REMEDIATION: Iconic Images and Everyday Spaces

ENDORSING THE KISS:

‘Why is there no kissing in Indian films?’ and ‘why do Hindi-speaking characters say ‘I love you’ in English?’  M M Prasad (1998) tackled these questions as he wrote about the ‘absolutist gaze’ of feudal family romances. He discussed how the feudal order ‘prohibits’ the voyeuristic look and the ‘invention of the private’, which could otherwise illustrate the journey into modernity. Interestingly, popular press emerges as an extra-diegetic space where the ‘prohibited kiss’ of the Hindi popular films can be shown. While some publicity stills showing the actors kissing are strategically released for newspapers, the frontal placement of these images in the newspapers (outside of the narrative logic of the films) demonstrate the ways in which notions of cinema were ‘remediated’ through the print media. While Raj Kapoor’s Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978) was controversial in its own times for its display of the female star’s body, this still from the film Fig.26, has the following ‘story’ attached to it:

Fig. 26

This film is a culmination of Aman’s star persona, where the heroine’s (scarred) face is virtually hidden or need not be projected, while her ‘inadequately’ covered body becomes a site (sight) for deliberations, in the sense that the hero loves her body and her voice (or soul), but doesn’t see her face before marriage. Hence, while he is obsessively attracted to the overtly sexed body (which floats like an excess on the surface of the frame), he hates the person he has married. Therefore, Rajiv ‘cheats’ his (nurturing) wife by sleeping with her own ‘other’/fetishised self. The problem is resolved when Rupa becomes pregnant. While Rajiv initially accuses her as ‘immoral’ (because he thinks his ‘marriage’ has not been consummated), he realises that his dream-woman is indeed his wife, and eventually accepts his disfigured wife as his beloved. Certainly, it is a twisted tale of masculine desire for both the fetish and the nurturing wife. However, contrary to Mulvey’s analysis, the woman in Satyam Shivam Sundaram doesn’t ‘graduate’ from one to the other; instead she is spilt into two, and plays both at the same point of time. Intriguingly therefore, Aman covers her face when she displays her body, and covers the body when the scarred face is seen. The use of such otherwise censored images in everyday newspapers as ‘news items’ is an interesting way in which dailies re-present and re-formulate certain notions of cinema.

Fig. 27	Fig.28

While the image of Kamal Hasan and Dimple in Vikram, Fig. 27, has no further details, the still showing Hema Malini and Dharmendra, Fig.28, doesn’t even mention the film. Nevertheless, both focus on a moment just prior to the ‘real’ kiss, which remains outside the symbolic domain of print media.  In fact, such images are often loosely presented in the newspapers as a ‘publicity gimmick’, and may or may not be part of the real film. Such floating images of intimacy create ambiguous views regarding cinema, making films appear perversely alluring through such decontextualised re-imaging. Having written about mediation it is nevertheless, important to return to the point that the space for cinema in newspapers can also become domains of subversions, or at least entail possibilities of deviations.

Fig. 29

As an afterthought (with reference to Mulvey’s own ‘Afterthoughts….’), one may say there can be some room for female subjectivity. For instance, here is one of the few images of a ‘woman-film maker’ Sheela Dutta, Fig.29, who was an actor and is ‘now’ shooting the ‘docu-feature’ Stinking Dawn in Bihar. This surely is one of the rare images of a female actor, where she is recognized doing ‘real’ and ‘ordinary’ work, as opposed to the festishistic poses discussed earlier.