REMEDIATION: Iconic Images and Everyday Spaces
MEDIATED POLITICAL SPHERE:
I have discussed different portrayals of the heroines in the dailies. For instance, while images of Zeenat Aman or Sriprada represent the ‘desirable woman’ in typical and opposing ways, both the heroines look at the spectator and draw him into the visual field. This structure of gaze (‘Woman as Image, Man as Bearer of the Look’) presents the possibilities of a series of allied functions, which gives fixity to the male spectator/reader positions. Nevertheless, Shabana Azmi’s image as a ‘social worker’ with a certain degree of ‘subjectivity’ emerges not so much through her films but through her representation in the other media. Indeed, these images are ‘performative displays’ of certain fixed (and variable) notions of gender, icons, and institutionalised spaces. A comparative analysis of such images indicates that some popular media might become‘resources to express a desiring and divided subjectivity’ even as they subordinate female subject positions.
The first image (Fig.30) shows Azmi with Bhupen Hazarika, Deena Pathak, Ruma Guhathakurta and others artists, presumably holding the ‘red’ flag at a rally in Calcutta. The second and the third (Figs. 31, 32), show her performing more personalised actions like giving away clothes to an old woman, and nurturing a sick child. While these photographs project the image of a ‘liberated and emancipated’ woman with a social conscience, Azmi appears like a domesticated ‘rebel’ when compared to Shatrughan Sinha who is seen addressing a mammoth rally in Fig. 33. While Azmi has been photographed largely in mid-shots and mid-close ups doing personalised activities more in keeping with the image of a ‘social worker’/socialite, the over-the-shoulder photograph of Sinha addressing a crowd gives him the stature of a ‘politician.’
However, representations are multifarious and it is not possible to produce any one meaning of the photographs cited here. For instance, while Hema Malini is seen with a Congress MLA, Fig.34, Shatrughan Sinha is seen with the Left Front Sports Minister Subhash Chakrabarty for Bakeshwar ’89 in Fig.35. Similarly, while Sridevi pays homage to the departed MGR in a personalised gesture, Fig.36, Madhuri Dixit –biggest female star of the nineties – laughs and issues a disclaimer when asked about her political ambitions, joking that she will start her own ‘Party of love’ (Mohabbat Party) in order to ‘spread the message of love’, see Fig.37.
Nevertheless, messages are polysemic and have multiple meanings. Receptions of messages are mostly ‘negotiated’ and not necessarily along the lines that the dominant discourses ‘prefer’. Thus, there is surely no one image of women in the media. As a matter of fact, one can see an overwhelming variety of such representations - a jigsaw effect - despite the dominant tendencies to denote women in a particular way. Interestingly, McLuhan (1964) studied modern technologies as extensions of our senses, and he described the print media as a ‘hot’ medium that is more individualised and dramatic than television; therefore it is actually closer to cinema. Thus, this cinema-newspaper interface becomes extremely engaging as it appears that the print media and cinema mirror each other on a formal level. Possibly this explains ways in which newspapers include (and exclude) images of the ‘Film star’ and lays those out for public consumption.
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