From stories, backdrops, dialogues, scenes, shots, characters, etc. in movies, even the titles have their much-needed significance. The title defines the movie in a nutshell and also presents the basis/foundation of the theme. This way of representation through titles sometimes function as director’s trump, but sometimes it also fails and how. This essay will attempt to address the aforementioned representation and the politics it entails through the examination of movie titles of Fire and Father, Son and Holy War and themes associated with them.
Deepa Mehta’s ‘Fire’ is the first of the famous Element trilogy preceded by ‘Earth’ and ‘Water’. This trilogy attempts to deal with the issues of social taboos giving the viewer insights into social evils and the orthodox ideologies which gives birth to them. The title ‘Fire’ could be defined as latent desires. Additionally, it also represents a purge from crude and regressive society. When one brings these two ideas together, one understands that desires are the purge from the repressive society itself.
The ‘fire’ of desires aren’t everlasting instead are fulfilling. Firstly, Deepa Mehta presents the ‘fire’ from the first scene of the movie and continuously unfolding with each character’s advent. But the center of the story remains the lesbian relationship which Sita and Radha explore later in the movie.
Sita’s and Radha’s desires are presented through multiple monotonous and underwhelming depictions of sex or loving making sequences. However, it surprisingly manages to establish the much-needed oddness about a same-sex relationship and certain unusual desires. Second is Ashok’s (Radha’s Husband) quest to control his temptation, in a lot Gandhi like manner, and sexual desires to attain celibacy.
Next comes Mundu (the servant) who desires Radha and uses Blue Films to conquest his fire. Eventually, the director uses fire to depict the purge of the character Radha creating a similarity with Agnipariksha which ‘Sita’, the character from Ramayana, had to go through to prove her loyalty to Shree Ram, the protagonist of Ramayana. Hence, the title of the movie has greater relevance.
It is imperative to mention that the movies which depict homosexuality in India are as rare as Halley’s Comet. Hence, the depiction or we say the representation of the same remains very stereotypical as can be seen in ‘Dostana’. They depicted everything but a real homosexual relationship. Also, Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga never attempts to represent the theme of a lesbian couple but the movie is promoted as one. Instead, it looks at homosexuality through the lens of the society which apparently is still Hindu.
Second is Anand Patwardhan’s ‘Father, Son, and Holy War’. The title itself represents patriarchy, masculinity and its association with violence and aggression. The title saliently also addresses the fact how ‘men’ in a patriarchal system of living tends to behave like a protector like a self-nominated and eventually, self-appointed savior of the weaker section which generally is women. Once you are part of this self-nominating-appointing system you are left with least or no agency to choose.
As presented even in the title ‘Father-Son’, it represents the transfer of baton or power from one man to another without consulting the successors. The term ‘Holy War’ represents the fight to save/protect the religion or religious practices from foreign influences. Basically, anything which impacts their religious sentiments or practices are a foreign influence – the age-old easy blame game.
Hence, they have to fight against foreign influence to protect their religion. Therefore it is known as the Holy War. The title of two parts– Trial by Fire and Hero Pharmacy– also render the theme of respective parts. The movie also depicts the sexual violence which women face, in the first part. In the second part, how masculinity in society promotes violence. The title and part titles are hence very significant to Anand Patwardhan’s documentary as well.
The representation of themes in both the movies has been directly-indirectly, implicit-explicit. The tone and symbolism also varied with the intensity of the scene. Hence, the politics of representation is a very curious and interesting domain of exploration. These representations are used to instill the written apparent lies as truth and reality. Furthermore, they draw an outline of the nation or mindset one lives within.
To conclude, the overwhelming portrayal of both homosexuality and masculinity in each of the two movies was through a Hindu lens. The very advent of Indian cinema was a movie based on a Hindu ruler, Raja Harishchandra. Simultaneously, when color television was introduced in India, Indira Gandhi insisted on creating and telecasting mythological and religious shows, which she has explicitly said in a lot of interviews, to bind the country together through identical ideologies which were predominantly Hindu.
This biased representation of apparently secular state leads to politics of representation which can be termed as convenient representation. It could eventually lead to ignition of communal sentiments due to the insignificant representation of minorities in the visual media. The representation and misrepresentation of a certain section of the society are done continuously in cinema, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously and sometimes, unapologetically. It leads to prescribed categories of functioning in various sects of society. This, when done over a period of time, elevates differences and creates divides in an already divided society.
Bibliography
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Derné Steve. Globalization on the Ground: Media and the Transformation of Culture, Class, and Gender in India. Sage, 2008.
Chatterjee, Partha (. Nationalist Thought and Colonial World: a Derivative Discourse. Zed, 1993.
Kishwar, Madhu. “Naive Outpourings of a Self-Hating Indian A Review of Deepa Mehta’s ‘Fire’.” Review of Fire by Deepa Mehta.