Things go wrong all the time and humans, the naive little creatures we are, cling on to the hope that one day they might not. We look for a ‘silver lining‘– a single sliver of goodness in a giant sea of plain old bad. This can prove to be exhausting, especially when you have to go looking for the silver lining to reassure yourself that the universe does not, in fact, hate every fibre of your being.
I’ve had my fair share of ups and downs and I’d be lying to myself if I said that no matter how hard the current against me was, I stood firm in my belief that there would come a rainbow after this storm. Of course, I didn’t. There were extended periods in my life when I’d trudge through dates in the calendar as a gelatinous, sleep-deprived blob wrapped in a blue duvet, trying to make up for her serotonin shortage with garlic breadsticks and instant ramen.
Nothing seemed to be going my way. After attempting to attend a normal high school and failing twice, I’d given up on institutionalised education and finished my degree through an open school, completely isolated throughout the process. The anti-depressants and anxiety medication I was on was making me pack on pounds like crazy, and this didn’t help my already low esteem. Throw in chronic autoimmune disease and I might as well have had ‘God’s Cruel Joke‘ tattooed on my forehead. Everyday I woke up wishing I hadn’t. And then I found my old baking equipment.
You know how people say they remember the exact moment they decided to turn their life around? Like an addict checking themselves into rehab or an estranged father reaching out to his family? Yeah no, that didn’t happen. I’m not going to say “The second my hand touched the silicone spatula I was transported to my grandmother’s kitchen where I’d bake cookies with her after school,” or any other saccharine shit like that.
What really happened was I’d been instructed to clean out the guest room wardrobe for my visiting family, and accidentally stumbled upon a drawer full of cake tins, sprinkles, whisks and piping bags. My mum gave me an ultimatum, saying she’d throw the whole lot away unless I used them. Maybe that made me realise I missed baking, or maybe my sweet tooth made me cave, but I decided I was going to make a triple-layered chocolate mousse cake.
Anyone who’s tried to make mousse knows that there is very little margin for error. Whisking it too much or too little, letting it boil for a little too long or not long enough or even piping it the wrong way can ruin the light airy texture that it’s supposed to have. The recipe I’d chosen called for 3 kinds of chocolate mousse, each with different consistencies and flavour profiles. And I, a novice baker who hadn’t set foot in the kitchen for over three years, had set myself up for failure.
After 4 gruelling hours in the kitchen, I stared at the monstrosity I’d created with wide eyes. It had an unsightly dip in the middle and the bottom layer was oozing out of the biscuit base because I’d put too much chocolate and not enough heavy cream in there. Predictably, I went on a tirade about how I could never do anything right and I’m a no-good failure and yada-yada, but ultimately the aforementioned sweet tooth made me take a bite of my ghastly creation. And it was…..pretty fucking good.
The bottom layer that I’d put too much chocolate in tasted like chocolate ganache. The middle layer that I’d left in the fridge for too long had frozen into milk chocolate ice cream. The top layer had white chocolate in it that I’d whipped a little too vigorously and melted in my mouth like whipped cream. I’d messed up nearly every step of the recipe, yet every spoonful had me reaching for another one.
No matter how hard you try, you can’t mess up cream and chocolate. Sure, maybe you don’t get the decadent ganache you wanted, but you get a chocolate thick shake which, in my opinion, isn’t a bad trade-off. The forces that appear to be working against you might actually be steering you towards something else, maybe even something better. If I’d stayed in any one of the two schools I’d dropped out of, I wouldn’t have met the amazing people in my support group or any of the friends I made through poetry. If I hadn’t spent two years at home, I would never have bonded with my sister the way I did. If I hadn’t opened up that drawer full of dusty cake tins, I would never have felt so embarrassed by the goopy mess of a cake I made that I put in hours of practice to make sure I only turned out quality creations.
I wouldn’t trade the experiences that shaped me into the person I am today. I lived through the pain and the sadness and everything else the world threw at me, and I bear my battle scars proudly because the life I have now is worth doing it all over again.
I said there would be no saccharine shit in here. I lied.
At least, that’s what my mother tells me. The doctor held me up for everyone to behold and the nurses marvelled at the dark coils on my tiny scalp.
When I was 1, my mother refused to take me to Tirupathi to shave my hair off as a sacred offering to god. She claimed that God had blessed her child with beauty, not vanity, and there was nothing unholy about the gorgeous mane on my melon-sized noggin.
When I was 5, I was experimenting with safety scissors in art class and cropped off a good three inches of hair. My mother nearly flayed me alive and made me write an apology note to my fallen locks.
When I was 9, I was at a friend’s birthday party and I heard some girls sniggering in the corner of the room. They called me names and said I smelled of coconuts. I ran my hands down my oily braids and bit the inside of my cheek, trying to will the tears to go back from whence they came.
When I was 13, I went out for ice cream with a small group of classmates. I’d tied my hair up in a bun because of the blistering heat, and everyone said they’d never seen me with my hair pinned up before. They liked it, and so did I.
When I was 15, I convinced my mother to let me get a tiny strip of hair dyed red. She drove me to the salon herself and watched with pursed lips as the stylist snipped away at my split ends, chatting with me about how much I could experiment with my tresses. The entire time, I could feel my mpther’s eyes boring into the back of my skull.
When I was 16, in a fit of boiling teenage angst, I stormed into my bathroom, cut off nearly two feet of long, straight shiny hair, stuffed it into a mug and presented it to my mother with a smug look on my face. She was devastated, and her reaction gave me a moment of satisfaction before the reality of what I’d done descended upon me. Oh god.
When I was 18, i was sick of what I looked like. I bought myself a packet of bleach and some hair dye and three hours later I emerged from my bedroom with a shock of blue framing my face. My mother screamed and dropped the bowl of peanuts she was shelling.
A week ago, after having blue hair for nearly three years, I decided I wanted a change. I rooted through the boxes in my uncle’s storeroom and found my grandfather’s old shaving razors. I FaceTimed my parents to show them what I’d done, and my mother let out an elated cry. She called me brave. My father called me beautiful.
I am trapped . In a shallow pit . I could get out if I wanted to . And I should want to . But somehow, I cannot .
This wasn’t a pit to begin with . It was a sinkhole . It plunged into darkness. Everything avoided it. The light. The warmth. The air. But somehow, I did not.
It was blacker than any night I’d spent awake. It was colder than any blade that had grazed my skin. It was emptier than the plates of food I’d flushed down the toilet. It was hopeless. It was joyless. Escape should have been impossible. But somehow, it was not.
I used my fingers. I used my teeth. I used my voice and made my throat bleed. I clawed my way up. Up the cold slimy walls. Until the blood ran down my arms and into my mouth. I should have stopped . I should have fallen . But somehow, I did not.
Now the light is just a breath away. My fingertips yearn for the warmth. But my body is torn. And my mind is broken. And the air is thick With the smell of my trials. I should rest for a while. I deserve it. To close my eyes and dream to be free. But somehow, I cannot.
You see, When I shut my eyes, The darkness envelops me, And the feeling of sinking Back into hell, Back into hopelessness, Clouds my senses.
I should be able to fight it For a few minutes more. For surely, how do ten minutes compare To two years of desolation? But somehow, Somehow
I don’t know what it means to exist. I don’t know what the purpose of life is, why we were put here or how we will end up. I don’t know if we’re a part of a bigger plan set in motion by a higher being, or if we’re just insignificant animals on a spec of dust in a giant expanse of nothing. I don’t know why we do the things we do or why we say the things we say. Existing, to me, sounds brave. To be born on a rock floating through space was luck, to live on that rock is courage.
For a long time, I couldn’t feel. Mood altering medication does that to you– a fun little side effect doctors often forget to mention. Everything was a shade of grey. Those were some of the darkest years of my life, and the first time I began to question my existence. Why was I here? Why should I stay? Should I even want to? Like a drowning sailor clutching on to splinters of his sinking ship, I began grabbing at anything that helped take the grey away.
Instinctively, I turned to work, throwing myself into academics because I had been taught that I was a student. Students study, students work, students don’t have time for play. When I couldn’t be a student the way I was taught to be, I tried to be other things. A writer, a baker, an athlete, a daughter, a sister– all of which in my head were mutually exclusive. I found that I could never exist as a whole of any one thing because I couldn’t fulfil what the roles asked of me.
I realised that my reason to exist doesn’t have to be something that contributes to a collective good. I don’t need to be an irreplaceable cog in the giant machine of life to feel like I exist. I used to think I needed to explain why I had to audacity to exist as an individual. That I needed a ‘purpose’ which was the reason I hadn’t dropped dead yet. I believed that my usefulness–to a person, a company or a community– was a desideratum for me to simply be. Now, I know I don’t need to wager my existence on my worth.
Now, I think existing means to feel. It means to laugh so hard your lungs beg for air. It means anger, so fierce it could burn cities to a cinder. It means sadness, bottomless and darker than the sky on the night of a new moon. It means to love, unafraid and honest, bearing your heart out come what may.
I exist to watch the heavens open up as I sit in my balcony in the middle of a thunderstorm. I exist to smell metal as lightning electrifies the air around me. I exist to hear the windows rattle as thunder rolls across the sky. I exist to experience, wholly and unapologetically, every single waking moment.
Because if I don’t then what, pray tell, is the point of anything at all?
Have you ever been in love? Not with a person, But with a memory
I remember my mother taking me on long drives all over the city in her old beat up 1998 Maruti Suzuki Zen. It was dark green and we used to call it the Beetle Wagon because it looked like a bug.
I remember getting in the car before we’d set off on one of those drives and sifting through her cassette collection to pick out our playlist for the day. I remember accidentally unspooling an entire cassette of 1990’s love songs. We’d blast The Bangles and Britney and Natasha Bedingfield through those tiny speakers and sing along to the muffled lyrics. We’d get the words wrong- we didn’t know this until years later when YouTube karaoke became a thing- but that didn’t stop us from singing to them like we were performing in front of a stadium full of people.
I remember she’d sometimes pick me up from school and take me to the Juice Junction in Indiranagar before these drives. ‘Fuel for the journey’, she’d say. Our order was always the same- veggie sandwich and watermelon juice for her, a chilli cheese sandwich and chocolate milkshake for me. She’d always say I should eat more vegetables but she’d never stop me because she knew it made me happy. Maybe I should have listened to her more.
I remember feeling so safe in that tiny vehicle. It was objectively a pitiful car, but I was small enough for it to feel like a chariot, like royalty on my way to a ball. My mother was so proud of it, how could I not be too? I remember her being so proud to be the first person in our family to make a huge purchase, to learn how to drive, and to teach my father. I know now that the car was more to her than a mode to get places. It was a means for her to get away.
I miss those car rides. The car got sold nearly a decade and a half ago, the roads we’d take don’t look the same, the cassettes we’d listen to collect dust in the back of my grandmother’s bureau. My sister never liked singing in the car, and once she got older the music was turned down and we’d talk to each other instead. My dad would join in on the singing occasionally, but he’s a talker too.
I miss you, Ma. Singing isn’t the same without you.
Coronavirus disease– or as it’s more commonly known, CoVid-19 – has brought life as we know it to a standstill. What began as a case of pneumonia of an unknown cause in the small city of Wuhan in China in December 2019, has now spread all over the world, bringing major governments to their knees. It feels like a dystopian scenario similar to that seen in books like Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel and movies like Contagion (2011) and 28 Days Later (2002).
While there are several conspiracy theories about the pandemic floating around, what we do know about the virus is that it causes respiratory problems, similar to the flu, with symptoms like cough, fever and difficulty breathing. It spreads through contact with an infected person, and the immunocompromised– namely the elderly and the sick– are the most vulnerable to the disease. However, with the number of infections and deaths skyrocketing in the last few weeks, it’s become clear that being a carrier is just as dangerous as being a patient.
It is for this reason that countries all over the world have issued quarantine orders for citizens. Beginning with China, countries like Italy, Spain, Germany, Iran, the Netherlands and India have enforced strict curfews on civilians. Governments all over the world closed their borders and declared lockdowns on its citizens, effectively trapping tourists, migrants and civilians inside the buildings they resided in. People began to panic, hoarding essentials like food and medicine, causing widespread lack of supplies for those unlucky few who waited too long.
On March 19th, 2020, the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi called for a ‘Janta Curfew’ on the 22nd of March, urging civilians to stay indoors from 7 am to 9 pm. Little did we know that this was a precursor to a longer, more strict quarantine.
On the 22nd of March 2020, Prime Minister Modi in his second address concerning the virus declared a 21-day lockdown, far stricter than the curfew. Essential services like hospitals, ATMs and grocery stores would continue to function but all transport was forbidden until the 14th of April.
It is during this lockdown that I pen this post. Cooped up in my uncle’s house after being temporarily evicted from student housing– like a lot of my classmates– with no interaction with the outside world except to run to the store to buy essential groceries. Even then, on my way to the store, I see police vans parked every few hundred meters, stopping vehicles and pedestrians for questioning. “Where are you going?“, they ask, “What are you going to buy?”
I answer their questions, my words muffled by the mask I wear and go on my way. Several days I’m tempted to take the long route to the store, just so I can feel the sun on my skin for a little longer, and take my mask off for a minute so I can breathe in the fresh air. But I don’t, I just hurry to the grocery shop and back, three times a week.
This is life now. Confined to the same four walls for hours on end. I do my best to stay busy– picking up a rigorous exercise regime, learning to cook, watching movies, reading books, trying to create something, anything to escape the clutches of inactivity. It’s lonely to be separated from friends and family, and the irrational fear of never seeing them again creeps up on me occasionally. But some days, when I sit in my uncle’s balcony next to his potted plants and look outside onto the empty streets and the rows of closed stores, I feel a calmness I’ve never felt before.
Without the noise of people outside, I can hear the birds again. With no cars on the street, the sky is a lot less hazy. I laugh as the pixels on my laptop screen momentarily arrange to form the face of my mother, sitting all the way in the Netherlands, as she calls me on Skype to tell me what my cats are up to. My mother and I end the call saying “I’ll see you soon,” and in that moment I truly believe it.
We hope that our grandparents stay indoors and protect themselves. We hope that our little cousins are getting the care they need. We hope that the healthcare workers all over the world who are fighting this virus stay strong. We hope that we survive this. This is life now, and we can only hope that it gets better.
“To state quite simply what we learn in time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.”
Upstage was a 3-day theatre festival hosted by the Performing Art Society and Department of English of St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore. Theatre geeks flocked to Loyola hall, where on February 27th, 28th and 29th, colleges from all over the city competed in 6 events. As a complete newcomer to the world of drama, I had no idea what to expect when my college’s theatre group signed up for 3 of the major events.
As soon as our theatre group got wind of the theatre fest, we set into action, picking appropriate versions of three plays to perform. I was assigned the role of light tech for our college’s adaptation of Girish Karnad’s play Hayavadana. I’d never heard of this play before, but over the course of the two weeks we practised it over and over and by the end of it I had every line of dialogue committed to memory. I was comfortable working production and doing most of my work behind the scenes- I even helped assist the light tech for our other short adaptation- Sartre’s No Exit. Having spent more time than I’d like to admit cooped up in my room scrolling through Reddit, sitting in a small, dark room and pressing buttons was right up my alley.
While Hayavadana and No Exit were our entries for the two events with the longest time slots- 40 minutes and 25 minutes respectively, the third event we’d signed up for was called Scenematic, and it was a musical event. This was the one that intrigued me the most- as unaware as I may have been about the world of theatre, I sure knew more than my fair share of musicals. I’d driven my neighbours up the wall with my renditions of Hamilton and Hairspray in the shower. There was no question about the musical we were going to perform- with an all-girls team, it had to be a number from Chicago. While the other girls from our group went on chattering excitedly about the roles they wanted to audition for in Karnad’s and Sartre’s plays, I hoped I’d land a role in Chicago. And I did- Annie Young, one of the inmates of Cook County Jail.
And so began hours and hours of gruelling practice. Getting into our characters, learning our lines and choreographing the entire number ourselves was no easy task. However, despite the sweat dripping down our brows and pooling under our arms, we all had the same glint in our eyes- we’d never performed a musical before and we were determined to win.
On the 27th, we made our way to St Joseph’s in a huge SUV, the 12 of us packed in like sardines. When we got there, we registered and were shown to our green rooms. After a lot of haphazard draping, tripping over fabric and a whole lot of face paint, the actors were in their costumes. I hurried up to the light room and waited for the emcee to announce our act. Apart from a few snags in the timing of the dialogue and the lighting, the act went perfectly. Every joke landed and the audience seemed completely engaged during the entire 40-minute time slot. We received a roaring applause and returned home, exhausted but excited for round 2.
Our performance of No Exit was, admittedly, a little lacklustre- we had several technical difficulties with the mics which led to the dialogues not being heard at all. The audience clapped politely at the end of our act, but we didn’t let this slow us down. The next day was our final performance and we were all determined to make it our best.
Finally, the day of reckoning came. On the 29th, the smallest group of stagehands and actors showed up to college early in the morning in rickety autos and rapidos, yawning as we all took our places on the basketball court to begin our practice of the Cell Block Tango. Later in the afternoon, we all set off to St. Joseph’s for the third and final time. We got to our green room and hurriedly put on our makeup, the tension in the air palpable. Our mentor Ms Naureen showed up just before we were to go on stage and we all huddled in for a prayer. Although an atheist myself, I secretly prayed to any higher power that would listen to let our performance go smoothly. The buzzer sounded signalling our turn to get on stage and my heart leapt into my throat.
Whatever higher being or cosmic energy I prayed to must have been feeling quite generous that day because it was one of the best performances out group had ever put up. As soon as the curtains were raised, the audience was captivated. We didn’t miss a single beat, we were in character and in tune. Learning from our technical mishaps over the previous two days, we’d decided to ditch the lapel mics and stick with floor mics, which proved to be genius because the audience caught even the slightest murmurs of witty dialogue and sniggered. As we ended, out of breath and with beads on sweat on our forehead, we got a standing ovation from the crowd, including the female judge in the first row.
We brought home several accolades that day. Hayavadana won the best adaptation, Chicago won first place in Scenematic, our teammate Parna won Best Supporting Actress, and Daya who played kali got a special mention for her acting. However, the best things to come out of the whole experience were the validation out little theatre group got, and the bonds that we built with each other. We’re just a bunch of theatre geeks after all, from science, commerce and arts background, connected by our passion for the performing arts. We trusted each other, believed in our abilities and never gave up on one another.
Boy, am I lucky to call these girls my partners in crime.
Second-wave feminism, a period of feminist activity beginning in the ’60s and spanning roughly two decades, was influential in kickstarting the fight against patriarchal institutions prevalent in broader sects of society. This included the treatment of women in cinema. Since the gender bias present in Hollywood cinema at the time involved portraying women as the subordinate and men as the superior, studying and critically analyzing patterns in films and elements of cinematic storytelling concerning the representation of women became an issue of great importance for feminists.
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema is an essay written in 1973 by highly acclaimed British feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey and published in 1975 in the influential British film journal Screen and, later, other anthologies including a collection of her essays titled Visual and Other Pleasures. Highly influenced by the works and theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, in her essay, Mulvey steers the perspective of film theory towards a more psychoanalytic framework. She uses psychoanalytical theory to attack the male-dominated viewpoints deeply embedded within old Hollywood cinema. Her essay was the first to intersect the three concepts of film theory, feminism and psychoanalysis.
Although his essay was written in 1975 regarding misogyny in old Hollywood cinema, we can see the hegemonic continuation of male dominance in Hollywood and regional films today. Further in this article are cited several examples of films subservient to male-centric viewpoints. Mulvey’s essay was written to recognize and dismantle the filming strategies that exist to provide narrative pleasure to men alone.
Male Gaze
Mulvey intends to use psychoanalysis to make the argument that the visual and anthropomorphic components of film storytelling are dictated by a male-dominant viewpoint, exploiting the female form to provide the audience with a pleasurable experience. This is where the term Male Gaze comes into play. First introduced by Laura Mulvey in her essay, this key term in feminist film theory refers to a sexualized way of looking that objectifies women whilst simultaneously empowering men. In the male gaze, women are framed to appear as hypersexualized objects of the male desire. Her thoughts, emotions, ideas and needs are secondary to his, and her highest desire is to be ‘wanted’ by the male.
“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female.”
Laura Mulvey
Mulvey’s ideas of male gaze and fascination with the female form are very closely tied to the Freudian concept of scopophilia. Scopophilia was defined by Freud as a deep-seated sexual pleasure derived from looking at others, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze. In extreme cases, scopophilic desires could manifest into voyeuristic behaviour, producing Peeping Toms who derive sexual pleasure from witnessing and actively controlling an objectified other. Essentially an active process, fetishistic scopophilia leads to women being erotically objectified in film, coding them so that they connote ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’. Moreover, the experience of watching a movie in the cinema nurtures this desire by providing an environment that allows the viewer to remain anonymous, shrouded in darkness, introducing a voyeuristic element in watching something that was created to be watched.
Jacques Lacan’s idea of the mirror stage, where infants identify themselves in the mirror, also influenced Mulvey’s theory. She claims that the narrative is manipulated in such a way that the audience finds themselves identifying with the main male character. They feel and see what he feels and sees. They empathize with him since he is the ego ideal or ideal self, evoking emotions of compassion, admiration and jealousy thus creating a love-hate relationship between viewer and character. For example, in John Hughes’ critically acclaimed 1985 American film The Breakfast Club, the main character John Bender (Judd Nelson) is the main character. The audience, although aware of his deviant behaviour, sympathizes with him since he is framed to appear likeable despite his flaws. Molly Ringwald’s character, Claire Standish, is the ‘princess’- unattainable, perfect and out of Bender’s league, and by extension, the audience’s as well. As the narrative progresses, she falls in love with Bender, and since the audience at this point identifies with him, they can possess this glamourized woman too.
Bender and Claire in The Breakfast Club
Apart from being an extremely sexist representation of women in film and mainstream media, the male gaze has proven to be a significant contributor to sexism in the real world. By portraying women as the weaker, fairer and, in several ways, the inferior sex, the idea that their purpose is limited to becoming a supporting role in the life of a male is enforced. Impressionable young girls, exposed to this narrative from the very beginning, grow up being very aware of their potent sexuality, which is both demonized and deified by the male population. Male children too are raised with the notion that they are the more powerful sex, and these archaic gender roles and stereotypes are reinforced by the media. Not only is the male gaze prevalent in mainstream cinema, but it can also be seen in commercials, music videos, television shows and a host of other media where women have little to do with the subject matter. This sexualization, commercialization and objectification of female bodies exists due to the assumption that the male-centric viewpoint is the norm and that in order to sell a product, a movie or a song, one must visually appeal to the masculine audience.
The stories are always catered to the heterosexual male- forcing the audience to view the story from this perspective, regardless of their heterogeneity. By restricting itself to this rigid mise-en-scene reflecting the dominant ideological concept in cinema, Hollywood plays into the male fantasy that women are meant to be looked at and men are to do the looking.
“The determining Male Gaze projects its view onto the female form which is styled accordingly.”
Laura Mulvey
Every part of the woman- from her characterization, her personality, her clothes, her behaviour down to the smallest detail- is manufactured to imply and maximize her sex appeal and erotic nature. Women adopt a “traditionally exhibitionist role” in cinema and, function as passive erotic objects of desire for both the characters on screen as well as the audience. It is within this narrow narrative that her characterization takes place, and thus she is limited to remaining an evoker of response from the male lead. The seamless unification of the looks from either side of the screen allows for the story to continue ‘logically’ with no explanation needed for the convenient sexualization of the woman. While some filmmakers attempt to avoid characterizing women as mere sexual objects by providing them with a complex backstory, more often than not the writing pales in comparison to the portrayal of her sexuality.
For example, David Ayer’s 2016 American superhero film Suicide Squad introduces Harley Quinn, one of the only female members of the team, in a scene where she strips down to her underwear in front of a group of soldiers. This scene involves close-ups of her body and long shots of her revealing more skin, focusing on her breasts and genitalia. This scene offers nothing to the development of the storyline, neither does it provide any insight into other aspects of her character. It was put there to please the viewers. She is portrayed as a hypersexualized object, meant to elicit a response from the men onscreen and in the audience. None of her male counterparts had anything remotely close in terms of displays of sex appeal in their introductions.
Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) has personal motives influence her decisions- mainly her relationship with Jared Leto’s Joker (her actions being motivated by her ties to a man). However, her backstory is barely explained and so poorly written that it’s clear that she was put on screen to be looked at. The explanation offered for her overt sexuality- that she is ‘clinically insane’- makes it seem like it is okay to derive pleasure from her presence. Whilst her male teammates like Deadshot (Will Smith) and El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) are clothed in some form of protective clothing, Harley waltzes around in a skimpy torn T-shirt, a pair of booty shorts and high heels. Although Robbie’s performance received high praise, the movie was rightfully criticized for relying heavily on her characterization as a ditzy sexpot.
Suicide Squad isn’t the only superhero film guilty of perpetrating this narrative- most superhero blockbusters are rife with the objectification of female characters to cater to male fantasies. Catwoman (Anne Hathaway) in The Dark Night Rises (2016) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) in the Avengers movies are portrayed to be powerful, strong female superheroes…in skintight latex suits that cling to every curve. This creates an illusion of the ’self-actualized warrior female’ within the framework of the patriarchy. She has qualities that the male lead can respect like being skilled in combat or physical prowess, but she is also sexually desirable.
Anne Hathaway as catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises (2016)
Phallocentricism
Mulvey’s theory was also influenced by the concept of phallocentrism, i.e., the ideology that the phallus or the male sexual organ is the central element in the organization of society. Man exists first as a person of the world, and woman is then created and defined by her lack of a penis. Mulvey stated that the narrative intentions of the director, the interactions between the characters on screen and the experience of the audience are guided by an entirely phallocentric view. The audience is always provided with the option of fulfilling a pleasurable desire, albeit a male-centric one, since women on screen are coded for extreme erotic, sensual and visual impact.
“The meaning of a woman is sexual difference, the absence of a penis as visually ascertainable, the material evidence on which is based the castration complex..”
Laura Mulvey
Due to women’s lack of a penis, Mulvey stated that men saw them as strangers, and this led to castration anxiety, i.e. metaphorical and literal fear of emasculation. Therefore, women could never be looked at as equals lest they are considered dangerous, instead, they were deemed beautiful, mystical creatures, slaves to their own sexuality. According to the patriarchal rules, the male figure is the one forwarding the story and the one the spectator identifies with. The woman is subject to his actions and by extension to the audience.
Considering it’s supposedly a depiction of a more advanced, technologically and intellectually superior society, sci-fi in Hollywood often fails dismally in its appropriate representation of women. Luc Besson’s 1997 cult classic sci-fi film The Fifth Element is the most quintessential example of this. In the film, Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) is constantly referred to as the saviour of the human race, due to her being a product of genetically engineered human cells that were spliced together in a lab along with the essences of four other classical elements. From her very creation in the lab, she is portrayed as a sexual object on display, isolated and glamourized. As her body is being manufactured, the camera slowly pans up her legs, while her genitalia remain hidden by conveniently positioned machinery. The scientists in the laboratory watch her body being created with their mouths agape, even exclaiming that she’s ‘perfect’- no doubt referring to her physical appearance. The camera’s focus on the men actively viewing her passive body is exactly what Mulvey examined in her essay.
Leeloo, although supposedly the all-powerful key to saving humanity, is depicted as naïve and innocent but simultaneously framed in a sexualized manner. Throughout the movie, there are several sequences where she is under the mercy of Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis) and he takes advantage of her naivety under the pretense of helping her. Since the movie explains that she was technically ‘born yesterday’ with no knowledge of human morals, rules and basic social interaction, her unawareness of her inherent sexuality can be brushed aside, and her actions are supposed to be considered whimsical rather than provocative. For example, the scene in which she undresses in front of two men- Cornelius and David, who are extremely flustered by her nudity- is completely unnecessary to the storyline, showing how “innocently oblivious” she is to her own physical attractiveness, and is present so the audience can derive pleasure from it.
Dallas with an unconscious Leeloo in The Fifth Element (1997)
Even though Leeloo is the one who saves humanity at the end of the movie, her actions are prompted by Dallas confessing his love for her, ultimately making him the main figure who progresses the plot. Along with more recent culprits in the sci-fi genre like Tron Legacy (2010) films reinforce the idea that no matter how powerful the female character is, she is still a woman and needs a man to save her, either from her overpowering emotions, a villain or unfortunate circumstances.
While it’s been made evident that egregious examples of the male-centric narrative are still present in Hollywood films, Bollywood is also full of similar culprits. Item numbers, ever so popular in Bollywood films, exist solely to cater to the male gaze. These songs check all the boxes outlined in Laura Mulvey’s definition of the male gaze- from framing the female character in a sexualized manner, limiting her characterization to that of an object of erotic desire, making her a passive player in her relationship with the male lead and providing extreme close-up, cut up shots of segments of her body namely her posterior, exposed belly and cleavage. The provocative lyrics further sexualize the woman. The word ‘item’ itself suggests that the woman isn’t a person, but an item being advertised and sold to the audience.
In the song Munni Badnaam Hui from the 2010 Bollywood film Dabanng, Malaika Arora’s character sings about her oozing sex appeal and how she was left powerless, captivated by the hero. She lists off her physical attributes in a way to make her seem desireable- her cheeks, her eyes, her figure and even her stride. She repeatedly says she’s unattainably sexy, yet she “turned from special to normal” for the hero.
A still from the song Munni Badnaam Hui from Dabanng (2010)
In the song, the lyrics directly address the audience. So to the viewer, it sounds like this extremely attractive, mature woman, who has so far been untamed and unattainable, is intoxicated by you, is in love with you, and wants to sleep with you. After the film’s release, the song was compared to Sheila ki jawaani from the movie Tees Maar Khan released in the same year, yet another provocative item number featuring actress Katrina Kaif. These comparisons saw a huge amount of online debates over which woman was sexier and which one people would rather sleep with, reducing both women to mere objects to be won and possessed.
Criticism
Although written over 40 years ago, Laura Mulvey’s essay continues to influence several discussion about film theory, and still provokes strong reactions. Most common of which is that both men and women are sexualized in cinema.
While this is true, the argument fails to note the regularity, intensity and normalization of the sexualization of women in cinema. While some theorists insist that men and women receive equal treatment in the media, a satirical Tumblr page called The Hawkeye Initiative was quick to debunk these claims. The Hawkeye Initiative involved replacing female superheroes in movie posters with Hawkeye, a male superhero from the Marvel Comics, in the same pose. This was done to highlight how the female characters were made to pose in highly sexualized ways, often to emphasize their buttocks, breasts and face. Although this yielded hilarious results, it also brought to light how female bodies were sexualized to such a degree that our society accepted it as normal.
Other theorists argue that, if a Male Gaze exist in cinema, surely so does a female gaze. As far as a direct equivalent goes, I don’t think there is a female gaze, nor do I think there ever will be. Since the power dynamics between the sexes are such that women have always been under the power and control of the patriarchy, a female gaze will not have the implications and consequences of the male gaze, since it would require heterosexual women to be considered the dominant sect of society.
The following post– completed for a creative writing assignment– by Roshni Anand and Yutika Pahuja is an abridged story of Lord of The Flies, originally written by William Golding in 1954
Rosh Writes 