Symbolism and Bhumika

            Based loosely on the life and autobiography of 1940’s Marathi screen actress Hansa Wadkar, Bhumika concerns the life and career of Usha, a young actress who struggles to find identity and self-fulfillment. Usha’s mother, Shantabai, doesn’t want her to be a singer and actress, but poverty compels her family to send her to work in a movie studio. Usha rebels against her mother’s imperialness in her choice of career as well as her choice in love. She continues to act, and marries Keshav, an older man whose leeches off of Usha’s success. Usha wants to be her own person, but doesn’t know what kind of person she wants to be; is she an actress or a mother, a lover or a fighter?

The theme of time is an important element of the film. When Keshav confronts Usha after she returns from the studio at the opening of the film a ticking clock echoes in the background. The clock roots the scene in the now, which Benegal proceeds to undercut through the use of flashback. Black and white scenes of Usha’s past are juxtaposed with full color scenes of present day. Time and again we return to the same dance scene that opens the movie. This endless cycle – of film, romantic tryst, followed by romantic disillusionment – propels the plot of the movie forward, and speaks to the notion that Usha is stuck in time. She keeps trying to leave the film industry to start a family, but she keeps coming back. She is a prisoner to the role that she has been forced to play by first her family, then Keshav, and later Kale. It is only in the theater that her identity takes form.

Throughout the film we see many shots that expose the technical details of the film industry. We see shots of boom mikes, directors coming in and out of shots, sound recorders, all of the unseen elements that work together to create a film. The behind the scenes shots demystify the glamour of the film industry, and allow the audience to view the dirty underbelly of film. When we are first introduced to the movie studio it is depicted as a dirty, ill-kempt place, a place of sin and ill repute. Villainous laughter from an actor shooting a scene on one of the lots creates an eerie atmosphere. Later when Usha and Keshav go to a film together Keshav puts his arm around Usha in the dark theater. This lustful act in the shadowy environment of the movie theater highlights the Keshav and Usha’s unhealthy relationship; she is his captive, beholden to work the theater’s to keep the family solvent. Even after Usha becomes a star, we see a montage of her film roles, and in all of them she is a persecuted or pitiable woman. She becomes a metaphor for the modern Indian woman, a woman who is educated and independently wealthy, but still subservient to the patriarchy of Indian society.

Mirrors also play an important role in the film. When Usha first arrives at the film studio where she will one day work we see an actress fixing her appearance in a mirror. The actress is glamorous and beautiful, but her beauty feels impersonal and transient, which is underscored by an actor rehearsing his lines in the background, “I will destroy your beauty to ashes. Fire. Fire.” Beauty and free will are pictured as a threat to men’s power, and mirrors act as a means of reflecting back the inadequacies we notice about ourselves. When Usha’s costar Rajan is pictured staring at his image in the mirror it is implied that he sees a man that he does not like. He sees a coward, a man unable of telling Usha how he truly feels. Sunil puts it best when he says to Usha, “Your lovers are mere mirrors. And you are that idol locked in the mirror. You are worried that a new experience does not break that idol into pieces.” Mirrors show who we are rather than how we would like to be seen.

In one of my favorite shots Usha is filming a scene at the studio. She messes up a pose, and the choreographer steps in to show her how to properly perform the pose. The implication is that she doesn’t know what her role is or how she is supposed to act. She is torn by her desire to rebel against her mother and make her own choices, and her desire to a mother and leave the film industry behind. She is full of contradictions, and it is in celebration of contradictions that the film captures some of its most poignant moments.

Showdown in Hinditown: Curry Westerns, Villains, and Frontier Justice

Drawing from genres as diverse as Hong Kong martial arts films and “spaghetti Westerns,” Sholay engages in a discourse that roots the audience in the experience of the other. Shot in the desert-like environment of Southern India, Sholay is a transnational epic that features narrative and stylistic elements that make it both a typical masala film and a genre bending innovation, and is the first example of the affectionately named “curry Western.” The story of a village imperiled by a band of ruthless bandits who seek the protection from a band of disreputable warriors has been recycled in numerous formats including the Magnificent Seven and Seven Samurai, with Sholay marking just one installment in a series of revenge films. The film serves as a backdrop for conversations about brotherly love, frontier justice, and the hero/villain dichotomy.

Sholay utilized techniques considered cutting edge at the time, including quick cuts back and forth between shots, as witnessed in the opening battle scene on the train where Veeru, Jai, and the Thakur fight off a band of thugs. Later, freeze frame and slow motion shots are used to heighten the melodrama of the deaths of the Thakur’s family at the hands of Gabbar and his henchmen. Unlike a lot of traditional Hindi films which emphasize static shots and close ups Sholay utilizes a number of tracking shots and inventive angles, including a number of “bottom up” shots where the camera is position on the ground facing upward at the actor. Sholay often blends traditional Indian instrumentation with Western style music. Veeru and Jai are depicted playing the harmonica, an instrument utilized time and again in Hollywood Westerns, but also make time for the typical song and dance numbers typical in Hindi “masala” films.

The theme of frontier justice is an important motif in Hollywood Western films, and the same is true for Sholay. When the Thakur first catches Gabbar Singh he grips Gabbar’s head in a vice and says, “They aren’t arms, they’re a noose.” This bit of gritty dialogue harkens to the use of lynch squads as a form of frontier justice, and serves as a manifestation of the power of the common man. Like many tortured heroes popular in Western films the Thakur is a damaged person out for revenge, and his sense of morality is shaped by the violence that his been committed against him and his people. “In a reversal of the usual hostile imagery, the ‘feudal’ landlord too is shown as fundamentally good, able to act where the state cannot.” (Metcalfe, 2012) The Thakur justifies hiring Veeru and Jai to deal with Gabbar by saying, “Only because iron will deal with iron,” meaning that only strength (meaning violence) can counter strength, and in Sholay the strongest characters are those with the greatest martial talent. When the Thakur later confronts Gabbar after Veeru effectively neuters Gabbar of his masculine power by decimating his band of thugs the Thakur cripples Gabbar’s arms by crushing them under his feet. This act of retribution honors the “eye for an eye” message that is propagated up till the end of the film when the Thakur’s vengeance is derailed by timely arrival of the police, whose appearance enforces that notion that law and order is ultimately the realm of the state. Yet the film also undercuts the effectiveness of traditional forms of law and order. The jailer who pompously lords over Veeru and Jai while they are in prison is depicted as a ridiculously ineffective character whose appearance is clearly influenced by Charlie Chaplin’s depiction of Hitler in The Great Dictator.  Simultaneously a metaphor for British imperialism and national law the jailer serves a laughable foil to the more gritty and effective methods of justice dealt out by Veeru and Jai against Gabbar Singh and his evil henchmen.

Gabbar Singh is also as much a creation of the Western film genre in Hollywood as he is a distinct product of Hindi cinema. One of Hindi cinema’s first true super villains, Gabbar is a hyperbolic human incarnation of sadism and greed, and operates as a dual representation of Western violence and mythological villainy. “Gabbar Singh, by his creator’s own admission, was modeled on the psychotic, laughing villain, Indio, in Leone’s For A Few Dollars More. Yet he enjoys the kind of uncontested authority over his men that Indio can only fantasize about. More evocative is the way that both men are situated in a moral universe where greed and revenge, violence and betrayal are the primary referents.” (Banerjea, 2005) Throughout the film Gabbar repeatedly commits the gravest moral taboos, almost none of which is more heinous that the betrayal of his own men. Gabbar proves his disloyalty by shooting three of his men after sparing their lives in a miraculous game of Russian roulette, and the enigma of his character only grows more complex, because his true motivations other than sadistic pleasure are never revealed. “By the end of the film the audience is none the wiser about the substantive location of Gabbar’s desire. He has no social history, no personal biography beyond the stylistic markers of criminal excess: the howling, the tilt of the head, the mad, rolling eyes, that studded belt.” (Banerjea, 2005)

Pakeezah and Symbolism

Upon its release, Kamal Amrohi’s Pakeezah received predominantly negative reviews, and was considered a flop by both critics and the public. It wasn’t until the death of the film’s heroine, Meena Kumari, that the film gained popularity amongst Hindi cinema audiences. Now viewed as a classic of the courtesan genre, Pakeezah grapples with notions of female sexuality and the role of women in modern India, and features a wealth of visual and audiovisual symbolism.

             

            The film opens with a shot of Nargis (played by Meena Kumari) dancing around a burning fire in the middle of a kotha. She is dressed in white, a symbol of purity, and appears almost joyful as she expresses herself freely through the artful motions of her dance. “The deepest allure of the figure of the courtesan, Amrohi suggests, lies not in her sexuality per se, but rather in her exquisite mastery of the arts of dance and song, whose expressive purity conveys the essential value of the courtesan.” (Allen, 2009) While traditionally a place of art and sexual freedom the kotha is framed more as a tomb than a stage. “Her body is itself her tomb in the sense that although from her point of view her performative body is conceived as a pure expression of spirit—as evoked in the opening sequence, from the point of view of the largely unseen clients that she entertains, it is, at least incipiently, available for their sexual pleasure.” (Allen, 2009) When Shahabuddin enters the kotha he is backlit by a square of light that makes him appear like an angelic savior. The metaphor of the kotha as a tomb is further entrenched when Nargis flees Shahabuddin’s home in disgrace to take up residence in a cemetery. By taking up residence in a cemetery her environment reflects her emotional state, alerting the audience that she is dead inside. After Nargis passes she is buried in an unmarked grave, which symbolizes her lack of personhood as a courtesan, because according to the film only married women are truly realized persons.

            Nature has served as a metaphor for sexuality in literature throughout time and across cultures, and Pakeezah is no exception, with birds in particular playing a special role in the film. The wealthy Nawab Khan gifts Sahibjaan with a caged songbird, which casts the courtesan life as one in which women are not free to make their own choice, or more accurately, not free to pursue the life of a married woman. When Sahibjaan later frees the caged bird she symbolically communicates that she is releasing herself from the “shackles” of the kotha in favor of finding true love. During the scenes at Salim’s forest camp Sahibjaan is enchanted by the pastoral countryside, which stands in stark contrast to the gaudy décor of the kotha. The countryside symbolizes traditional notions of romantic love, and acts as a sounding board for Sahibjaan’s desires to escape the life of a courtesan and pursue romantic love.

            During the scene where Salim Ahmed Khan first encounters Sahibjaan in the compartment of a train he is enticed by her feet and the jangling of the bells that adorn her ankles. These bells are a symbol of Sahibjaan’s sexuality and her art, but also function as a manacle that tie her to the life of the courtesan. “The courtesan figure camouflages a deep-seated anxiety about female independence from men in its function as a fetishized “other” to the dominant female character, the wife or wife-wannabe, whose connotation is so over determined in mainstream Indian society that her appearance in Hindi cinema seems mandatory.” (Hubel, 2012) In the letter that Salim leaves for Sahibjaan he remarks on the beauty of her feet, and tells her not to let them touch the ground. His entreaty serves to enforce the notion that women should shun independence and self-expression through work in favor of subservience to men as devoted wives. When Sahibjaan reveals herself as a courtesan to Salim the bells, which before sounded so enticing, clang with a clamorous tone, implying that to be courtesan is a deplorable profession, despite all the evidence to the contrary that has been presented up to this point in the film.

            In one of my favorite scenes of the film Salim rides up to his forest camp astride a horse appearing like a knight, a heterosexual paragon of masculinity. The conversation that ensues between Sahibjaan and Salim is conducted through the walls of the Salim’s tent. Salim sees only Sahibjaan’s shadow, symbolizing Salim’s limited point of view; he sees her as a fetishized sexual object rather than a flesh and blood person. Additionally, he sees her as the woman he wants her to be rather than the woman she actually is. The tent serves as a faux veil of purity that surrounds Sahibjaan and cleanses her of her transgressions, but it also traps her within a structure that compels her to perform the role of the demure and doting wife. On the other hand Salim is outside the tent, and, as a man, free to do what he chooses. There is a great shot the shows the Sahibjaan and Salim facing camera and speaking to each other on each side of the tent. The shot implies that the structures of society – the tent – prevent men and women speaking to each other candidly and from understanding each other motives.

            The symbolism in Pakeezah can at times be downright obvious. The name given to Sahibjaan by Salim – Pakeezah – means “pure,” and draws a clear association between marriage and notions of purity, simultaneously casting the life of a courtesan as impure. At other times Amrohi's touch is more subtle and artful. The kite that gets in the tree at the Pink Palace symbolizes the cessation of Sahibjaan’s dream of romantic freedom. When we see it again the kite is in tatters, symbolizing that Sahibjaan has resigned her self to her life as  courtesan. The historical context of the courtesan as a sexually liberated artist stands in contrast to the film's fetishized version of the courtesan as a slave to immoral sexual practices and denied the benefits allowed honorably married women. This combination of obvious and subtle audio and visual symmetry served to make Pakeezah a complex film that extrapolates both the hypocrisies and grace of the courtesan genre of films in Hindi cinema. 

Mother Indian and Feminine Discourse

Released in 1957 to critical and public acclaim, Mother India by Mehboob Khan accomplished feats unparalleled by any Hindi film up till that time. The film engaged the audience in a complicated discourse about femininity in post-colonial India, and portrayed a complex female heroine who experienced transformative change onscreen to become an allegorical symbol for nationalism, morality, and femininity in modern India. “Mother India is most usefully seen as an arena within which a number of discourses around female chastity, modern nationalism, and, more broadly, morality intersect and feed on each other, with significant political effects.” (Thomas, 1989) Radha’s traditional female Indianness in reinforced from the opening scenes of the film. An elderly Radha is first depicted seated on the ground clutching a clod of dirt to her face. This shot immediately establishes her as stature as a metaphor for Mother Earth. In the ensuing marriage sequence her chasteness is well established; she wears a veil that cover her face, and in Ramu’s symbolic lifting of the veil her purity is reinforced. She and other women in the film are frequently filmed hiding their faces with the bangles on their wrists, which serve as a metaphor for preserving honor, or izzat. These and other instances of physical symbolism confirm Radha’s status as the quintessential Indian woman, one who is demure and chaste.

Khan and Nargis beautifully elevate the politics of Radha’s femininity throughout the film. “As Wadley has pointed out, in the Hindu tradition not only does femaleness embody a fundamental duality – woman as bestower and as destroyer – but female sexual energy is always potentially dangerous but can become beneficent (to men) if controlled through marriage or otherwise subjugated to male authority.” (Thomas, 1989) At the start of marriage, Radha massages her husband Ramu’s feet, denoting her service to his needs. She lets her sons drink from her cup, eat from her plate, and sleep in bed with their father while she sleeps on the floor below them further adding credibility to the theory of marriage as a mechanism for female control. However, when Ramu loses the use of his arms after a boulder crushes him, Radha begins to take on the role of the provider for the family. When her husband leaves the family due to his unbearable shame the transformation of Radha from human mother to Earth mother is complete; she loses her sindoor, signifying the end of her marriage to Ramu, and instead she becomes married to the land. Rather than her physical body being a symbol for fertility her metaphorical body – the land around her – becomes the medium for fertility. When her fellow villagers make to abandon the land – the symbol for national pride – it is Radha who convinces them to renew their metaphorical vows to the land. In doing so, Radha unites the families together through the spirit of hard work and ownership of the land, which culminates in the overtly nationalistic shot of pre-division India, enforcing the theory of woman as a metaphor for the nation and nation building.

In one of the most memorable scenes from the film, Radha confronts the moneylender Sukhilal in his home. While the moneylender is clean and well dressed, Radha wears a filthy sari and is covered in mud. This shot challenges the viewer to separate the characters from their appearance and see them for what they represent; Sukhilal, a devious leech who preys on the weak and ignorant, and Radha, the noble martyr who devotes her life to her family and, ultimately, her nation.

“Radha’s defiant refusals of Sukhilal’s advances thus is constructed less as a stand against male sexual oppression of women than as evidence of faith in Lakshmi and as a refusal to dishonor her husband and hence her suhaag.” (Thomas, 1989) At first glance it is easy to agree with Thomas’s assessment. Radha grips the Sukhilal’s shrine, which could be construed as her clinging to traditions, and beseeching help from the gods. Yet immediately after this Radha throws caution to the wind and beats Sukhilal with her bare hands till he falls prostrate at her feet. This use of violence clearly uses fire to fight fire by using archetypal male violence to counter Sukhilal’s villainy. Throughout the film, Radha is seen as being pulled in conflicting directions; she is pulled by Ramu and Birju in the fight over the stolen bangles and the gun, and between feeding her family and retaining her own personal honor. In each instance she performs how best she sees fit, in accordance with how she believes she should act according to her own moral code and the laws of society.

The relationship between Birju and Radha becomes an intricate landscape where masculinity and femininity are navigated with increasing intersexuality. From the get go Birju is set up to become a dacoit, or armed outlaw. He is an aggressive and disobedient child whose first answer to any problem is always violence. As an adult Birju’s overt masculinity and violent behavior becomes magnified. He is frequently pictured wearing a red turban at a cockish angle, a sign of his rakishness. On multiple occasions Birju throws stones at the water pots carried by the unmarried village women, which is his way of blindly lashing out at an unjust world regardless of the consequences. Despite all Birju’s bad behavior he is also seen to be interested in learning to read, a symbol that one villager sagely warns can make men weak. He also refuses to violate Chandra’s chastity when he raids her wedding caravan; he lifts up her veil, but lets it immediately fall, keeping her purity intact. Throughout it all, Birju remains Radha’s favored son; she admires his strength and passion, and in many ways he takes the place of her late husband. Birju returns her pawned wedding jewelry to her, signifying the restoration of her lost honor, and he fights the battle against Sukhilal that no one else is willing to fight. In the end it is only Birju’s attempted rape of Rupa that drives him away from his beloved mother; this most grievous breach of honor and morality is intolerable by Radha, who by the end of the film has become symbol for all the women of the village. She becomes the embodiment of the female God and destroyer Kali when she confronts and kills Birju, restoring the delicate balance that Birju has upset. Just as Birju was once the protector of his mother’s honor, Radha becomes the protector of female chasteness and honor.