Non-Western films, made by females, offer the possibility of numerous problems in regard to interpretation—problems for both Western and indigenous audiences. These films are often regarded as resources that will give evidence of relationships of power within gender issues. For the Western viewer, however, it is difficult to determine if these relationships within unfamiliar cultures are accurate or formed from various experiences and expressionistic views of the author/director. Such films, if read as feminist ethnographies, have potential for problems because of the “regimes of spectatorship that cinemas has universally instituted.” Too, unaccustomed to a particular non-Western culture, the student, spectator, or analyst of film may struggle to understand meanings in the presentation of language. Language, through reinterpretation by first the director and then again by the spectator, may no longer carry its true and original meaning (Arora 293).
Lack of knowledge of a specific culture places the viewer in a disadvantaged position for disseminating the undercurrents of religion and politics and the respected family traditions within those spheres. Based on the varied degrees of oppression emitted from these spheres, gender issues, male hierarchy and power, and other feminist concerns will likely be perceived and acted upon very differently by women of a non-Western culture compared with women of Western culture. So, there is concern that the actual perceptions of the real women being portrayed may not be presented in a way that allows the viewer to come to a legitimate understanding.
In attempting to document their own culture, some non-Western female directors work to “provide a window on “native” cultures and on the gender dynamics operative within them to Western Viewers” (Arora 293). But one of the main difficulties for female film directors lies in their changing ideas of what life was for women during their growing up years in their original culture, how they perceive it to be today in that culture, and how the Western views they have absorbed in time spent living and/or studying in Western culture may have construed those experiences. These mixed impressions may or may not reflect the actuality of a specific situational story selected for filming. Based on individual conceptions of female film directors, to some extent, all work will vary in degrees of validity. Too, what may appear to be valid—within a film’s presentation of gender or other issues—to a Western spectator may look like inaccuracy, subversion, and/or deceitful manipulation to indigenous viewers.
Still another problem, in some female directed non-Western films is the representation of oppressed groups of people. Colonialism, racism, and stereotypical images invite negative and erroneous interpretations of oppressed groups. Viewers, who are not literate in the history of certain cultures, will probably be unable to definitively discern if presentations are authentic. To “unmask and combat hegemonic images,” many female directors and Third world film-makers have attempted to counteract this problem by presenting “a vision of themselves and their reality as seen from within.” However, the reality of the a film-maker may have undergone many changes through cultural, educational, and other personal experiences (Stam 639).
Oppression can also occur through translation. Film editing with invisible matching of Third World women’s images with Western women’s voices creates a mimicry of Third World women’s reality. In attempting to form a kind of shared sisterhood, film-makers may end up romanticizing women in Third World cultures. This kind of colonization results in casting Third World women into stereotypical roles. Often the Third World woman is shown as “ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, domestic, family-oriented, and victimized” (Lawrence 409).
Deepa Mehta, who unlike some female film-makers, seems to be able to resist casting women into stereotypical roles, was born in Amritsar, India. She received a degree in philosophy from the University of New Delhi, and emigrated to Canada in 1973 (Earth). The female screenplay writer and director of Fire, a Canadian film involving cultural issues in present day India, says that her visions for film have been formed over her entire life, including their beginnings in her childhood in India. “My childhood was largely spent living vicariously through a character in some English book I was reading…Everything that I wanted to do in my life has somehow been entwined with English books I’ve read.” From these books, she says that she realized the power of image in creating a world that seems totally real (Mehta).
Mehta’s film career began as an editor for a small company called Cinema Workshop in New Delhi that made documentaries for the Indian government. Within three years of graduating, however, she left India. “There are a number of film-makers who were also displaced. They left their homeland for the West and now make film stories related to what they know and grew up with. Film-making is evolving, for me, as it is for others” (Mehta).
In regard to the making of Fire, Mehta says, “What started to interest me during the making of my latest film Fire is the opportunity to focus on the rapid changes taking place in the culture of my homeland viewed from the distance of 20 years.” Even though she’s been gone from India for many years, she says that her reactions to things that are Indian are on a very personal level but she has discovered that she is more Western now when it comes to anything on the aesthetic level. “Emotions are universal,” Mehta says, “but the expression of those emotions comes from our environment – our social context and our personal aesthetic” (Mehta).
Fire, a film which might easily have been entitled Duty and Desire, appears to be formed from two different aspects of Mehta’s background—her traditional childhood in native India and her internalized beliefs and values from Western culture. Feminist issues of patriarchy gained from Western culture are evident—even to the less than well-versed Indian culturist—throughout the film, which is to some extent based on the Ramayana, a folk story of India that speaks of women’s duty and devotion to men (Ramayana). The paradoxical use of Ramayana and its heroes the God Rama and his wife Sita repeatedly punctuates the film. By means of a home video, an actor states, “If I’m impure, flames will destroy me.” In a play enacted by men, the female lead, Sita, says to the God Rama, “If I have sinned, turn me into ashes.” But, even after she has proved her dedication by walking through fire, she is banished to the forest. A dreamlike story, narrated by Radha, warns that one must walk through fire to become pure, that fire will expose the sinner, and that women must forever remain dedicated to their spouses.
In Fire, Mehta offers a fairly distinct interpretation of Indian women’s desire to defy their oppression by a male-dominated culture. Sita, the new bride, and her sister-in-law Radha, when they are ignored by their husbands, daringly become fast friends through their shared domination within a joint family. Mehta’s non-stereotypical female characters defy their husbands, their customs, and their society. Garbed frequently in saffron robes, the color of fire, they test the flames of duty. Mehta message is that while the women’s relationship with each other is not the real threat to their society it is rather the willful way in which they refuse to continue devoting their lives to their husbands that presents the real danger.
Caught between the beliefs and values of two cultures and faced with the conflict of combining ideas of Western culture with Indian tradition, Mehta seems to resolve this is by playing issues of patriarchy against an Indian backdrop. The use of the English language instead of sub-titles works well for the Western audience. Whether or not the translation works, however, would have to be evaluated by a member of the Indian culture. And, for the most part, Mehta seems able to avoid the pitfalls of colonialism and racism so often seen in non-Western films by female directors. There is, however, a scene in which the Chinese father of Jatin’s mistress denigrates the Indian culture for its outmoded use of the latrine, but this seems to be used by Mehta to point out that even men—from other cultures—can see how archaic some Indian practices are.
Mehta’s message, through Fire, seems clear to a Western audience. Some of India’s ways are painfully outdated. And, while the Indian culture insists women serve men as their dutiful subjects—and objects—these same women are real people with real hopes, needs, and passions. Women, as well as men, do have desires but have been forced, for centuries, to submit in silence to the demands of their male dominators. Change—respect for women—is needed and women should demand it.
To the indigenous viewer, there are undoubtedly other concerns surrounding the film. While the Western viewer, unfamiliar with religious and political issues in Indian culture, may be somewhat stymied by what is happening religiously or politically, one Indian man, a professor at Truman State University in Missouri contends that Fire is a political vehicle used by Mehta to attack the Hindu society. He says that she has a hidden agenda meant to demean Hinduism and that Fire offers opportunities for Mehta to talk about the influence of religion and myth on interpersonal and marital relationships, bride-burning, and dowry. “The Hindu women are all fighting oppression, and that is supposed to be good for they can thus be emancipated. And the emancipation comes not just through the abandoning of the two husbands/brothers, but through the symbolic embrace of a new religion…The Ramayana has now been made the fount of all things ugly in the Hindu psyche and society” (Ramesh).
While others of the Indian culture may find Fire deceitful, antagonizing, and subversive, most Western film-goers will probably find Mehta’s combustible creation, Fire, to be a powerful, thought provoking film. Its theme of women refusing to be duty-bound to men is obvious. Through the plight of Sita and Radha and their decision to make change in their lives, this important feminist statement can likely be recognized by women of any culture.
From the opening of the film—a sunlit flowered field filled with traditional Indian music and the family unity of Sita’s childhood—viewers are invited by Mehta to explore conceptions of women finding freedom. “I want to see the ocean but I can’t,” Sita tells her parents. But her mother responds, “You can…you have to see it without looking.” Immediately before the final scene, as Sita and Radha, who has been forced through an accident in her kitchen to walk through fire, meet to start their new life together, Mehta returns us to the field where the child Sita exclaims, “I can see the ocean! I can see it!” Freedom is within, not outside, the soul.
Mehta has done a remarkable job of presenting the dichotomy of traditional Indian conscience and the trials of Indian women. It is easy to see why Fire has received numerous awards including Best Foreign Film, 1996 Rencontres Internationales De Cinema A Paris; People’s Choice, 1996 Toronto International Film Festival; and Best Foreign Film, 1997 Barcelona International Film Festival (Awards). Aesthetically, the film can be compared with a work of art. Like a painting or literary piece, Mehta’s Fire calls viewers to take a closer look at the nuances of color and words through composition, editing, lighting and sound. Fire, though seen by distinct cultures in different ways and with varied interpretations, stirs a flame within each viewer that is beyond brilliant.
By Coralie Cederna Johnson
WORKS CITED
Arora, Poonam. “The Production of Third World Subjects for First World Consumption: Salaam Bombay and Panama. 293-304.
“Awards.” Trial by Fire Films. Online. Netscape. 1 Nov. 1999. Available: www.bradson.com/fire/awards.html.
“Earth.” Zeitgeist Films Lt. 1999. Online. Netscape. 3 Nov. 1999. Available: www.zeitgeistfilm.com/current/earthdeepa.html.
Lawrence, Amy. “Women’s Voices in Third World Cinema.” 406-420.
Mehta, Deepa. “Outlook.” Online. Netscape. 2 Nov. 1999. Available: http://web3.asia1.com.sg/timesnet/data/ab/docs/ab1031.html.
Ramayana, The. Online. Netscape. 2 Nov. 1999. Available: http://members.aol.com/musicircle/r_story.html.
Ramesh, Closepet. “A LOT OF SMOKE BUT LITTLE FIRE.” IndiaStar Review of Books. Online. Netscape. 2 Nov. 1999. Available: www.indiastar.com/closepet4.html.
Stam, Robert and Spence, Louise. “Colonialism, Racism, and Representation: An Introduction.” Countercurrents. 633-649.
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