REMEDIATION: Iconic Images and Everyday Spaces
Madhuja Mukherjee

National, international, and local political news as well as news on sports cover substantial amount of newsprint, while ‘entertainment’ news (that include cinema) along with advertisements, weather reports, comic strips etc., cover extensive spaces. I take a closer look at this heterogeneous nature of newspaper spaces. The period addressed here is roughly between 1985 and 1995, the ‘moment’ before globalised media dominated the ‘geopolitics’. In such a situation, how is cinema - a spectacular popular form - negotiated by (an)other media that works on its everyday greyness? For instance, how does the Amrita Bazar Patrika (group) established in Calcutta in 1868 with certain liberal and nationalist intentions, address Indian popular cinema of 1986?  The moot point is does newspaper ‘mediate’ notions of cinema?

THE DUALITIES OF TIME:

The political scenario of India between 1984 and 1992 is marked with events that were indeed inconceivable in 1947, and later during the period of Nehruvian euphoria. 1984 experienced the Bhopal (methyl-iso-cyanate) gas tragedy. In the same year, Bhindrawale was killed after the army marched into the Golden temple (during the Operation Blue Star). Following this, Mrs. Indira Gandhi was killed by her guards triggering off riots all over India in which Sikhs were targeted. Her son Rajiv Gandhi became the Prime Minister in the same year, and Doordarshan became fully commercialised with slots for TV soaps etc. During this period, the National Films Development Corporation was formed in 1980, and in 1982 colour TV was introduced. During this time the most popular star of Hindi cinema Amitabh Bachchan, became a Member of the Parliament. However, his popularity began to decline, and after a decade of unprecedented success his films fared poorly. He also became virtually absent from the popular press. In 1986 the Babri Masjid issue became a ‘problem’ as the mosque was opened to Hindu worshippers. In the same year Kashmir was brought under President’s rule. In 1987 Bachchan resigned after what was popularly described as ‘Bofors Gun’ scandal. Tamil Nadu’s popular actor and Chief Minister MGR passed away in the same year. In 1991 Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by Tamil militants, and in 1992 the Indian political scene transformed drastically with the destruction of Babri Masjid, which put all secular and nationalist values to severe test.

In opposition to the ‘statist’ endeavours John Abraham started the Odessa Collective in Cochin, and the Baroda art exhibition (Questions and Dialogue) brought together radical painters, sculptors, artists in kerala. They took a militant stance against commercialisation of art. Despite the confusions of the times, if there was an ‘alternative’ cinema in India it thrived during this phase. It is interesting to note how in absence of dominant stars and block busters (also a dominant ideologue) alternative cinemas occupy crucial spaces within print media. One may argue that the fuzziness of political thought allowed varied modes of representations at that point in time. It was also the period when films from the ‘parallel cinema’ were regularly telecast on Doordarshan.

ICONS AND MEDIATED SPACES:

How does one read the iconic images of ‘female film stars’ that appeared regularly in the pages of Indian newspapers between 1985 and 1995, before the ‘globalization’ of media? How did a newspaper projecting a ‘respectable’ image negotiate the not-so-reputable cinema on its Page 2, 3, or 8, 9? For instance, Amrita Bazar Patrika or ABP was an English nationalist newspaper which was launched in 1868 from Kolkata (it went out of circulation in the nineteen eighties, and was re-launched in the nineties). Similarly, Jugantar established in 1906 also had very strong nationalist agendas.  It is engaging to enquire how such larger-than-life visuals of movie stars or ‘actresses’ transformed the everyday space of the daily newspapers and conversely, how newspapers ‘re-mediated’ cinema? Last but not least, what kinds of ideas about femininity (and by extension, masculinity) were produced by the interaction between cinematic images and print media?

Laura Mulvey’s seminal essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, 1975 (which is a polemical feminist analysis of representation in classical narrative cinema), is useful for exploring gendered spaces created by these newspaper and images. To summarise the article - Mulvey describe ‘Woman as Image, Man as Bearer of the Look’. She argues that the active narrative role in films and the power to make things happen is reserved for male characters, while female stars usually remain passive. The woman usually functions as an object of masculine desire and a spectacle for erotic contemplation. She states that the woman’s image evokes visual pleasure as well as displeasure through the anxieties posed by sexual difference. Thus, the male unconscious has two ways of escaping this fear of difference.  First, by demystifying her mystery through ‘devaluation’ (as opposed to the ‘overvaluation’ of the mother figure), that is by punishing her in various ways. Secondly, through the disavowal or denial of the (castration) fear by turning her into a fetish so that it/she becomes reassuring. Mulvey shows how narrative cinema predominately engages in a sadistic story in order to punish the woman.  

However, there is another way of looking at the pleasures offered by narrative cinema. For instance, Gaylyn Studlar (1985) has shown how Masoch’s fiction (as opposed to Sade’s writings) is ‘mythical, persuasive, aesthetically oriented, and centered around the idealizing, mystical exaltation of love for the punishing woman’. Studlar quotes from Masoch’s Venus of Furs:

Thus, through Mulvey’s and Studlar’s theorisations three interesting and overlapping categories emerge.

1) The image of the isolated and spectacularly desirable heroine, who as the narrative progresses graduates into a devoted wife and /or nurturing mother. However, if she continues to be ‘provocative’ in any manner, the otherwise romantic tale can turn into a story of punishment, with the heroine often being disciplined, and the vamp  ‘accidentally’ being killed in most cases. When the heroine switches roles from spectacle to good wife, her erotic appeal is restricted to the hero alone, and the spectator can possess her by identifying with the hero. Films like An Evening in Paris, Sharmili, Great Gambler, Betaab, Devdas etc.,are good examples of such plots. Alternately, if the hero is not interested in a woman’s sex-appeal or is unable to engage with it, her sexuality floats like a semantic excess through the visual scope of the film for general consumption. For instance, the role played by Karishma Kapoor in Dil to Pagal Hai. Similarly, the hero’s sister whose sex-appeal is outside the moral universe of the hero is often ‘violated’ by the villain, and thus becomes available to the spectator through identification with the villain.

2) The woman displayed purely as a fetish or a sexual object becomes ‘the leitmotif of erotic spectacle’.  Most Ram Gopal Varma films engage in such representations.

3) The masochistic figure that provides perverse pleasures by becoming the torturing (as opposed to ‘nurturing’) ‘mother’ figure. Surely such depictions are few in Hindi mainstream cinema; however, Sridevi in Laadla and Bipasha Basu in Jism indirectly play something like Masoch’s Venus, even when they are eventually punished and a moral order is restored.

Of course, there are crucial points of intersections among these three categories, some of which will become clearer as we analyse the newspaper-cinema interface. Cited below are images of the ‘torturing and nurturing’ mother figures that present complex notions of femininity.  The iconic low-angle shot of Nargis, Fig. 1 (top), with top light and projecting a ‘virtuous’ image through details such as her bindi, attire, and disarming smile, is in sharp contrast with the aggressive and ‘heroic pose’ of Nadia, Fig.2 (left), who appears as a ‘beautiful tyrant’ with her mask (of Zorro), masculinized attire, and defiant pose. It is interesting to see how such images of the screen women of the thirties and the fifties recur in the eighties and nineties, and hold up a mirror to the representations of contemporary heroines.