Shame, Empathy and Looking Practices beyond a Disability Studies Classroom

Shame, Empathy and Looking Practices: Lessons from a Disability Studies Classroom co-written by Lisa Cartwright and David Benin raises a lot of issues for further discussion not just because of its theme but also its style of writing.

The vivid description of the class almost reads like a screenplay of a film describing the scene, which is one of the reasons why I would think this piece to be an extremely visual writing. Apart from this, getting quick access on the Internet to the photograph being discussed definitely makes concrete what was only imagined in my mind through the description, and emphasizes the visual character of the article. Also the beginning creates a sense of suspense, setting the stage for the kind of effect the photograph was aimed to achieve in the class and probably also in this paper. The article draws one in into the debate of looking through words like ‘awkward’, ‘moment’, ‘feeling’, ‘gasp’, ‘look’, ‘breathing’ all referring to a very human experience as opposed to an esoteric understanding of things. 

As a reader/participant one question that came to my mind was if shame was felt in the act of looking or in being caught in the act of looking? Is the photograph really the primary elicitor or is shame felt precisely because the spectator is aware of the presence of the professor and the teaching assistant, therefore subordinating the photograph (keeping in mind that is an object not human) to a status of only a factor facilitating in this feeling of shame? Can it be broken down to a three-step process of 1). Looking 2). The realization of being looked at, in the process of looking 3) shame.  One incident that comes to my mind that helps in exploring these questions is when I caught myself looking at a person in a wheelchair waiting to be pulled up into the bus in which I was sitting. My curiosity was more in the mechanism of the bus to be able to pull in a wheelchair but I was ashamed to have been staring all this while. This feeling didn’t arise due to the presence of a third person or the person on the wheel chair but as a self-reproach.  Therefore answering my own question shame may not be necessarily felt in the presence of an onlooker. Interestingly H.B. Lewis distinguishes between shame, which according to her is about the self, and guilt, which she says, is about action related to another. She argues that shame is produced by the events to be found in the mind of the person experiencing it. While she suggests that what causes shame in a large part is the loss of approval others, the sources of shame is one’s own thoughts about oneself. Thus according to Lewis the elicitors of shame appear to be located in one’s evaluation of the negative evaluation of others or of one’s self. The focus of the self on the self’s failure and an evaluation of that failure is what leads to shame. And in the case of me being caught looking at the person in the wheelchair by myself and feeling shame was to an extent due to the failure or an inability to conform to the cultural/societal norms where ‘one looks away’. In Practices of Looking discussing images, power and politics Lisa Cartwright and Marita Sturken use the photographer Arthur Felling a.k.a Weegee’s photograph The First Murder (1936) to talk about the act of looking at the forbidden and in some ways I think it is related to my looking at the person in the wheelchair, something forbidden socially.

To look at this photograph taken out of the context of the disabilities classroom and placed in an art exhibit as a photo-performance will create a completely different set of meanings for the viewer.  The lady could be assumed to someone posing sitting in the wheelchair instead of an owner of it. Such a displacement would completely eliminate any shame from this discussion. Because as an artwork it offers the viewer the power/privilege to look at the photograph that is being presented to one for the primary reason to be looked at. It is interesting how in the affect spectrum if one may call it so, the dislocation of the context of the photograph can create the surprisingly wide disparity between the two, power and shame. And such a re-contexualizing can also generate different sets of meanings than the earlier.

Though both the looking at say an art gallery and a classroom as authorized public looking like in the article, the authors write, “It is as if we are ashamed to be caught looking even in this context where looking is authorized…”

I would argue that is because in the context of a classroom where there is already a definite power relation between the instructor and the students where the student by being a student is already in a position to be judged and evaluated and is therefore conscious of conforming to certain accepted social behaviours. Secondly, the fact that is not an art/photography class but a disabilities studies class also shapes the way one may read a an image such as this. The authors note the aim of such an exercise.

…during the process taught new ways of looking, at photographs of people with visible physical disabilities, as they experience a range and mix of affects that include surprise and shared shame in context of authorized public looking.

Therefore the knowledge of “photographs of people with visible physical disabilities” changes the way one responds to these photographs. 

Lisa Cartwright and Marita Sturken discuss the difference between seeing and looking in the book, Practices of Looking where seeing is an arbitrary process of observing and recognizing the world around as opposed to looking which is a more active and involved process of meaning making which I think is important to mention in the context of this discussion of looking. Coming back to the photograph of the woman in the wheelchair showed in the undergraduate class interestingly connects to some of the issues raised in the book as well. If one were to consider what this photograph does, is it mimesis, a reflection of reality, a representation, a symbol with meanings?  As they write, “ a photograph is often perceived to be an unmediated copy of the real world…it is not”. One can assume that the lady in the wheelchair doesn’t wear a mask everyday and therefore this photograph doesn’t represent her everyday reality. Quite clearly it is staged almost as a photo-performance where again affirming that there are decisions a photographer takes before taking a photograph that may alter things. This leads us to the discussion of photography as a performance of power. One is familiar with both colonial and contemporary use and misuse of power in the context of power relations, representations and exploitation. A google search on Diane Arbus the photographer in question, offered a little biography mentioning how she was fascinated by taking photographs of transvestites, twins, midgets, people on the streets and asylums. “Arbus's pictures are almost invariably confrontational: the subjects look directly at the camera and are sharply rendered, lit by direct flash or other frontal lighting. Her subjects appear to be perfectly willing, if not eager, to reveal themselves and their flaws to her lens.”¹ Interestingly I also happened to read something Diane Arbus writes about the subjects of her photographs. She says, "What I'm trying to describe is that it's impossible to get out of your skin into somebody else's.... That somebody else's tragedy is not the same as your own."²

Interestingly, the use of a child’s mask that the old lady wears in the photograph can be seen a sort of a temporary getting out of the skin not in the sense of empathy that Arbus talks of but as a probably a release or subversion. There is as Cartwright and Benin point out a certain playfulness in this masquerade because the mask is a concealment of probably the real, ageing self only by a mask of a witch (who is also an old woman only mean and cruel) and this resistance to ageing is both by concealment of what is behind (maybe we worse, who knows!) and by the use of a child’s mask.  The metaphor of masquerade is played out both by the mask that the old lady is wearing and at the same time at the hide and seek relationship that spectator has with this photograph as a result of both awkwardness and curiosity that one feels while viewing it. 

As a conclusion I think it is apt to quote the writers as to their answer to what the purpose of this photograph/exercise is: 

What is offered to the spectator is not a stable truth about disability or about this woman’s subjectivity, but a joke about what we ask for when we look at an image of the body for meaning about disability subjectivity and identity.

Bibliography

• Cartwright, Lisa and Benin, David (yr) “ Shame Empathy and Looking Practices: Lessons from a Disability Studies Classroom” Journal of Visual Culture
• Berger, John (yr) Ways of Seeing, Penguin
• Cartwright, Lisa and Marta…. (2001) “Images, Power and Politics” Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture, Oxford University Press
• http://www.arts.rpi.edu/~ruiz/PracticesofLooking/PracticesofLooking.htm
• http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/gaze/gaze02.html
• http://masters-of-photography.com/A/arbus/arbus_articles1.html

Spectacle vs Narrative

What is spectacle? What is narrative? Why are spectacle and narrative seen to be diametrically opposite? What effects do they have? Can they co-exist? These are some of the questions I wish to explore in this essay.

Debates on spectacle and narrative in cinema have been going on for sometime and the conversation for me starts from Scott Bukatman’s “Spectacle, Attractions and Visual Pleasure” as a point of departure where he places Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema” and Tom Gunning’s “Cinema of Attractions” and "Attractions: How They Came into the World" in conversation with each other. I would argue that spectacle and narrative are intertwined in complex ways and it is futile to draw distinctions between them.  

Mulvey in her “Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema” examines Hollywood narrative films, which she argues are characterized by spectatorial passivity and spectator’s vouyeristic isolation and for her these films are explicitly ideological. Gunning on the other hand, analyzes pre-narrative experimental cinema, which he argues is basically exhibitionistic cinema, where the spectator is constituted as a social aggregate, and this kind of cinema is not explicitly ideological. For Mulvey spectacle is “an aberration within a primarily narrative system” (72) while for Gunning “attraction precedes and subtends the system itself”(72). Though Mulvey’s essay acknowledges the existence of “something else”(76) according to her, narrative is prioritized over spectacle in Hollywood films while at the same; she implies the limits of narrative cinema strictly in narrative terms. For Gunning, narrative theory as a hegemonic structure has restricted our understanding of the medium. He insists on the exhibitionistic nature of the cinema of attractions. He believes that this kind of cinema is not voyeuristic because it is  presentational, exhibitionist confrontation, “what is seen on the screen is manifestly shown.”(79) Bukatman points to a convergence of Mulvey and Gunning’s ideas that they both acknowledge the existence of this “something else”(76), however Gunning argues that it has always been there. Mulvey’s essay insists on the disruptive power of cinematic spectacle as being fundamental to the construction of cinematic meaning but she believes that it needs to be tamed or contained and hasn’t been fully or easily. Similarly, for Sergie Eisenstein, attraction was something that was attention grabbing and that which was not naturalized through psychological narrative. Therefore, suggesting something like Bertolt Brecht’s alienation effect where the viewer takes the role of a spectator who is actually aware of his/her witness position.  Mulvey, like Brecht opposes identification and calls for interruption at the level of spectatorship (which for Brecht was through a new mode of theatrical production) and considers spectators to be passive. Comparing Mulvey and Brecht’s stands, Bukatman writes, “Both demand the disruption of common modes illusionism and narrative presentation in order to establish a critical distance between the text and the spectator”(74); Brecht in the context of epic theatre and Mulvey in the context of Hollywood films. For Mulvey the disruptive character of spectacle is a threat to the stability of narrative system. I would argue that because she doesn’t allow for any agency at the level of the spectator, who would by virtue of being involved makes a decision in not being disturbed by the element of spectacle in the narrative of the film and has a fairly seamless filmic experience, that spectacle for her becomes such a big threat. Bukatman as a negotiation between Mulvey and Gunning suggests his own definition of spectacle as being “an impressive, unusual or disturbing phenomenon or event that is seen/witnessed” (81) and writes that spectacle can be used for ideological resistance and attraction can return as an untamed form.

A spectacle is a specially arranged display of a somewhat public nature usually on a large scale that is an impressive show for those viewing it. It is also used to mean a person or a thing exhibited to the public either as an object of curiosity or condemnation or an object of miracle or admiration. The word, spectacle is derived from the Latin root spectare which is “to view, watch” and specere “to look at”. But with the shift into modernity, the traditional notion of spectacle as a visual and affective medium begins to define a more complex understanding of the spectacle and its relationship to the spectator. The spectator, confronted by new modes of socio-economic production and technology, ceases to simply be a receiver of affect and arguably becomes the modern or post-modern subject. Though for Jean-Louis Baudry, the spectator even being within an ideological spectacle is unaware of the entire film labor processes like audio-video production, editing, etc. and the ideological effects of the apparatus. A similar re-definition and skepticism towards spectatorship appears in Mulvey's essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," which locates the power of the gaze within male spectatorship. She bases her argument on scopophilia, which fetishizes the female into a sexual object and spectacle, and sadism, which demystifies and punishes the woman. Queer, Marxist, and post-colonial dialogues have responded and modified Mulvey's argument so that non-normative categories of spectator and spectacle Otherness can be considered. Another criticism of Laura Mulvey’s essay that I wish to take forward for my own argument here is against her claim of spectatorial passivity in Hollywood narrative film. I would argue that absorption, identification and “willing suspension of disbelief” constitute active participation on part of the spectator. Also, films like Gladiator and Moulin Rouge show that spectacle may not oppose or suspend narrative, but rather, it becomes an integral element in the unfolding of narrative. The spectacular sequences of these films, while being thrilling, corporeal and disorienting, also provide important information for the narrative of the film. It is becoming more difficult to make a clear division between what is spectacle and what is narrative, between what resists or suspends narrative and that which contributes to narrative. 

Vanessa R. Schwartz, illustrates the obscured distinction between spectacle and narrative in her chapter, “Cinematic Spectatorship before the Apparatus: The Public Taste for Reality in Fin-de-Siecle Paris”, where she makes an interesting argument about how early cinema was part of public interest in reality. She situates her argument within the study of three sites of public looking, Paris Morgue, wax museums, and panoramas. She writes, “Panoramas and similar entertainments reproduced reality in a variety of ways: by relying on spectator-generated optical illusions, by echoing other realist genres such as press, and by simulating reality. One can find no technological telos toward ever more perfectly realistic reproduction culminating in the invention of cinema. Rather, as this focus on panoramas during the 1880s and 1890s has tried to suggest, these spectacles technologically generated “reality” and its concomitant animation in a variety of ways during the same period. Further, the various representations of “real-life” experiences offered sensationalized versions of reality- a sensationalism that ranged from narrative suspense to physical simulations.” (315) She suggests how the real life was experienced like a show and the shows were becoming increasingly more realistic. Therefore, reality is continually redefined and is constituted in complex ways.  

Expanding this discussion further, I would like to point to Peter Wollen’s list of losing and winning cinema techniques from his article about Jean-Luc Godard’s Vent d’ Est (1972): 

The losing side                                                               The winning side
Narrative transitivity                                                       Narrative intransitivity
Identification                                                                  Estrangement
Transparency                                                                 Foregrounding
Single diegesis                                                                Multiple diegesis
Closure                                                                          Aperture
Pleasure                                                                         Unpleasure
Fiction                                                                           Reality

Such a division cannot be generalized to all genres because such polarities don’t exist everywhere. Like, absorption is not exclusive to spectacle, there can be narrative absorption as well, and also, one can be absorbed by both at the same time. Alienation can be understood as an estrangement of the spectator from his/her present environment into the world of the film in the form of involvement and identification. Therefore, alienation and absorption can co-exist. Also, with an increase in both televised and cinematic mediation, the spectator is not necessarily alienated from the spectacle but instead seems to produce a different type of awe and wonder which is based on the medium specificity of the filmic image. Roland Barthes writes on his enthrallment with the cinema, describing the "cinematographic hypnosis" and the pleasure of being drawn to the cinematic representation and the fascination of being close to other dark bodies in the shared space of film viewing. A similar idea is what Thomas Elsaesser has called “engulfment”. Elsaesser describes engulfment as a characteristic trend in contemporary Hollywood cinema that displays spectacular visual effects, which demands reactions of awe and wonder from the spectator, but also pushes them into modes of disorientation, affective complexity and shock.  

I would like to add “engulfment” to the characteristics of attraction offered by Tom Gunning namely, novelty, a presentational set of codes, direct address to spectator to illustrate how popular Hindi films particularly use both spectacle and narrative resulting in absorption and engulfment, that for Indians is mainstream cinema. Novelty not just in the case of a desire to see a display of cinematic technology but also in terms of new locations within the filmic world, innovative narrative styles, extravagant sets, costumes and accessories, the ways in which music and dance is incorporated and the presentation of latest consumerist products are some of the ways in which it is employed in popular Hindi films. A presentational set of codes becomes naturalized into the mise-en-scene of the films in the above-mentioned ways. The direct address to the audience can be traced back to iconic images from calendar art and poster art that influenced early Indian cinema. These images varied in styles, featured both religious and secular icons, they were always fore grounded, essentially still and immobile and its full-frontal address was the most distinctive feature. Film scholars like Ravi Vasudevan have suggested that darshan or the aspect of gaze in worship can be used to analyze Indian films. I would use the concept of darshan as a tool for making a connection between the iconic images in films and other arts and how that establishes the spectator’s relationship to the icon. Just as the devotee derives pleasure from a sense of involvement in looking at the icon and in the assumption that he/she is being looked back at, early film spectators received a similar pleasure from the iconic images represented in films. This pleasure from the sense of involvement by being directly addressed to gradually changed into being involved in the filmic experience through narrative absorption where even if spectacle if understood to be “a disruptive power”, it was the “willing suspension of disbelief” that allowed spectators to have a sense of involvement, where the spectator overlooked situations of contradictions and impossibility for the pleasure of being entertained. I would like to point out that in popular Hindi films, spectacle gets naturalized into the narrative and hence is not considered to be a deviation from the continuity of the film, even though from an objective point of view it may be. Therefore, even though the way the spectator was being acknowledged changed, the relationship between the spectator and the image, did not necessarily. And here again, emphasizing on the role of the spectator in the whole process, I would locate the issues of how spectacle is defined, what is its relationship with narrative and how does it affect the spectator, within the relationship between the spectator and the image. In any case, cinema’s function is not just to tell stories, which is done by many other art forms but rather to show its own specific and special properties and potentialities.

Bibliography

1. Tom Gunning, "The Cinema of Attractions"; Tom Gunning, "Attractions: How They Came into the World;" and Scott Bukatman, "Spectacle, Attractions, and Visual Pleasure" In Wanda Strauven, ed., The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded (Amsterdam Univ Press, 2006), pp. 381-38732-39; 72-81
2. Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (online)

3. Peter Wollen, ‘Godard and counter-cinema: Vent d Est’, in Bill Nichols (ed.), Movies and Methods, Volume II: an Anthology (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985)
4. Jean- Louis Baudry, “The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in the Cinema” in Philip Rosen ed., Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970)
5. Thomas Elsaesser, “Specularity and Engulfment: Francis Ford Coppola and Bram Stoker's Dracula” in S. Neale and M. Smith eds., Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (London and New York: Routledge, 1998)
6. Vanessa R. Schwartz, “Cinematic Spectatorship before the Apparatus: The Public Taste for Reality in Fin-de-Siecle Paris” in L. Charney and V.R. Schwartz eds., Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1995)
7. Gayatri Chatterjee, “Icons and Events: Reinventing Visual Construction in Cinema in India” in R. Kaur and A.J. Sinha eds., Bollyworld: Popular Indian Cinema through a Transnational Lens (Delhi: Sage, 2005)

Bad Girls of Hindi Popular Cinema

Many histories have been written about Indian Cinema especially, almost obsessively focused on the Stars mainly the actors and actresses of popular Hindi films. Iconization of stars as demi-gods and goddesses is obvious in every nook or corner in every street in every village, town or city, every television set, in every haircut or dress, every colloquial lingo, in every emotion of an Indian. But somewhere in this star-mania we seem to miss/ignore those as much loved as hated characters creating magic on the margins that play just as much a vital role in making the filmic experience complete. In this essay, I will attempt to trace a sort of a shadow history of Indian Cinema through the Bad Girls of popular Hindi cinema.

The influence of India’s rich traditions of popular folk theatre and oral performances on Indian popular films is palpable. This can be observed in the stage-like quality of acting, stereotypical characterization and the use of conventional tools of sentimentality like songs and dance sequences. Indian Cinema incorporated these features in its form of melodrama, which served to magnify the moral oppositions between good and evil, the righteous and the fallen, and imparted an intensity to the representation of emotional experiences. The staging of the melodrama entailed a Hero (the Good) - inevitably a conventionally good-looking young man, who is moral; a Villain (the Evil) who contrasted the hero in being immoral and feeling no guilt about it; then followed the Heroine (the supporter of the Good) an ally of the hero; and, of course, the exact opposite of the Heroine, the Vamp (the supporter of the Evil), the ally of the villain. This representative composition of opposites striking a balance of good and evil became a norm in almost all the popular films. And over the years this plot of conflict between the good and the evil became the tried-and-tested-formula at the box office.

The two women were products of patriarchy- both modeled to serve the men. The dominant forms of patriarchal ideology can be seen in how women are seen subjugated- as the nurturing mother, the chaste wife, or the promiscuous vamp. As mentioned earlier, the representation of the two women were diametrically opposite in their characters and so to say in their functions. The exaggerated qualities of one would bring out the qualities of the other. There would be distinguishing identifiers like the extreme behaviors and attitudes, contrasting costumes, distinctive hairdos, typical make-up and their widely divergent environments.

The sari-clad traditional good woman, who is a forgiving wife, a sacrificing mother, a dutiful daughter had identifiers like her head to toe sari1, round red bindi2, long black hair, subdued make-up and the usual stepping in or out of a mandir3 with the symbolic ‘pooja ki thaali’4 in hand. Patriarchy placed her on a convenient pedestal where the woman was expected to be “perfect”. She was modeled on The Devi5 – with no imperfections and flaws and consequently making her un-human. This woman was an asexualized entity whose sole purpose was to serve the men in the narrative. She was an embodiment of the concept of the Bhartiya Nari6.

The other was of course the vamp, a morally degraded woman. She could be recognized by social taboos like smoking, drinking, and wearing clothes that only the not-so-proper girls would wear, loud make-up, exaggerated Western hair-styles and dancing in public for entertaining men- all of which set the tone for the perfect setting of immorality- ‘the pub’. Unlike the heroine who was denied the expression of desire the vamp was exploding of it. She was allowed to explore her sexuality by various means. She was the intruder in the well-defined space of the heroine. The function of a vamp was varied but never really inconsequential because they did serve a purpose no matter how frivolous. At times they were part of the plot as an accomplice (like in those innumerable songs where the vamp is seen winking or gesturing so as to help the villain). Though, sometimes she was just there to play arm candy to the villain. And many a times it was just time of a song and the presence of the vamp gave the film an excuse to squeeze in a cabaret number. The song was the defining moment for the vamp because it gave her the desirable setting of a nightclub or a gambling den, Western costume, the outlandish hair-do and her blatant dance of seduction, all of which labeled her as the morally degraded ‘other’ woman of the film. All the identifiers were part of the whole package and worked either way -- ‘whoever smoked was usually a vamp, a vamp usually smoked’.

This degradation was associated with everything unwholesome about the Western world. The concept of the West as the cultural other being ugly and corrupt emerges from India’s colonial past. The West and the evil began to mean one and the same thing and they both could be substituted for the other. Thus, is reflected in the depiction of the evil as westernized and vice-versa. The sharp divide between what is Indian and what is not was portrayed by the two women. The vamp, who is interestingly usually called Mona or Lily smokes, drinks, wears westernized clothes. The marks of decadence were challenged and contrasted by the signs of Indian-ness. Suddenly the conflict between the good and evil was superimposed by the conflict between nationalism and colonialism.

Film scholar Ranjani Mazumdar suggests that the vamps in popular Hindi films can be likened to the femme fatale of the noir films who were characterized by revealing clothes, stilettos, blonde hair and invariably dark and mysterious character. These women were an epitome of power, seduction and evil. However stereotypical, the figure of the vamp permitted films to explore a different mise en scène where desire, wealth, sexuality, indeed urban modernity could be represented. Insofar as they were parts of Indian life, popular cinema could not ignore their presence. But by framing of the signs of modernity as Western, it offered a melodramatic critique that was as much aimed at the West as at the urban experience.

The History of Vamps

The lineage of dancing girls in popular Hindi films can be traced back to Kuldeep Kaur and a dancer named, Azoori. It is said that it was Azoori who influenced the one next in line, Cuckoo, an Anglo- Indian girl who made her appearance in two films of the time Pehli Nazar and Mujrim. In the credits of the film the name of the girl simply said, “Cuckoo”, her real name remains unknown. Considering the body of work and its impact, Cuckoo would definitely be the first ‘other woman’. In the year 1945, established actresses were far from playing roles of leading lady; the role of a vamp was unthinkable. Cuckoo captivated the audiences for almost 20 years. She had appeared in 49 films within five years after her debut in 1945. Though in most of her films she only appeared for a song, distributors considered her as important as the heroine.

But one of my earliest and most favourite memories of a vamp would definitely be the classic Nadira in Raj Kapoor’s Shree 420 where a small town boy, Raju gets trapped into the big-city world of dishonesty by a woman called Maya (played by Nadira). She lures him into cheating the poor and Raju is caught between two worlds, and two women -- Vidya, (which means ‘knowledge’), the heroine, and Maya (which means‘illusion’), the vamp. Maya plays a pivotal role in taking the story forward and by her crafty plans almost achieves her goal. The unforgettable song from the film picturised on Nadira “Mud Mud Ke Na Dekh” has Maya dancing in her typical ``Ek haath mein jaam, doosre haath mein dhooaan”7 vamp form in celebration of diwali8. The mise-en-scene of the club, an indoor space with lighting that played with shadows creating a dark and murky mood was accentuated by the contrast in the openness of the setting of Vidya’s school under a tree, on a bright day, shot with developmentalist photography that shared the aesthetics of the government’s development propaganda films of Films Division.

In 1958 a film called Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi had a mujra9 number ``Hum Tumhare Hai Zara, Ghar se Nikal Kar Dekh Lo" where Cuckoo, thirteen years after her debut was still going strong. She was accompanied by a young foreign looking girl. The credits said “Dancers- Cuckoo and Helen”. Helen though started her career as a part of Cuckoo’s troupe with a film called Shabistan (1951) had started performing solo in films like Alif Laila (1953) and Hoor-e-Arab (1955), but it was in 1958 that people knew she had arrived. Helen is probably one of the most celebrated dancing girls of Bollywood, with her career spanning over 500 films, stretching over 25 years. An Anglo-Indian refugee from Burma, the young Helen, accompanied by her mother, escaped to India from the Second World War generated life-threatening situation in Burma. Helen quit school to work in films, since her mother’s income, as a nurse did not seem adequate. It was while leaning Kathak that she discovered she had a flair for dancing.

The club dance numbers through the 50s till the 70s established her as a dancer with expertise in Western dance forms. But Helen proved her competence in Indian semi-classical forms as well, for example in songs like Tora Man Bada Paapi (Ganga Jumna) and Ghungarwa Mora Chham Chham Baaje (Zindagi).

Helen’s Anglicized looks were exploited in making her an icon of Occidental cabaret numbers and also for accentuating the distinction between the Westernized vamp and the traditional Indian heroine. Her looks kept her away from taking the leap into playing main leads, though there are a few unsuccessful films where she was attempted to be cast as the leading lady in films like Cha Cha Cha and Imaan Dharam.

But her golden period was definitely the 70s and 80s with the new revolution in the field of Hindi film music. Celebrated music composer R. D. Burman made singer Asha Bhosle sing to his new westernized tunes. Both masters in their respective fields, this collaboration became a phenomenon. The time was right for the Dancing Queen to spread her wings and conquer her domain- The Cabaret! An interesting trivia that I can’t help but add is that in spite of Helen oozing with sexuality; she always made it a point to wear skin-coloured body stockings in her cabaret numbers like Piya Tu Ab To Aaja (Caravan), Aa Jaane Jaa (Inteqam),Aaona Gale Lagaona (Mere Jeevan Saathi), Mehbooba Mehbooba (Sholay), Yeh Mera Dil Pyaar Ka Diwaanaa(Don). Luckily for Helen, she has been called from graceful to dignified and was never categorized as vulgar or indecent. She made the titillation look aesthetic.

Around the 70s Helen’s monopoly was broken by other bad girls like Bindu, Padma Khanna and Aruna Irani. Her increasing age and decreasing number of roles made the situation worse causing financial problems. It was at this point when she was involved with scriptwriter Salim Khan who was instrumental in getting her roles in films like Inaam Dharam, Don and Dostana, which he was co-writing with Javed Akhtar. It was only by the end of her career that she did roles, which appropriately exploited her acting skills. She won the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Lahu Ke Do Rang in 1979. But soon Helen accepted her fate and much to the audiences’ surprise she played Zeenat Aman’s mother in a 1980 film called Ram Balram. After she married Salim she took a long break from films only to be seen much later in films like Khamoshi and the recent release Mohabbatein.

The next to step in the world of dancing girls cum vamp was Bindu seen in a famous song “Mera naam hain Shabnam” from the film Kati Patang. In this film Bindu plays Shabnam who is a cabaret dancer in a club and helps the villain of the movie in his devious plans. With no so-called social stigma or moral responsibility attached to the vamp, Shabnam in this film is seen smoking, drinking, dancing to entertain men, wearing the clothes the heroines wouldn’t dare to wear, engages in pre-marital sex, tells lies, impersonates as somebody else; contrasting her counterpart- the heroine - an epitome of dignity and morality. Shabnam with the villain attempts to blackmail the heroine in order to win a large amount of money but of course “Jeet Hamesha Sacchai Ki Hoti Hai”10 (or that’s at least what we like to believe!).

Bindu, the daughter of a film producer Nanubhai Desai and a stage actress, Jyotsana, started her career in 1969 with a film called Do Raaste. But little did she know she was to be re-christened to Mona Darling. After her father’s death, this 13-year old being the eldest daughter took up the responsibility to support her family. She started with modeling assignments and graduated to films only after her marriage to Champaklal Zaveri. After the success of Kati Patang, she made waves with mesmerizing performances in Itefaaq (1969), Zanjeer (1973), Hawas (1974), Imtihaan (1974). Bindu appeared in over 150 films, her roles ranging from playing the vamp, the other woman, the side-kick, to the mean mother-in-law/sister-in-law. It was Bindu who made Mona Darling a household almost a synonym of a vamp. But where Helen challenged the stereotype of a bad girl with her innate grace who was incapable of looking sleazy Bindu broke out the myth of that married actresses couldn’t be sex symbols.

Bindu was given almost like a chance for redemption with a role in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Abhimaan starring Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan (then Bhaduri). At the height of her career she played the character of a socialite friend of the main male lead, who fawns over him. This serious role changed her image as the classic Mona Darling. This opened the doors to more challenging roles like the one in the film Arjun Pandit where she plays a deglamourized wife of actor Ashok Kumar and in Chaitali where she plays the role of a crippled woman. Her career as the glamorous vamp was soon ended due an unfortunate miscarriage when she was advised by the doctors that she should keep away from dancing. But Bindu couldn’t stay away from films and returned with quasi-vampish roles and comic character roles in films like Biwi Ho To Aisi, Hum Apke Hain Koun and Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai.

Bindu’s successor was Aruna Irani who started her career as a child artiste in a 1961 film called Ganga Jamuna. By mid-sixties Irani had taken that leap from a child-artiste to a dancing girl. With films like Caravan (1971), where Irani plays an iterant-gypsy woman who is part of an entertainment troupe, gave her enough scope to prove her mettle both as a seductive dancer as well as her histrionics. In this film Irani is in love with the main male lead played by Jeetendra and goes to all extents to keep him away from the main female lead played by Asha Parekh. Like Bindu, Irani was also offered a supporting role in a Raj Kapoor film called Bobby (1973) that altered her image. Aruna Irani ‘s most memorable characters is her role as a dance instructor in Yash Chopra’s Dil To Pagal Hai (1997). Irani is now busy acting, directing as well as producing for both film and television.

Aruna Irani was followed by divas like Padma Khanna, and Kalpana Iyer. Both of whom were acclaimed for their works but had short-lived careers. Padma Khanna after a few forgettable cabaret numbers resigned to Bhojpuri films, Kalpana Iyer shifted to television. Another music composer-singer combination of Bappi Lahiri and Usha Uthup gave Kalpana Iyer the opportunity to be a part of the prevalent disco fever with the ultimate disco song Koi Yahaan Aahaa Naache Naache.

Metamorphosis

Vamps and Villains were metaphors of stark reality in white and black. But this idiom took an interesting turn around the 70s. Gradually films began to question both these patterns of the clash between good and evil and therefore the existence of the characters on account of it. Only recently there has been an attempt to break these distinct boundaries. The spaces were no longer restricted; with the hero experimentally depicted with subtle shades of grey and the heroines serving the functions of the vamp. It probably began with India’s favorite Bollywood phenomenon “The Angry Young Man”, when the hero had shades of grey – he was no longer the moral hero who could do no wrong. Somehow now his actions could be justified by circumstances like torture by an evil father as a child or bad company. There was no longer simply right or wrong-and it is this chaos between pure good and pure evil and the somewhat convenient shift in morals that led to the acceptability of what we’d grown up to be known as wrong thus dissolving of one into another. As film scholar Rashmi Doraiswamy says that, “Now the heroes, heroines, villains, vamps display the ability to contain within themselves more than one- if not many stereotyped selves”. 11

During this time India was facing a general discontent. Films of this time demonstrated the urge and need of the generation to break away from the norms of the society. And in this period of crisis entered, actress Zeenat Aman singing “Dum Maro Dum”, in the film Hare Rama Hare Krishna. With all her freshness and charm, she naturalized the Western other. This non-conformist attitude became a general desire. Aman’s character in the film leaves her family behind in search of herself. The film attempted to mirror the outside world where the Flower-Power age was at its peak. And this acknowledgement of the happenings of the outside world led to an acceptance, opening new avenues of perception for the Indian film industry.

With the popularity of ‘Westernized’ heroines like Parveen Babi (Deewar) and Zeenat Aman (Hare Rama Hare Krishna), challenging the two stereo-typical female characters, the existence of the vamps was questioned. These heroines with characteristic high slit skirts, fur lined halter blouses and colored glasses were soon substituting the place of the vamp as the seductress. The functions of the heroines were extended to include things that only the vamps were licensed to do. The 80s also marked the disco age therefore the need to insert disco songs centered around the leads. While there are some who argue that it was the male domination that led to this kind of change where vamps became redundant with the one female character, the heroine fulfilling the functions of the vamps as well. Now one character had the ability to accommodate both.

Late 80s and 90s exploded with leading ladies like Sridevi (“Kaatey nahi kate yeh din yeh raat”), in the film Mr. India and Madhuri Dixit (“Choli ke peeche kya hai”) in the film Khalnayak. In this song, the character played by Madhuri Dixit impersonates as a prostitute therefore momentarily stepping into the domain of the vamp which sort of legitimatized her new look and her dancing to one of the most controversial songs in popular Hindi films. The heroines seemed to have become a full package of entertainment that was self-sufficient. All barriers of costume, setting, hair-do and make-up were crossed by the heroine and she leaped into the world of the vamps. The vamps were no longer required for sensational songs of seduction. She faded away! Or as the creator of Mona Darling (a popular, almost iconic vamp from a 70s film), Javed Akhtar says, “She got swallowed up by the heroine”.

This transformation liberated the heroine from being judged and scrutinized by the public eye. She was no longer the social yardstick for the perfect “Bhartiya Nari”. There was no longer a concern of Log Kya Kahenge12.

But this liberation for the heroine proved disastrous in being stereotyped again in violent and the so called ‘feminist’ films of the 80s and 90s. The characters from films like, Pratighat, Sherni, Khoon Bhari Mang, Khoon Bahaa Ganga Mein, Commando, Bhraschtachar, and Kali Ganga which primarily focused on hardened, cynical, strong (both physically and emotionally but rarely mentally), almost man-eating super women. Luckily, for them such films did not somehow appeal to the Indian masses. It is only recently that the heroines are being given their legitimate position in popular Hindi cinema without having to oscillate between two extremes.

But our poor vamps did dissolve into a bigger whole- the heroine. Let us try and deconstruct the composition of the vamp: a). The sensuous part, which is now being, fulfilled by our new age heroines with their song and dance of seduction b). The evil element, which has been taken up by the villain completely exterminating the vamp. Though in some films we also see a trend of quasi-vamp where the vamp is not wholly present but we get a glimpse of her evilness by a lesser important, almost insignificant evil aunt, mother or mother-in-law. So the poor vamp has been shredded into parts and has been distributed primarily amongst the heroine and the villain.

It has already been established that the bad girl of Hindi popular cinema was largely a male invention but it is due to the redefinition of the image of the heroine by herself that has led to the extinction of the vamps. The song and dance role of the vamps is now becoming some kind of a specialization with actresses. “Item numbers” as these songs have come to be called have become an integral part of any film, where an actress appears just for that one song. Established actresses like Aishwarya Rai, Sushmita Sen, and Shilpa Shetty are making an alternative career out of it. These actresses, paid well for their expertise, definitely match up to the skill of the earlier vamps; lack a little something- the thrill, the charisma and the same kind of glamour. They were an embodiment of both somebody you would love to hate but at the same time be so enthralled by.

This phenomenon, a product of globalization, with the explosion of the popular cinematic images into the “global village”, is no longer an anomaly but a trend. A cornucopia of images, both in cinema as well as television while serving as carriers of a glimpse of the outside world, also make it more accessible. Commodity circulation and images, fashion and shopping provided news ways to dress the heroine, thus eroding the sharp divide between the vamp and the heroine. Mazumdar makes an interesting comment about the elimination of vamps in this context:

Popular song and dance sequences of Indian cinema have become the medium through which spectators are offered a virtual, novel and innovative form of ‘window shopping’ experience. The sheer phantasmagoria of contemporary consumption brings about the demise of the former Westernized vamp whose gestures and performances are now required for the erotic display of women’s fashion….13

Though fashion is only one of the aspects of globalization that fostered the elimination of the vamps, the growing exposure to the outside world now made a few things to be socially acceptable. The lines between what was considered wrong and what is right began blurring. Social taboos were reconsidered and amended. And this acceptance was best exhibited in the popular films that were made to reach the common people.

Though it is difficult to say what comes first and with the ever-evolving world it would be difficult to takes sides with neither the Platonic view of art imitating life nor the post-modern view of the domination of images over absent/numbed audiences, though one can definitely draw a parallel between cinema and life. Indian cinema has always portrayed even if it has been typically melodramatic social issues, sociological changes and shifts in society in terms of everything – values, family systems, condition of women etc. Films by auteurs like Satyajit Ray, Bimal Roy and Ritwik Ghatak are representative of this argument. But popular Hindi films, like Yeh Raaste Hain Pyaar Ke based on the famous Nanavati case, in which a Parsi naval officer finds his English wife having an extra marital affair and finally kills her lover, also delved into social issues. Another popular film that comes to my mind is the B.R. Chopra film, Dharmaputra which in spite of keeping all the elements of popular cinema raised the sensitive issue of communalism. The gradual acceptance of widow remarriage is shown in a film like Prem Rog (1982) where the protagonist questions the acceptance of widow remarriage only in theory but not in practice. Path breaking films like Lamhe that deals with a difficult issue of age difference between lovers also represents the changing face of our society. Another film in popular genre that deals with relevant feminist issues is Rajkumar Santoshi’s Lajja in spite of being flawed by clichés and stereotypes.

Lives of people at the same time are influenced by cinema a great deal as well: fashion, styles, social customs etc. The annual trips with family or just a honeymoon to places like Switzerland was inspired by Yash Chopra movies. A sudden fancy to rather culturally restricted festivals like Karva Chauth14 making them national festivals crossing all cultures after its constant depiction in all family movies starting from Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995). And here it’s important to note the undeniable power of an image realistically as in, in real life and unrealistically as seen on the screen and the relationship between these images.

Another factor that is instrumental in such a marginalization is the economics of the film industry. Now a single heroine offering an array of emotions, characters, images, dancing styles and fashion statements seemed like a better option for the producers.

Real Life bad girls from Indian Cinema

Talking of financing, due to the high risks involved banks and other financial institutions avoided the film industry, an attitude that is now gradually changing. But due to the uncertainty of financing, money matters have always been a fishy business in the industry. After the studio system collapsed and with the increasing fees of the growing stars there was a greater need of finances. It is around this time that the gangsters started taking interest in the film industry, which meant regular extortion as well as financing films. Around 2000-2001 incidents like the murder of producer Gulshan Kumar and the alleged links of a financier Bharat Shah with the dreaded gangster confirmed the existence of such a nexus. Interestingly, these gangsters much like the ones in Hindi popular films in return of financing these films, demanded their girlfriends given a role in the film. Much like in the film Bombay Boys where the character of Nasiruddin Shah invests his black money in a C-grade film and insists his girlfriend is given the role of main female lead. It is interesting to see, how actresses like Mandakini (girlfriend of Dawood Ibrahim) and Monica Bedi (girlfriend of Abu Salem) brought to life the reel life of Mona Darling!

Therefore, it can be argued that the character of vamps can provide us with a counter history of popular Hindi cinema: to reflect on experiences of modern life- wealth, crime, fashion, sexuality, status/identity etc. Even if the films use the melodramatic form to cast them in an unfavorable light, their presence on the screen provides a contrapuntal as Edward Said would say, “commentary on the narrative drive”. The focus on vamps can be extended to other bad girls- the evil sister-in-law or mother-in-law, so as to explore the popular cinema from its margins.

Note: I would like to thank Ms. Ratna Rajaiah for letting me use information from her article ‘Whatever Happened to Mona Darling’ in The Hindu. 

Bibliography

1. Rajaiah, Ratna : Whatever Happened to Mona Darling, www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu

2. Mazumdar Ranjani and Jhingan Shikha (1998): ‘Whatever Happened to the Vamps’ episode in The Power of the Image, A 12-part television series on Mumbai Cinema, BITV.

3. Berger, John: Ways of Seeing, Penguin, 1977.

4. Vasudevan, Ravi, ‘Shifting Codes, Dissolving Identities: The Hindi Social Film of the 1950s as Popular Culture’ in Making Meaning in Indian Cinema ed. Ravi Vasudevan, Oxford University Press, 2000

5. Gopalan, Lalitha, ‘Avenging Women in Indian Cinema’ in Making Meaning in Indian Cinema ed. Ravi Vasudevan, Oxford University Press, 2000

6. Mazumdar, Ranjani, ‘Women and the City: Fashion, Desire and Dance in Popular Bombay Cinema’ in, Kapital& Karma: Recent Positions in Indian Art: Ed. Angelika Fitz, Gerald Matt, Michael Wörgötter. - Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2002

7. Ghosh, Shohini, ‘The Troubled Existence of Sex and Sexuality: Feminists Engage with Censorship’ in, Image Journeys: Audio Visual Media & Cultural Change in India. Ed. Christiane Brosius & Melissa Butcher, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, U.S.A., 1999

8. Hood, John W., ‘ The Essential Mystery: The Major Filmmakers of Indian Art Cinema’, Orient Longman, 2000.

Masquerade and Metaphor

Half an hour to leave for my University, I wonder what to wear. But the choice is not simply of ‘what to wear’ but of ‘what to be’. Should I be ‘the-typical-JNU-kurta-and-jhola-type’ or ‘the-jeans-heels-bag-type’? This thought of ‘putting on’ stays with me; I know I will be perceived to be ‘what I put on’. Not only will I wear my identity; I will be stereotyped by what I wear. Does one actually wear one’s identity? Does wearing one’s identity become a valid proposition because one gets stereotyped by what one wears? By wearing, here, I obviously don’t mean just clothes but an attitude, a personality and everything that goes with that personality that is not naturally one’s own self but an add-on, a ‘put-on’, a make-over and a mask.

This stream of thought automatically leads us to the concept of ‘masquerade’. Arguably, there is a certain role-playing in everybody’s life, where one ‘acts’ according to what people’s idea/notion of that individual is: one ‘acts out’ fantasies of otherness. An attempt to disentangle the paradox of ‘self x stranger’ leads one to explore how does the self become a stranger, how does the stranger become the self, and how does the self become determined by a stranger?

Interestingly, it is this game of enactment, stereotyping and masquerade that is both used and questioned by the artist Pushpamala N. I am referring to her project jointly conceived with photographer; Clare Arni called “The Native Women of South India- Manners & Customs”. A range of stereotypical images of women from newspapers, popular-studio photographs, film-stills, and advertisements are recreated as photographic ‘artifice’. For what is interesting is the construction of these images: physically, with the help of elaborate sets, costume and make-up; and also conceptually, decoding the idea of stereotype again using the same tools. The mise-en-scene plays a crucial role in evoking the memory of an already familiar image, of suggesting its past, reminding us of its context. Therefore what the artist constructs is only a part of what is finally constructed and made relevant through the viewer’s recognition of the image as a type.

Pushpamala says “the final photograph will be a copy of a copy--from original to the printed image which is then photo-copied and used as a reference for the set painter--to the painted set which is then photographed, and then to the final form of the image”.

It is in the process of this construction of a type that the artist or her ‘self’ becomes a ‘stranger’. For by stepping into the world of the stereotype, Pushpamala subverts the stereotype. The development of the artist from her ‘self’ to the ‘type’ involves a masquerade, and opens up a range of issues about the drive in favour of mimesis.

In the 1929 article, ‘Womanliness as Masquerade’[1], Joan Riviere argues that womanliness “could be assumed and worn as a mask, both to hide the possession of masculinity and to avert the reprisals expected if she was found to possess it—much as a thief will turn out his pockets and ask to be searched to prove he has not the stolen goods.” She concludes by saying that there is no difference between “genuine womanliness” and “masquerade.” Judith Butler makes an interesting point by saying that gender is an act, a performance, a set of manipulated codes, costumes, rather than a core aspect of essential identity. In ‘Gender Trouble’[2], Butler says that gender is a performance. It is what one does at particular times rather than a universal identity of what the person is. And therefore if gender is socially constructed, in part through femininity-masquerade is an inescapable part of female lives and therefore here a stranger or the idea of what one has to be becomes the self.

One can’t help but compare Pushpamala’s work with that of Cindy Sherman who in her works; Untitled Film Stills explores a range of stereotypes. Sherman uses cosmetics, costumes, setting, gestures and expressions to bring out the clichés she wants to evoke.

Stereotypes are tags given to others because of this obsessive need to classify, typify and compartmentalize. And, creating then demystifying these stereotypes is exactly what Pushpamala’s work aspires to do. Through the various manifestations of masquerade she is not only ‘masking’ herself to become somebody else but also ‘unmasking’ in the deconstructionist sense of exposing and critiquing that stereotyped stranger. The question of how a stranger determines the self is precisely the underlying thought behind her ‘stereotypes’. The work takes a playful turn when the characters are displaced and are given a new setting as in The Popular series. For example, when the ‘Lady in Moonlight’ from a Ravi Varma painting transforms into a modern day woman wearing dark glasses, when the Toda woman playfully points a gun to a man or when the goddess Lakshmi becomes white-skinned. And this mix-and-match generates the situation for alternative identities to emerge.

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[1] Riviere, Joan, ‘ Womanliness as a masquerade’, in Formations of Fantasy, ed. Victor Burgin et al. (London: Methuen, 1986) pp. 35-44

[2] Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge,1990)