planet is, essentially, a movie with three characters. Nica (Hani Furstenberg) and Alex (Gael García Bernal) are engaged, a pair of active world-travelers who can tackle any challenge together. Before their wedding, they visit the country of Georgia, where they hire a guide, Dato (renowned Georgian mountaineer Bidzina Gujabidze), to take them on a long hike through the nation’s incredibly scenic countryside. Along the way, they meet a group of heavily armed men who are suspicious of the trio, questioning them briefly. Then, they walk back, exploring more of Georgia’s gorgeous natural landscapes.

That really is it for plot. But the key twist in the film’s halfway point is what gives the film its power, and there’s no real way to discuss what the movie is saying about masculinity without first talking about the twist. So, for the spoiler averse – and this is the rare twist best experienced without knowing quite what to expect – I suggest taking a break and checking the movie out now. For those who’ve seen it, or who don’t mind a bit of foreknowledge, however, read on…

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The key moment, the scene that gives the film its shape, happens at the halfway point, when the trio meets the armed men. Neither Alex nor Nica share a language with him, so they aren’t sure what the confrontation is about. Despite the presence of guns, Loktev shoots the scene in a fairly low-key manner, highlighting not the tension but the lack of control for the two tourists. It is this lack of control that makes Alex so uncomfortable. He tries to insert himself in a conflict that Dato appears to be handling well, demanding to know what’s going on – only to find a large rifle leveled at his face. Alex’s immediate response is to push Nica in front of the barrel and hide behind her – but only for a second. After that gut reaction, he reasserts himself, pushing Nica back behind him and aggressively posturing for her, recklessly pressing his forehead to the rifle’s barrel.

It turns out to be a false alarm. Dato talks the armed men down, and then he accompanies Nica and Alex as they walk back home. At no point do any of the characters discuss what just happened. Alex grows immediately taciturn, and Nica is clearly uncomfortable. Something very fundamental about their relationship has changed, and Julia Loktev does an amazing job at showing how differently Alex and Nica see that event without ever coming out and saying it.

Throughout the first half of the film, most characters outside the small group instinctively defer to Alex, a role he happily relegates to his equally competent partner. A group of locals approached as they seek out a guide ask Alex if Nica is his wife – she answers. They ask Alex if Nica can carry a heavy-enough load to be an effective hiker – she answers. Early in the film, during a perilous river-crossing, Dato has concerns that Nica can make the trip safely, but Alex lets Nica go first, and has no doubts that she’ll be able to handle herself. Alex is comfortable not taking the lead, despite what everyone else expects, and Loktev constantly reinforces that through the staging and the shot composition, as well as frequent interludes that highlight the physicality they have in common, the confidence they have in their own bodies working precisely how they want.

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Alex is, in many ways, the ideal of the modern man: Handsome, athletic, intelligent, well-traveled, well-off financially but still environmentally sensitive, and with a romantic partner he treats as an equal. Because of this, he has no trouble shrugging off the gendered stereotypes expected of his relationship in the first half of the film. But as soon as he is given reason to doubt his own traditionally defined masculinity, it all falls apart. Suddenly, he thinks Nica needs help lifting her own pack, needs help steadying herself while she takes off a shoe – help he himself refuses to accept from her later, when he twists his ankle and tries to shrug it off. It isn’t the external expectations that get to him, the fear of judgment from other people, but his own concern that he isn’t man enough. The specifics of how masculinity presents may have changed from the days of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” a story with thematic and structural ties to Loktev’s film, but the way some men react when they begin to question their own masculinity has not.

Nica, of course, is shaken up just as much as Alex by the event with the gunman, but the way Loktev and her performers portray the aftermath, their violations seem very different. As portrayed by Furstenberg, Nica seems to feel betrayed by Alex’s action, but she is clearly willing to forgive him as she processes what happened. She begins to open up again. Alex, on the other hand, seems to feel unmanned. Both characters are profoundly shaken up by the incident, but Nica fears for her life, no longer certain if she can trust her partner, while Alex fears that he looks weak. Which is, I guess, a purely visual way of expressing Margaret Atwood’s classic sentiment: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”

The Loneliest Planet is a difficult movie in a lot of ways, telling almost its entire movie nonverbally. Indeed, the characters’ feelings and relationships are mostly defined by their staging and the camera’s movement, which can make the long, dialogue-free stretches feel slow. Until you start to notice the way the landscapes change to counter the emotional state of the characters, or the way walking order during the hike can define relationships. Until you realize that the film is very much about language, and that the things Alex and Nica can’t bring themselves to say are far more important than any words they may use to paper over the issue.

The Loneliest Planet ends in uncertainty. Alex and Nica are back together, but the casual intimacy of the film’s earliest moments is gone, perhaps forever. Even at the end, Alex is more withdrawn. He has learned something very dark about himself, and it’s something he still can’t quite process. You can be a sensitive multi-lingual world-travelling guy who looks like Gael García Bernal, but can you still consider yourself a man, he seems to wonder, if you’re a coward?

 


Cal Cleary spends most of his time judging others, writing film and comic reviews for GeekRex and novel reviews for Luxury Reading. When he’s not writing online, he’s librarianing in rural Ohio, and he definitely hasn’t figured out that librarianing is not a real word. Follow him on Twitter (@comicalibrarian) for links to more of his work.

 

 

‘Mommy’: Her Not Him

I went into ‘Mommy,’ the magnificent film from out, gay, Québécois prodigy Xavier Dolan (he’s 26 and this feature is the fifth he’s written and directed) knowing that Anne Dorval, who plays the title character, was being touted in some awards circles as a possible nominee for “Best Actress” in 2014 (she’s flawless in this role, certainly better than the other Best Actress nominees I saw)–as opposed to “Best Supporting Actress.” But this film (which won the Jury Prize at Cannes) kept surpassing my expectations by keeping its focus on her and not the one who would be the main character of any other film: her at turns charismatic, obnoxious and violent 15-year-old, blonde son, Steve (an incredible Antoine-Olivier Pilon).

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This slightly modified repost by Ren Jender appears as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.


The misunderstood, screwed-up manboy/hero is such a persistent trope in films that audiences are often tricked into empathizing with characters whose actions are more deserving of our scorn. At the end of Blue Valentine, when Ryan Gosling’s character separates from his wife, Michelle Williams’ character, and leaves the daughter they’ve raised together, I heard someone nearby say aloud, “Poor guy.” But Gosling had, just a scene before, shown up drunk at Williams’ workplace to terrorize and humiliate her (and ends up assaulting her boss, which results in her losing her job). The director and co-writer, Derek Cianfrance, could barely manage to see these actions from the point of view of Williams’ character: the one with whom our empathy would more naturally lie.

I went into Mommy, the magnificent film from out, gay, Québécois prodigy Xavier Dolan (he’s 26 and this feature is the fifth he’s written and directed) knowing that Anne Dorval, who plays the title character, was being touted in some awards circles as a possible 2014 nominee for “Best Actress”  (she’s flawless in this role, certainly better than the other Best Actress nominees I saw)–as opposed to “Best Supporting Actress.” But this film (which won the Jury Prize at the 2014 Cannes) kept surpassing my expectations by keeping its focus on her and not the one who would be the main character of any other film: her at turns charismatic, obnoxious and violent 15-year-old, blonde son, Steve (an incredible Antoine-Olivier Pilon).

We first meet Dorval’s character, Die (short for Diane), after we see, from a distance, a car crash into hers at a good speed. She staggers out after opening the jammed door, her head bleeding as she curses out the other driver. In the next scene we see her walking in extremely high heels along a hallway filled with several inches of water to meet with the director of the “youth facility” (one small step from a detention facility) where her son has been staying. The resigned bureaucrat behind the desk is more like real-life people who work in social services than the young idealists and abusive villains we usually see in movies. She explains that Steve has set a fire (the reason for the watery hallway) that injured another student, so he’s being expelled into Die’s care. Die objects, but the director tells her she has no choice–unless Die wants to commit him. Die astutely points out that doing so would put him in the pipeline to prison, which she doesn’t want. The director tells her, “We save some, we lose some,” and “Loving people doesn’t save them,” but no one, certainly not Die, can be as philosophical about their own child.

“Skeptics will be proven wrong,” Die retorts. Besides having a sexy wardrobe of high heels, tight jeans, sheer shirts and short skirts (a contrast to how unwilling most films are to acknowledge mothers as sexual beings) we see she also signs her name like a 12-year-old girl–complete with hearts.

MommySon
Mother and son

 

Steve has some psychiatric diagnoses and no impulse control, so even though he has a loving, teasing, quasi-inappropriate relationship with his good-looking, tart-tongued, probably alcoholic mother, their lives together are measured in the moments between his abuse and violence, some directed toward her, some directed to others. In one of the only scenes in the film that fall flat he makes racist remarks to a Black cab driver, the only person of color we see onscreen. Young, aimless white guys have targeted their anger at Black and brown people through the ages, but filmmakers, especially young ones like Dolan, should understand that audiences need to see POC characters as more than anonymous victims–and more than one in a film that is over two hours.

At one point Steve goes to the mall and in a beautifully stylized sequence (the expert cinematography is by André Turpin) we see him shouting and whirling around with a shopping cart. He shows joy and energy along with the intermittent charm we’ve already witnessed. But when he goes home and shows Die the goods he’s brought with him, including a necklace for her that spells out, “Mommy,” she tells him he has to return this stolen merchandise. He then starts shouting and smashing things, chasing Die, and at one point strangling her until she hits him in the head with a glass-covered picture frame and he retreats. As Die cowers in a locked closet, pleading with Steve through the door to take his medication, she hears him talking calmly to someone and when she ventures out she sees the neighbor from across the street (to whom she has never spoken) dressing the leg wound Steve suffered in the confrontation. Kyla (Suzanne Clément, every bit as great as her co-stars) is about Die’s age and the two have similar features but their personalities and circumstances differ. Kyla has a form of aphasia that seems to be the result of a breakdown. She is “on sabbatical” from her job as a high school teacher and, as we have seen in previous scenes she spends a lot of time facing away from the husband and daughter she lives with, observing Steve and Die through her home’s front window.

 

MommyTrio
Mother, son, and friend/tutor

 

The three have a convivial dinner together and while Steve is out of the room, Kyla and Die down shots while Die explains that she can’t ever call the police or alert hospitals after an incident like the one that afternoon because the authorities might then take her son away from her. Die states, “Life with Steve is a roll of the dice,” and, “When he loses it, you best scram because it gets ugly.” When Steve returns he encourages them all to dance and sing along with one of his favorite songs.

Kyla, who feels superfluous in her own household, accepts Die’s request to tutor her son while Die goes to a job interview. We see Steve testing Kyla by acting up with her the way he does everyone else, even touching her breasts, but when he pulls a necklace from around her throat and refuses to give it back, Kyla shows the reserves of rage quiet people often have, pushing Steve flat onto the floor. In a lesser movie this scene would be the prelude to a sexual encounter, but Dolan instead makes us see, as Kyla does, that in spite of his bravado and violence Steve is just a screwed-up kid.

What follows is a chronicle of three misfits who, for a time, find what they need in one another. Kyla is Die’s confidante, the only person who really understands her and the situation with her son. Steve likes having Kyla as his tutor and is on his best behavior (which is by no means perfect) in her presence. And Kyla has fun and feels like she has a purpose when she is with Die and Steve. In a bravura moment, the square frame of the film is seemingly stretched by Steve’s own hands into widescreen as Oasis’s “Wonderwall” plays on the soundtrack.

We see, when Die is interrupted as she prepares dinner with the others, that the idyll can’t last (and the screen shrinks back to a square). The classmate at the facility whom Steve injured with fire is suing. The knock at the front door was to serve a subpoena. Still, Die scrambles to “save” her son and in another widescreen sequence imagines a parallel life for him, graduating from high school, going to college, getting married, becoming a parent–and growing tall.

At one point Steve wonders what will happen when his mother doesn’t love him anymore, but she explains to him that he is much more likely to stop loving her than the other way around. In the end we see that no matter the circumstances their bond will continue. But the two women who had been such close friends (friendship between two 40-something women is an unusual enough focus for a film that one would think it rarely occurs offscreen) can hardly face each other anymore. The other’s presence reminds each of what she would most like to forget.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7rtSqI0ZeA” iv_load_policy=”3″]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing, besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

‘Girlhood’: Observed But Not Seen

‘Girlhood’ starts on a peak note: a slow-motion scene of what looks like Black men playing American tackle football on a field at night, wearing helmets, shoulder pads and mouth guards, so we don’t realize–until we notice the players’ breasts under their uniforms–that they are all girls.

GirlhoodCover

When Boyhood was making its victory lap through critics’ circles and award ceremonies, I wasn’t the only person who thought, “I want a film called Girlhood.” We all got our wish near the beginning of this year when the out, writer-director of Water Lilies and Tomboy, Céline Sciamma, gave us the art house US release Girlhood about a French, Black teenager, Marieme (Karidja Touré). The English title isn’t an exact translation of the original French Bande de Filles (“Group of Girls”) which was in production long before Boyhood was released–and perhaps even before that film was called Boyhood: the original title was 12 Years. Still, I was eager to see Sciamma’s film–until I read about its “bleak” ending and some talk from women of color that they found the writer-director’s take on Marieme’s life lacking. When the film played at my local art house as a revival months after its first run, I went to see it. I’m glad I did, but now I understand both reactions: the effusive praise and the cringing.

Girlhood starts on a peak note: a slow-motion scene of what looks like Black men playing American tackle football on a field at night, wearing helmets, shoulder pads and mouth guards, so we don’t realize–until we notice the players’ breasts under their uniforms–that they are all girls. Marieme and the rest of the team all live in the same neighborhood so after the game they walk home together with each saying “Good night” to the rest as she leaves the group to go home. Marieme is the only one left at the end, making her way up to her family’s apartment, where we see that she and her sister, who is a couple of years younger than she is, (Marieme is 15 or 16 at the beginning of the film) are the ones raising their much younger sister, cooking her meals and doing the dishes while their mother works. Their older brother is a physically abusive, petty dictator who kicks Marieme out of the living room when he comes home, so he can have the computer soccer game she was playing to himself.

Marieme finds out that she is flunking out of school and an unsympathetic counselor won’t listen to her excuses, or allow her to redeem herself. Dejected, she leaves, then just outside the school meets up with a group of three girls about her age, also not attending classes, who invite her to go to Paris with them (the film seems to mostly take place in the Parisian suburbs). At first she turns them down but when she notices the attention they receive from a group of local boys (including a friend of her brother’s she’s attracted to) she decides to go to Paris with the other girls after all.

LadyVicGirlhood
Lady and “Vic”

 

In the city the girls unapologetically take up space, whether blasting music and teaching each other dance routines in a crowded metro car (with the white passengers turning their backs on them, pretending not to notice) or shaming and shoving a white clothing store clerk who profiles them. Marieme is entranced and becomes a permanent part of the group. She exchanges her long braids for the long straight weave/wig similar to that of the leader of the group Lady (Assa Sylla) and intimidates one of her former football teammates into giving her money that the group pool into a night in a motel room (with extra for food and booze). While she’s partying with her friends her brother calls, but Lady, while taking a bath, instructs her not to answer. She tells Marieme, “You do what you want.” When Marieme repeats the words back to Lady, she says she should look in her bag for a gift, a necklace that spells out “Vic.” “As in ‘victory,'” Lady tells her. We later find out “Lady” isn’t her real name either: it’s “Sophie.”

In another highlight the girls lip sync to “Diamonds” (the Sia Furler song sung by Rihanna) while in the room, wearing the new dresses they’ve shoplifted, dancing (shot stunningly by cinematographer Crystel Fournier) like they are in their own music video. But the high life never lasts–afterward when Marieme, now known as “Vic” returns to the apartment her brother chokes her, telling her to never ignore his calls again.

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The girls dance and lip sync to “Diamonds”

 

By this time Vic’s nearly silent mother knows that she is out of school and has arranged for her to join her at her job cleaning hotel rooms. We see the defeated expression on Vic’s face as she scrubs a bathroom sink but aren’t prepared when, at the end of the shift, Vic grabs the supervisor’s hand, as in a handshake but squeezes and twists it until the supervisor agrees to tell her mother that she doesn’t have a position for Vic after all.

We’re used to seeing teenaged protagonists, especially those who suffer physical abuse at home, turn to petty crime and violence in film, but they’re rarely girls: the only other unapologetically violent, girl-protagonist that comes readily to mind is Reese Witherspoon’s Vanessa in 1996’s Freeway. We see Lady and the others in the group call out insults to other groups of Black girls which sometimes leads to nothing and sometimes culminates in scheduled fights (complete with a crowd of spectators filming the event with their phones). One of these fights leads to a humiliating defeat for Lady and the chance for Vic to avenge it. In Vic’s fight, she not only takes off the other girl’s shirt, as the girl did to Lady, she takes out her switchblade and cuts off the girl’s bra as well. When she comes home, her brother, who apparently saw the fight on YouTube, instead of hitting her (as he usually does when he calls her into a room) invites her to play computer soccer with him.

When Vic sees her younger sister with a group of other girls her age robbing a woman’s purse she ‘s upset. On the train ride home she implies she too will swear off stealing and fighting–only to find her brother waiting for her in the apartment with a beat-down, angry that she’s had sex with his friend (this boyfriend is one of the only Black men or boys in the film who is presented as more than a cardboard thug).

Sciamma is at her best when the girls are alone together (including an early funny scene between Marieme and her slightly younger sister) and also as in her earlier films when her characters seem to be exploring their sexual orientation and gender expression. Unlike every other woman or girl character in a movie, when Vic is in a dress and high heels it’s only until she can change into sweats and sneakers. At one point she wears her hair in short cornrows and binds her breasts, to protect herself as a woman alone on the street, but she continues to wear her “disguise” when she is at home as well. The scenes when she talks to Lady in the bathtub as well as a later dance with a sex worker/roommate have a sexual tension to them that Vic’s scenes with her boyfriend (even as she, just before they have sex together for the first time, objectifies his bare ass) don’t equal.

But during other scenes I felt Sciamma was observing these girls as a sociologist or tourist might, as opposed to truly seeing and understanding them or giving their scenes the same nuance the white male director of Our Song  gave to the girls of color who were his main characters. The sometimes careless cinematography doesn’t help; although Touré is photographed beautifully in most of the first part of the film (she’s never lovelier than when, in the presence of the boy she likes, she looks down and smiles) in some latter parts she’s poorly lit (a persistent problem of white photographers and cinematographers with dark skinned actresses/subjects), so we can’t clearly make out her features.

Other reviews made me dread a downer ending. Needlessly degrading or deeming “hopeless” a woman or girl character is one of the biggest clichés writers, especially male ones, have at their disposal and I’m not the only woman who is sick of it. But the last shot of Vic isn’t any more hopeless than the one of another, very famous teenaged protagonist in French film who had also gotten into a lot of trouble, Antoine Doinel in François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. And unlike him, Vic wears a look of determination on her face as she walks purposefully away from us.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AabCFCREVbQ” iv_load_policy=”3″]

 


Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks has appeared in The Toast, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

 

‘Dogtooth’: The Blindfold of Socialization

By introducing the audience to a tight-knit family with a very peculiar upbringing, the film allows a glimpse into socialization, explores gender politics, and shows how art can lead to individualism.

Dogtooth - Blindfold copy


This is a guest post by Janie Contreras-Johnson.


On a micro level, Yorgos Lanthimos’s film, Dogtooth, is a portrayal of one family’s socialization, yet on a macro level, it challenges its audience to reflect on the ways in which society accepts and perpetuates social norms. By introducing the audience to a tight-knit family with a very peculiar upbringing, the film allows a glimpse into socialization, explores gender politics, and shows how art can lead to individualism.

The film is set in a non-descript location that—only by the language spoken—the audience knows is Greece. The film revolves around a family wherein the parents employ bizarre methods to keep their three adult children safe and obedient under their roof.

Lanthimos immediately introduces the audience to the unusual development of this family; the first scene finds the three adult children listening to a taped recording of their mother giving a vocabulary lesson. We hear common words, but the definitions the tape is providing are inaccurate (“Highway: a gently blowing breeze”). It is one of the many times in the film Lanthimos establishes the childlike innocence and obedience that puts the children at the mercy of those meant to care for them. This sentiment is reiterated later in the film, when the father speaks with a dog trainer who explains that “dogs are waiting for you to show them how to behave.” The children live in a world where yellow flowers are called “zombies” and one is old enough to drive and move out on their own when their “dogtooth falls out.” Through this family, we are shown that we process information and beliefs by what we are told, whether that is from parent to child, or on a larger scale, government to society, or media to audience.

Initiating one of the children's many games and competitions
Initiating one of the children’s many games and competitions

 

The film also illuminates the perpetuation and acceptance of patriarchy in society. We see the parents show a great deal of concern with the male child’s sexuality, even going to the lengths of hiring the father’s co-worker, Cristina, as a sexual partner for their son. Yet never is there any concern for the two female children’s sexuality. The girls accept this as normal and do not attempt to exercise any form of sexual freedom. When Cristina offers to trade a headband for oral sex from the eldest, the eldest sister does not question her sexuality, and acts on the arrangement but only in a perfunctory manner, devoid of any insight into the act she’s being asked to perform. When the son’s arrangement with Cristina dissolves, the parents allow their son to choose which sister he would like to sleep with, and at the cost of their daughter’s sexual freedom, encourage incest to satisfy the son’s sexuality. Again, neither sister fights their parents’ or brother’s decision to dehumanize and objectify them, and instead the sisters accept it—like many other things in their upbringing—as normal.

Cristina, being carefully taken to the family's secluded home as part of the arrangement
Cristina, being carefully taken to the family’s secluded home as part of the arrangement

 

But the film acknowledges the possibility of escape from these norms by establishing how art can lead to critical thinking. The only child to make an effort to leave is the eldest sister. We see her capacity for free thinking expand throughout the film, beginning with art’s influence. She is loaned two videos—Jaws and Rocky—by Cristina. We know that these are the only films the eldest has been exposed to, as it is established previously that the only videos the children have seen are home videos, which have been viewed so many times that the youngest can mouth every word as they are played. The eldest is transformed by these new films: she no longer participates in the other children’s games, and instead chooses to re-enact scenes from the movies. She holds a sip of water in her mouth and mimes being punched in the face while channeling Rocky Balboa, then cites lines from Jaws while lunging at her brother in the pool. Finally, after being forced into incestuous sex, we are shown the culmination of this exposure to new ideas. She mouths a phrase that is neither from the films nor the sheltered world she was raised in, but is inspired by the language of the art she has seen: “Do that again, bitch, and I’ll rip your guts out. I swear on my daughter’s life you and your clan won’t last long in this neighborhood.” From then on, we witness the eldest navigate the strange milestones she has been taught. In a disturbingly gory scene, she uses a dumbbell to knock out her dogtooth, and attempts to escape. In the ambiguous conclusion, we are never shown whether this escape is successful, but are left wondering, contemplating how warped socialization occurs and whether anyone is exempt from it.

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Janie Contreras-Johnson is a Mexican American feminist who loves books, music, and movies, especially Charles Bukowski, Courtney Love, and GoodFellas. She co-hosts Fifth Opinion, the movie podcast dedicated to dissent, discourse, disagreement, and debate. 

 

 

‘English-Vinglish’: Straddling Patriarchal and Linguistic Hegemony

Moving away from the Bollywood style masala and dancing-around-the-trees numbers, this film focuses on the real-life issue of the position of women in the domestic and social spheres in India.

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This guest post by Asma Sayed previously appeared at AwaaZ Magazine and appears here as part of our theme week on Asian Womanhood in Pop Culture. Cross-posted with permission.


English-Vinglish is a new addition to the increasing number of Indian crossover films—socially progressive films that can still be commercially successful on a global scale. Moving away from the Bollywood style masala and dancing-around-the-trees numbers, this film focuses on the real-life issue of the position of women in the domestic and social spheres in India. Traditionally, many Indian feminist filmmakers such as Deepa Mehta, Meera Nair, Gurinder Chadha and Aparna Sen have made films about subject matter generally not discussed in the mainstream cinema: domestic violence, prostitution and trafficking, sexuality, and women’s rights in general. While these filmmakers continue to direct films with new and varied focuses, it is also exciting to witness the new generation of female directors in India that includes Anusha Rizvi (Peepli Live), Kiran Rao (Dhobi Ghat) and now, Gauri Shinde (English-Vinglish), who are doing excellent work and bringing unconventional cinema and subject matter to audiences. In a country where women’s role in society is very complex—on one hand, there have been female presidents and prime ministers, and on the other, the society remains highly patriarchal and there are the growing concernsrelated to the imbalance in birth sex ratiosresulting from female foeticide—presenting women’s life experiences can be a daunting task.

In her debut film English-Vinglish, Gauri Shinde, the writer and director, takes charge of the issue of women’s role in a society still suffering from the colonial mindset where people’s worth is judged on the base of their proficiency in English. Shashi (Sridevi), the protagonist of the film, is a wife and a mother, and also a good cook. She puts her culinary skills to work by starting a small home-based business selling “laddoos,” an Indian sweet. But Shashi’s knowledge of English is limited, and her tween daughter, the older of the two children in the family, and her husband Satish (Adil Hussain) continuously make fun of her linguistic incompetency. The daughter is embarrassed about her mother’s minimal knowledge of English and does not want Shashi to go to school with her as Shashi will not able to converse in English with other mothers or with the principal of the convent school. Satish is complicit in deriding Shashi’s weaknesses. Shashi feels justifiably belittled and insecure. Nonetheless, despite the lack of appreciation that her family shows toward her, Shashi never sways in performing her motherly and wifely duties. As part of a patriarchal system that she doesn’t explicitly question, she accepts that Satish expects her to have his breakfast ready in the morning, and that shebe ready to warm his bed by night. As such, Shashi spends her time doing all the household chores and running her small business, and never finds a moment for herself.

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Incidentally, performing another of her traditional roles, Shashi has to travel to America alone to help her sister plan her daughter’s wedding. Once in America, she reads a billboard advertising English classes that promise fluency in four weeks. Shashi starts attending classes. What follows is reminiscent of the 1970s BBC sitcom Mind Your Language and the follow-up Indian Hindi sitcom titled Zabaan Sambhalke. Shashi’s classmates are from various ethnicities and nationalities; all of them are struggling with their language skills and ultimately become good friends as they learn English. One of her classmates, a Frenchman, Laurent (Mehdi Nebbou), falls in love with Shashi. As the film progresses, Shashi’s husband and children come to Manhattan to attend the wedding. Shashi, who has been making all the arrangements for the wedding, makes laddoos for the party. When Satish makes the statement that —“My wife was born to make laddoos”—Shashi is supported by her niece who reminds Shashi that she is capable of much more than laddoo-making and is far more competent than her husband perceives her to be. At the wedding party, Shashi gives a speech—yes, in English. She reminds the couple getting married, as well as her husband and daughter, of the value of family and the need to support one another without being “judgmental” – a word Shashi has picked up from one of the many English films she has watched to learn the language. After her speech, both Satish and their daughter apologize to Shashi for their ill-manners. However, this repentanceemanates only after Shashi has learned English and in so doing learned her own self-worth. Shashi comes to appreciate herself, her work and her identity, and becomes a more confident woman.

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The film is certainly entertaining and well-made. The plot is tight-knit and gripping. The film attempts to showcase the everyday reality of women’s position in male-controlled Indian society. But, ultimately, the message that Shashi imparts in her speech is very conventional.When I watched the movie the first time, I was reminded of an advertisement that I saw in Gujarati newspapers when I was growing up in India. The bold writing at the top of the advert read “modern but good mother.” The advert insisted that a mother who is modern enough to know the world around her would ensure that she used the product it advertised. I never got over the conjunction “but” in that caption. The word posed modernity and motherhood as antithetical – any modern woman had to make a special attempt to simultaneously be a “good” mother. The institution of motherhood is much glamorized in contemporary societies in that a woman is deemed incomplete if she is unwilling or unable to conceive. Motherhood is still considered a central tenet of female identity. And yet, in a changing neoliberal and patriarchal society people fail to see the value of women’s domestic chores including those related to motherhood, and as such mother-work is neither socially respected nor valued economically. This reality is reinforced at the end of the film for Shashi’s role does not change – she is still the same housewife and a doting mother – although one who can now speak English. Shashi’s speech about family values brings her right back to square one; thus, Shashi’s role is static. Therefore, the film does not suggest any radical transformation of women’s social roles. It merely demands from them a higher level of education that, while potentially personally fulfilling, is not intended to challenge their traditional roles and could be argued to be simply placing more pressure on women. Moreover, the audience does not get a glimpse into Shashi’s feelings for Laurent; when her niece questions her about Laurent, all that Shashi says is that she does not need love, but respect. Shashi thanks Laurent for making her feel special, but as a dedicated Indian wife, she is not allowed to have any feelings of her own, and she goes right back to the husband who didn’t appreciate her much – one is to be hopeful that he will be a changed person when they land in India off the airplane from America, but then, can the patriarchal ideologies that have been internalized over the years be forgotten that quickly? After all, following more than six decades of decolonization, India has not unlearned the hegemony of English.

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The role of language has been debated continuously in the post-colonial world. While English came to countries such as India and Africa as a result of colonization, it has endured and, in India, now has a much stronger hold than during the colonial period. English has become a tool of what R. Radhakrishnan has called “cultural modernization.” However, English has been a contested language in post-colonial world at large. For instance, while Ngugi Wa Thing’o wrote that “language is a collective memory bank of people’s experience in history” and refused to write in English, Chinua Achebe declared that the language that the colonizers left behind belonged to him. While he decided to use it, he saw it as remade via appropriation: for the English he used had “to be new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its new African surroundings.” Whether it is Standard English, or appropriated, favoring the language at the cost of indigenous languages is a political move and a culture-altering exercise.

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One cannot deny that English has become a lingua franca in India, and that sadly, there is linguistic hierarchy in the nation with English as the ticket to upward mobility. Thus, the fact that in the film, Shashi proves her worth by learning English showcases India’s highly colonialist linguistic history.  However, India’s women’s liberation movement can certainly do without adhering to such hegemonic ideologies. At one point in the film Shashi is ecstatic when she learns the word “entrepreneur” – she is told that she was an entrepreneur as she sold sweets. Suddenly, this English word gives new elevated meaning and value to her work, making her feel important and confident. She walks the streets of New York saying the word repeatedly. In showing Shashi’s success through her acquisition of English, Shinde fails to address other issues of a post-colonial nation. Many advertisements and mainstream films in India play on the insecurities of women; for instance, the fairness creams are a huge market in this country where women are always reminded by society and through these ads that dark-skinned women are somehow inferior. Similarly, in this case, those who lack the knowledge of English have to prove their worth by learning the language of the colonizers. In not moving away from a colonialist mind frame, Indians are fulfilling Lord Macaulay’s desire, expressed in his 1835 “Minute on Education,” “to form a class of persons, Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions . . . .” It is an irony that in a country which has its own richness of multiple languages, the hegemony of English has outlasted British colonial times.

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Ultimately the film is about an Indian woman’s moral and family values – Shashi shows no interest in Laurent, the Frenchman who loves her, nor does she even once abandon her saree and mangal sutra –signifiers of a married Hindu woman – when in America. At the end, Shashi is just an English-speaking, sacrificial Indian woman – not a woman who has awakened to her rights or to her own needs. Shashi’s confidence returns after she found acceptance by a Frenchman, and after her husband and daughter have found her worth enhanced due to her English speaking skills. This is a classic example of patriarchal and linguistic supremacy. Shashi depends on the approval of men to feel good about herself. She also proves her worth by learning English. One does wonder if a single woman speaking Marathi or Gujarati or Tamil or Telugu has anything to feel good about.

An entertaining crossover film, English-Vinglish fails to deliver the feminist message that it may have intended to bring forth. While in various interviews the director has demonstrated her awareness of British colonization and Indian people’s misplaced awe of white people, it is a shame that rather than showcasing the ridiculousness of racialized and colonial insecurities, the film ultimately fails to transmit a message of awareness. Instead this work falls prey to the same stereotypes the director appears to critique.

 


Dr. Asma Sayed teaches English, Communication Studies, and Women’s Studies in Canadian universities. She has published three books as well as several refereed articles and book chapters, on such topics as diaspora literature, Canadian comparative literature, Indian cinema, and women’s representation in cinema. She writes a film column for AwaaZ: Voices, a periodical in Kenya.

 

‘Mother India’: Woman, Pillar of the Nation

‘Mother India’ treats Radha’s abnegating nature as a positive. Look how nobly she suffers for her husband and sons, the movie seems to say. In real life, such glorification of women’s suffering enables an exploitative system of economic growth on the backs of underpaid, overworked women. They get nothing except lip service, sometimes not even that.


This guest post by AP appears as part of our theme week on Asian Womanhood in Pop Culture.


 

“All Hindi films come from Mother India” – Javed Akhtar (lyricist, poet and scriptwriter)

Many people consider Mother India (1957) the definitive Hindi film. This legendary film won countless accolades, earned higher revenues than any film before it, and ran for more than three decades. Wondering what all the fuss what about, I watched it recently for the first time. It’s highly entertaining and moving, with a great plot, dialogues and music. It’s three hours long, so I spread my viewing over a couple of days. Despite its length, it drags very little.

The iconic Mother India poster, where Radha (Nargis) bears a heavy wooden plough almost like a crucifix
The iconic Mother India poster, where Radha (Nargis) bears a heavy wooden plough almost like a crucifix.

 

The film tells the story of Radha (Nargis), a farmer, from her days as a young bride to her old age. When Radha gets married and moves to her husband’s house, she lives a happy life until she learns that her mother-in-law has taken a loan from the usurious village moneylender to pay for the wedding. Unable to repay the loan, and beset by tragic accidents and a disastrous flood, the family eventually becomes impoverished. Radha loses her husband and mother-in-law, and raises her children on her own. She suffers great hardship but raises them to adulthood, and even faces down the crude advances of the moneylender.

The happy bride
The happy bride.

 

Radha raises her sons on her own
Radha raises her sons on her own.

 

Years pass; the family survives, but continues to be exploited by the moneylender. One of Radha’s sons, Birju, grows to hate the moneylender, and finally snaps. Circumstances lead him to become a bandit. He kills the moneylender, and for further revenge, abducts his daughter.

One son dutifully gets married and settles down. The other, Birju (reclining), is much more rebellious and restless.
One son dutifully gets married and settles down. The other, Birju (reclining), is much more rebellious and restless.

 

Radha is distraught: she cannot stand to see a girl’s honour violated. She threatens to kill Birju, telling him that dishonouring any girl of the village, is tantamount to dishonouring the entire village, which includes his own mother. When Birju tries to ride away with the kidnapped girl, Radha shoots him dead.

“You can’t kill me. You’re my mother!”
“You can’t kill me. You’re my mother!”

 

“I am a woman. I can give up a son, but I can’t give up honour.”

Several years pass; Radha is an aged woman. There is a hopeful note in the air: modern technologies are being introduced by the government to increase agricultural productivity and lessen the peasant’s burden. The villagers revere Radha for all she’s done, and invite her to inaugurate the new irrigation canal. Water the colour of blood flows through the canal, a reminder of Radha’s sacrifices.

After watching the film, I understand why it was such a big deal. It’s because it captured the mood of the nation, its values, hopes and aspirations. At the time, about 80 percent of Indians were engaged in agriculture. The colonial yoke had been thrown off. The film reflects the period’s broad consensus that for the nation to progress, two things were required: food security through advancement in agriculture, and rapid industrialization through investment in heavy machinery. The film is a celebration of farming, and shows reverence of the land that nurtures us.

The movie also celebrates the idea of woman as the nation’s pillar of strength. I’ll focus on this theme, and on the character of Radha.

The Bad

In some ways, Mother India is quite conventional. Its intended messages about women are regressive from a feminist point of view. The movie conveys that the ideal woman is nurturing, self-sacrificing and hardworking. It ignores the reality that women did all of this for very little reward. For all their sacrifices, did woman have a say even in basic decisions like how many children to have? Not much. In the 1950s, when the movie was released, women’s legal rights were severely restricted; for example, the progressive legislations introduced by stalwarts like B. R. Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru, for Hindu women’s inheritance and marriage rights, had been stonewalled and diluted in Parliament.

Mother India highlights the plight of the farmer, but glosses over or erases the specific difficulties faced by women farmers specifically: lack of access to resources, invisibilization of their labour, and their self-deprivation in times of scarcity. In times of food insecurity, adult women often deprive themselves and girl children of adequate food. It is not necessarily forced upon them; more often it’s a choice (made in the context of patriarchal society).

Mother India treats Radha’s abnegating nature as a positive. Look how nobly she suffers for her husband and sons, the movie seems to say. In real life, such glorification of women’s suffering enables an exploitative system of economic growth on the backs of underpaid, overworked women. They get nothing except lip service, sometimes not even that.

Lastly, a central theme of the movie is honour/modesty. Radha values honour – her own and other women’s – over and above everything else. Maintaining honour is the prime duty of a woman. Her honour is not just her own, but the family’s, the village’s, and by extension the nation’s. But the problem with honour is that to maintain it, women’s mobility, freedom and sexuality must be tightly controlled.

The Good

Having said all that, there are some ways in which the character of Radha is a triumph for women’s representation in Indian cinema. She is a formidable, determined woman. She is uneducated (she can’t read the moneylender’s accounts), but she is tough and practical. She has the skills, knowledge, and the will to protect and raise her children. She never dithers or acts silly. She commands respect from her sons, from the villagers, and from the audience. She has to make tough choices in bleak circumstances. She breaks two negative stereotypes: that women are not intelligent, capable decision-makers, and that women don’t do arduous labour. In Mother India, it is the woman who builds the nation with her sweat and toil.

Through images, music, and lyrics, the movie establishes Radha’s sheer physical strength. The foregrounding of physical power is rare in today’s female characters, but appropriate for a portrayal of a rural woman.

Standing in waist deep water, Radha holds her children up on a wooden platform during the flood.
Standing in waist deep water, Radha holds her children up on a wooden platform during the flood.

 

Radha ploughs the fields
Radha ploughs the fields.

 

On one hand, the audience is inspired (maybe even awestruck), by Radha’s resilience, and by her steadfast adherence to her moral code. But at the same time her humanity takes centre stage, and she is allowed to express a range of emotions. She suffers devastating losses, is disrespected, and is sometimes terrified for herself and her family. She also enjoys periods of relative prosperity, good harvests, the joys and frustrations of family life.

After the flood, a helpless Radha begs food from the moneylender, who makes improper advances
After the flood, a helpless Radha begs food from the moneylender, who makes improper advances.

 

Radha turns furiously and beseechingly to the image of the goddess in the moneylender’s house. “You may lift the burden of the entire world, goddess. But try lifting the burden of motherhood – your feet will falter.”
Radha turns furiously and beseechingly to the image of the goddess in the moneylender’s house: “You may lift the burden of the entire world, goddess. But try lifting the burden of motherhood – your feet will falter.”

 

Radha beats the moneylender
Radha beats the moneylender.

 

Radha celebrates the birth of a grandchild
Radha celebrates the birth of a grandchild.

 

A light moment in the fields
A light moment in the fields.

 

Radha hears of her son Birju harassing village girls, especially the moneylender’s daughter. She refuses to speak to him, or eat. A contrite Birju adopts the murga position to convince her to eat.
Radha hears of her son Birju harassing village girls, especially the moneylender’s daughter. She refuses to speak to him, or eat. A contrite Birju adopts the murga position to convince her to eat.

 

She warns Birju that she can forgive all his mischief, except for maligning the reputation of a girl of the village. She ties up her sons to teach them a lesson.
She warns Birju that she can forgive all his mischief, except for maligning the reputation of a girl of the village. She ties up her sons to teach them a lesson.

 

In the climactic scene, Radha shoots dead her son Birju. Framed starkly against the sky, Radha is an awe-inspiring figure, a wrathful goddess. She is rendered human the next minute, when she runs to her dying son and holds him, weeping.

Radha holds Birju in her arms
Radha holds Birju in her arms.

 

The last point about Radha is her love for the land. She does backbreaking work with dignity and forbearance, not just because she has to feed her children, but because she considers the land her mother.

When the villagers want to abandon the village after a devastating flood, Radha persuades them to stay, and together they begin the laborious task of clearing the flooded land
When the villagers want to abandon the village after a devastating flood, Radha persuades them to stay, and together they begin the laborious task of clearing the flooded land.

 

On one hand, Mother India suffers from fatal flaws – the glorification of traditional gender roles and modesty/honour. On the other hand, the film’s recognition of women’s contribution to building then nation, its characterization of Radha, and its reverence for farmers, are its triumphs. Paradoxically, the character of Radha is mired in stereotypes, but also represents women’s labour, and can serve as a source of strength and inspiration for Indian women.

The agricultural focus is also key. I’ll end with this evocative scene: the villagers have weathered calamities, and there is a song celebrating a good harvest. With the last line of the song, there is an image of haystacks shaped like the map of India, inside which farmers are singing and dancing. Today, with agriculture in dire straits in India and several other parts of the world, Mother India’s image of agricultural prosperity becomes even more important to work toward.

A picture of agricultural prosperity
A picture of agricultural prosperity.

 


AP is a student. She likes traveling, good food, and movies.

 

 

‘The World Before Her’: Between Liberalization and Fundamentalism–India’s Two Faces

Pahuja sees the film as going beyond the issues of women’s rights; according to her, the film is about India, and what’s happening there, and the fear about the future as the culture of the country goes through extreme changes. She adds that, through the film, she would like to showcase the kind of “hatred being taught in the camps in the guise of patriotism.”

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This guest post by Asma Sayed previously appeared at AwaaZ Magazine and appears here as part of our theme week on Asian Womanhood in Pop Culture. Cross-posted with permission.


“I hate [Mahatma] Gandhi; frankly speaking, I hate Gandhi,” declares Prachi, a 24-year-old young woman. “I am here to win [the Miss India title], and that’s my only goal,” says Ruhi, a 19-year-old. Indo- Canadian director Nisha Pahuja’s documentary film The World Before Her captures the worlds of these two young women representing many other women in contemporary India. The World Before Her is a thought-provoking, disturbing, and yet, compelling documentary that brings together the seemingly opposite worlds of Hindu nationalist ideologies and beauty pageants. Prachi and Ruhi denote dualistic faces of a country undergoing swift change. The documentary juxtaposes two female-dominated Indian communities: one is centered around the biannual camps organized by Durga Vahini, women’s wing of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a Hindu nationalist organization, and the other is the month-long preparatory training event leading up to the live broadcast of the Miss India beauty pageant.

The film was completed in 2012 and has been on the international film festival circuit in the interim, and won many awards, but its theatrical release in India in June 2014 coincides in ironic ways with the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May 2014. Modi’s political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is known to be closely affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist group that operates on the principles of Hindutva. VHP, founded in 1964, is closely aligned with the RSS and functions under the umbrella of Sangh Parivar, a group of organizations dedicated to Hindu nationalist movement. In short, these are different groups that share similar ideologies and have strong ties to the current ruling party in India. Prime Minister Modi is famously known to have been an active member of the RSS since the age of 8.

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Male training camps, called shakhas, organized by the youth wing of VHP/RSS, called Bajrang Dal, have existed for decades and have branches in India and abroad, and their activities have been largely known. By contrast, very little information has circulated about the female wing—Durga Vahini (Carrier of Durga)—which is a comparatively newer innovation with roots going back to 1991. Pahuja’s direction exposes this largely unknown female world that prepares women for traditional Hindu social roles as wives and mothers, but also for militia-style combat in defense of the Hindu nation, if necessary. Pahuja is the first filmmaker to have gained access to these exclusive camps organized by the Durga Vahini group. Her film is a courageous attempt to present the realities of extremist ideologies taught in the camps, and of linking them to the various events that have troubled India in the last decade and a half: the film shows footage of the Malegaon bombings, the Gujarat pogrom of 2002, and VHP/RSS members consistently acting as morality police by violently ransacking bars to ensure girls and women do not drink, dance, and mingle with the opposite sex.

Girls attending the Durga Vahini camps are between the ages of 12 and 25. They follow a regimented training schedule that includes martial arts, physical fitness training, and lectures that remind them of their Hindu identity. They are instructed about the virtue of fighting against Muslims, Christians, and Westernization, all presented as the antithesis of Hindu nationalist ideals. The film captures a lecture where girls and young women are being taught that “Muslims and Christians are attacking our [Hindu] culture,” and that the people in caps and beards look like demons similar to those described in the ancient Hindu scriptures. They are told that it is not Gandhi’s non-violence that brought independence to India, but the sacrifice of thousands of Hindu martyrs.

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Prachi, one of the strongest Durga Vahini female members, who with several years of experience in the camp, also acts as a leader to the next generation of campers, speaks out against beauty pageants, the second subject of the film, which, to her, represent Western decadence. Having herself attended more than 40 camps, Prachi has been inculcated into accepting the values that the camp organizers promote. Girls in the camp chant simultaneously “dudh mango kheer denge; Kashmir mango chir denge” – “if you ask for milk, we will give you rice pudding; if you ask for Kashmir, we will slit your throat,” referring to India’s long conflict with Pakistan over the Kashmir valley region. When a camper is asked if she has any Muslim friends, she replies, “I am very proud to say that I have no Muslim friends.” Prachi too declares that she is willing to build a bomb and blast it “if conditions call for it.”

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On the other hand, Prachi’s father is eager to marry her off against her wish. He has no qualms admitting that he hits her, if necessary, to ensure that she obeys. He proudly mentions that when Prachi was a child he burned her leg with a hot iron rod. Prachi does not object; she believes it is his right as a parent. In a country where 750,000 girl fetuses are aborted every year and the statistics for female infanticide remain undocumented, Prachi is happy that her father let her live. She points out that “many traditional families kill a girl child. He let me live; that’s the best part,” she says.

Then again, in Mumbai, Pahuja cinematographically captures the daily activities of 20 young Miss India hopefuls. Their focus is dramatically different: filled with regimen–Botox injections, skin whitening treatments, catwalks, and diction training. This female world is one focused on glamour, on pleasing the male-dominated jury, and on preparing for the big break that will come with the title of Miss India. Many of the pageant’s participants aim for Bollywood screen-careers. In fact, many former winners have gone on to become famous Bollywood stars: Aishwarya Rai, Shusmita Sen, Priyanka Chopra and Lara Dutta, among others. However, the young women who perceive the Miss India pageant as a path to freedom, fame and equality, largely fail to note the irony of the situation as they are made to walk in front of juries in bikinis, or with their upper bodies covered under white sacks so that the jury members may assess the “beauty” of their legs: sexual objectification and conformity to traditional beauty paradigms is not the equivalent of personal freedom. The few who are aware, at all, of the problematic of their current situation, brush it off, considering it a small price to pay to achieve the stardom that awaits them. And, of course, that stardom will come at a cost, as well.

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Pahuja’s camera follows Ruhi, one of the contestants from a lower-middle class family in a small town. Ruhi’s parents support her dream, and are keen to see her win the title. In many ways, Ruhi represents the dreams of a young generation of women in India. Pahuja also interviews Pooja Chopra, a former Miss India. Raised by a single mother, Chopra participated in the pageant in an attempt to prove herself to her father, who had wanted her mother to either kill her (after she was born) or give her up for adoption, as he did not want a girl child. Thus, the documentary beautifully mirrors the lives of different women in many ways, all of whom in one way or another, are attempting to prove their worth and their right to live, whether it is in taking up arms in defense of Hindu nationalism or succumbing to traditional ideals of worth equated with female beauty.

While these young girls and women are all attempting to empower themselves, their attempts are reflective of the inherently flawed options available to them. There is an innate sadness in these women’s attempts at either becoming part of a right wing fundamentalist group or using their bodies to showcase their worth. Neither of these efforts contribute to improving women’s condition and advancing women’s rights in patriarchal India, now troubled by a variety of issues including increasing gender tensions in a global world where women are, to greater and lesser degrees, aware that change is possible, if not quite within reach. However, the recent rise in gang rapes is a testament to the fact that India has a very long way to go before majority of women in India will be anywhere closer to gaining equal rights.

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With Modi coming to power, it becomes increasingly important to be aware of the influence of groups such as VHP and RSS, and how they will sway the political rhetoric as well as women’s rights in India. In a recent interview with filmmaker Shazia Javed, Pahuja, speaking of the content of her film, said that “with the new government, people really need to know that these things exist . . . Now that the BJP and Modi are in power, we have no idea what is going to happen. But to me, it feels that these groups feel a certain kind of validation. They feel emboldened; there is a confidence now. So I think that the film reminds us that we can’t close our eyes. It reminds us that there is a potential for these movements to grow and that is a threat.” Pahuja sees the film as going beyond the issues of women’s rights; according to her, the film is about India, and what’s happening there, and the fear about the future as the culture of the country goes through extreme changes. She adds that, through the film, she would like to showcase the kind of “hatred being taught in the camps in the guise of patriotism.” Starting in October 2014, Pahuja has done grassroots screening of the film with women’s rights and human rights activists, and those who work in the area of communal harmony. The World Before Her, well researched and edited, is a welcome addition to social issue films.

 


Dr. Asma Sayed teaches English, Communication Studies, and Women’s Studies in Canadian universities. She has published three books as well as several refereed articles and book chapters, on such topics as diaspora literature, Canadian comparative literature, Indian cinema, and women’s representation in cinema. She writes a film column for AwaaZ: Voices, a periodical in Kenya.

‘Mommy’: Her Not Him

I went into ‘Mommy,’ the magnificent, new film from out gay, Québécois prodigy Xavier Dolan (he’s 25 and this film is the fifth he’s written and directed) knowing that Anne Dorval, who plays the title character was being touted in some awards circles as a possible nominee for “Best Actress” (she’s flawless in this role, certainly better than the other Best Actress nominees I’ve seen)–as opposed to “Best Supporting Actress.” But this film kept confounding my expectations by keeping its focus on her and not the one who would be the main character of any other film: her at turns charismatic, obnoxious and violent 15-year-old, blonde son Steve (an incredible Antoine-Olivier Pilon).

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The misunderstood, screwed-up manboy/hero is such a persistent trope in films that audiences are often tricked into empathizing with characters whose actions are more deserving of our scorn. At the end of Blue Valentine, when Ryan Gosling’s character separates from his wife, the Michelle Williams character, and leaves the daughter they’ve raised together, I heard someone nearby say aloud, “Poor guy.” But Gosling had, just a scene before, shown up drunk at Williams’ workplace to terrorize and humiliate her (and ends up assaulting her boss, which results in her losing her job). The director and co-writer, Derek Cianfrance, could barely manage to see these actions from the point of view of Williams’ character: the one with whom our empathy would more naturally lie.

I went into Mommy, the magnificent, new film from out, gay, Québécois prodigy Xavier Dolan (he’s 25 and this feature is the fifth he’s written and directed) knowing that Anne Dorval, who plays the title character, was being touted in some awards circles as a possible nominee for “Best Actress” (she’s flawless in this role, certainly better than the other Best Actress nominees I’ve seen)–as opposed to “Best Supporting Actress.” But this film (which won the Jury Prize at Cannes) kept surpassing my expectations by keeping its focus on her and not the one who would be the main character of any other film: her at turns charismatic, obnoxious and violent 15-year-old, blonde son, Steve (an incredible Antoine-Olivier Pilon).

We first meet Dorval’s character, Die (short for Diane), after we see, from a distance, a car crash into hers at a good speed. She staggers out after opening the jammed door, her head bleeding as she curses out the other driver. In the next scene we see her walking in extremely high heels along a hallway filled with several inches of water to meet with the director of the “youth facility” (one small step from a detention facility) where her son has been staying. The resigned bureaucrat behind the desk is more like real-life people who work in social services than the young idealists and abusive villains we usually see in movies. She explains that Steve has set a fire (the reason for the watery hallway) that injured another student, so he’s being expelled into Die’s care. Die objects, but the director tells her she has no choice–unless Die wants to commit him. Die astutely points out that doing so would put him in the pipeline to prison, which she doesn’t want. The director tells her, “We save some, we lose some,” and “Loving people doesn’t save them,” but no one, certainly not Die, can be as philosophical about their own child.

“Skeptics will be proven wrong,” Die retorts. Besides having a sexy wardrobe of high heels, tight jeans, sheer shirts and short skirts (a contrast to how unwilling most films are to acknowledge mothers as sexual beings) we see she also signs her name like a 12-year-old girl–complete with hearts.

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Mother and son

 

Steve has some psychiatric diagnoses and no impulse control, so even though he has a loving, teasing, quasi-inappropriate relationship with his good-looking, tart-tongued, possibly alcoholic mother, their lives together are measured in the moments between his abuse and violence, some directed toward her, some directed to others. In one of the only scenes in the film that fall flat he makes racist remarks to a Black cab driver, the only person of color we see onscreen. Young, aimless white guys have targeted their anger at Black and brown people through the ages, but filmmakers, especially young ones like Dolan, should understand that audiences need to see POC characters as more than anonymous victims–and more than one in a film that is over two hours.

At one point Steve goes to the mall and in a beautifully stylized sequence (the expert cinematography is by André Turpin) we see him shouting and whirling around with a shopping cart. He shows joy and energy along with the intermittent charm we’ve already witnessed. But when he goes home and shows Die the goods he’s brought with him, including a necklace for her that spells out, “Mommy,” she tells him he has to return this stolen merchandise. He then starts shouting and smashing things, chasing Die, and at one point strangling her until she hits him in the head with a glass-covered picture frame and he retreats. As Die cowers in a locked closet, pleading with Steve through the door to take his medication, she hears him talking calmly to someone and when she ventures out she sees the neighbor from across the street (to whom she has never spoken) dressing the leg wound Steve suffered in the confrontation. Kyla (Suzanne Clément, every bit as great as her co-stars) is about Die’s age and the two have similar features but their personalities and circumstances differ. Kyla has a form of aphasia that seems to be the result of a breakdown. She is “on sabbatical” from her job as a high school teacher and, as we have seen in previous scenes she spends a lot of time facing away from the husband and daughter she lives with, observing Steve and Die through her home’s front window.

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Mother, son, and friend/tutor

 

The three have a convivial dinner together and while Steve is out of the room, Kyla and Die down shots while Die explains that she can’t ever call the police or alert hospitals after an incident like the one that afternoon because the authorities might then take her son away from her. Die states, “Life with Steve is a roll of the dice,” and, “When he loses it, you best scram because it gets ugly.” When Steve returns he encourages them all to dance and sing along with one of his favorite songs.

Kyla, who feels superfluous in her own household, accepts Die’s request to tutor her son while Die goes to a job interview. We see Steve testing Kyla by acting up with her the way he does everyone else, even touching her breasts, but when he pulls a necklace from around her throat and refuses to give it back, Kyla shows the reserves of rage quiet people often have, pushing Steve flat onto the floor. In a lesser movie this scene would be the prelude to a sexual encounter, but Dolan instead makes us see, as Kyla does, that in spite of his bravado and violence Steve is just a screwed-up kid.

What follows is a chronicle of three misfits who, for a time, find what they need in one another. Kyla is Die’s confidante, the only person who really understands her and the situation with her son. Steve likes having Kyla as his tutor and is on his best behavior (which is by no means perfect) in her presence. And Kyla has fun and feels like she has a purpose when she is with Die and Steve. In a bravura moment, the square frame of the film is seemingly stretched by Steve’s own hands into widescreen as Oasis’s “Wonderwall” plays on the soundtrack.

We see, when Die is interrupted as she prepares dinner with the others, that the idyll can’t last (and the screen shrinks back to a square). The classmate at the facility whom Steve injured with fire is suing. The knock at the front door was to serve a subpoena. Still, Die scrambles to “save” her son and in another widescreen sequence imagines a parallel life for him, graduating from high school, going to college, getting married, becoming a parent–and growing tall.

At one point Steve wonders what will happen when his mother doesn’t love him anymore, but she explains to him that he is much more likely to stop loving her than the other way around. In the end we see that no matter the circumstances their bond will continue. But the two women who had been such close friends (friendship between two 40-something women is an unusual enough focus for a film that one would think it rarely occurs offscreen) can hardly face each other anymore. The other’s presence reminds each of what she would most like to forget.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7rtSqI0ZeA” iv_load_policy=”3″]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing, besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender