The Dirty Picture: The Good Ol’ Gaze-Reflecting-on-Itself Technique?

Warning: This review has spoilers. If you want to see an image of the film or a trailer, please look here or here. I do not want to add images after critiquing their hold over us!

The term gaze or male gaze is often used in the context of feminist discourse. In fact, it is sort of the a-b-c of feminism. A cursory look at Wikipedia will tell you that the male gaze is stronger in the context of cinema since the female is often constructed to be the object of pleasure. Think of all the countless times you have heard that women are “objectified” and “victimized” through cinema and in the Indian film industry.

The Dirty Picture released to what I can only describe as mixed views, including some who reveled with mixed feelings and others who called it “eminently watchable.” What I am about to describe here is my response as a movie-goer, and it is essential to remember that I still recommend watching this movie. First, my impression of the original “Silk” (too anglicized an epithet for my taste) or “Siluku” was that she symbolized all that was subaltern. No, I am not saying that just because she wasn’t as “fair” as the other heroines and she was always the vamp oppressed by the men who oppressed their heroines/ wives/ mothers, etc. I say that based on Meena Kandaswamy’s post on Facebook about a Rediff article classifying women writers, decrying the “mainstream media’s obsession with colour, caste, privilege and western/ brahminical notions of whatever is deemed ‘beautiful.’” She adds that no one “can lay claim to beauty–something that dazzles in labouring bodies…” Silk subverted the predominantly “brahminical notions” of what a female body should look like. Her beauty was one that shone in minor roles, in the role of the vamp, thus subaltern in its own limited space in the three-hour duration of the film. Did that mean more women wanted to be like her? I don’t know. Does that mean her presence, which opened up viewers to the female body not covered up in skin-suits in Tamil cinema, was necessarily “liberating” or emancipating? No. After all, the cinema is a space where the female body is constantly under evaluation, and if anything, Siluku modified the language of “sexy” or desirable, but she could not rise beyond its limitations.

When I saw Vidya Balan at first, clad in a davani and sporting a mookuthi, I felt assured. But her makeup wasn’t working, I thought. I remembered reading about Vinu Chakravarthy, Siluku’s boyfriend, taking Ekta Kapoor to task because he thought Vidya wasn’t “dusky” enough or wide-eyed enough (pun intended). I wanted to move beyond the fact that I wanted to see a darker Silk, I really did, but I didn’t feel very politically right about feeling this way. Tamil popular culture is both obsessed with venerating that which cannot be had (the “fair” woman beyond the often powerless hero’s reach) and reveling in the “dusky”-ness of the hero. Karuppu thaan enakku pidicha coloru is the motto. To appropriate that which is not you, or to appropriate the role of the woman who was powerful in her influence but powerless in her subjugation by the male gaze, you need a heroine who is not part of the dominant discourse of fairness. Yes, it would have been disingenuous to have Vidya darken her skin with dye, I know, but these were my thoughts nonetheless.

The second thing I noticed was the discrepancies that sneaked up on us. As Rangan observes, these range from Vidya meticulously pronouncing “entertainment” to the anachronisms in the film—Tamil cinema didn’t have jowly, paunchy heros in the ‘80’s, that was the 70’s; the fact that the backdrop is Chennai doesn’t seem to even be credible; the male servant’s forehead mark looked a tad too perfect, etc. Baradwaj Rangan gets it completely right when he says that the  “problem with [the movie] isn’t that it speaks one language while telling a story in another, but that it isn’t able to make up its mind about where it belongs.” Yes, dear Bollywood, if you are going to speak in the voice of the Other, it is necessary that you locate the Other first. Tamil cinema, although misogynistic, although patronizingly anti-feminist, is a complex phenomenon. It does not boil down to nakka mukka or why this kolaveri di, even though those are completely legitimate as ways of diversifying the subaltern experience (even if they land up being misogynistic). Contextualize and set up the story accurately first; remember you are making or viewing a film that other north Indians will see as being representative of South India. The film is not separate from its premise just like the character cannot be free of its reliance on Siluku’s story. In short, there was little to reflect the working (wo)man that Tamil cinema took pride in focusing on. If MGR’s time was that of the neo-nativist cinema (as Ashis Nandy claims) where the village hero “tamed” the heroine from the city (socialism triumphing over capitalism), the 80’s was the time when Kamal was absolutely sparkling in his meaty “character” roles and Suhasini played the character who decided to live without a man in her life (Manathil Urudhi Vendum). I was born in that decade, so a lot of what I gleaned from cinema is firmly lodged in my brain because I grew up watching Siluku in both “item” roles (nethy rathiri yamma) as well as the more significant roles (Alaigal oivathillai). It was hard for me, as I sat through the movie, to imagine that this was the Madras of the ‘80’s. Again, like Rangan, I am not saying this is a prerequisite, but suspension of disbelief has to be earned, not merely carried on the shoulders of the Vidya Balan.

And now I must come to the subject of the male gaze. The movie was about the woman who heralded the age of “item” songs in Tamil cinema, proving that they were essential to the success of the film. She was manipulated and she manipulated in return, the movie argues. Okay, that’s fine. But virtually every scene has the heroine writhing in a pose and attire that is extremely titillating. I choose not to describe her not because I don’t see tight clothes as being offensive the way some others consider it: “oh why is she so fat and wearing ridiculous clothes.” In fact, I am completely with the fat acceptance movement and am beginning to find Health at Every Size® interesting.  I also do not subscribe to popular ideas of what a female body is entitled to look like on screen or off screen. However, why must the male gaze be replicated in an effort to be self-reflexive, or even worse, disgustedly critical of itself? Why reproduce the very problem that is sought to be reflected on, if not remedied? If Siluku was exploited by the very men who idolized her (and let me add here that it was not just the working class but also the holier-than-thou middle class that (secretly) did that, as Vidya implies, during the award acceptance scene), then why must she be exploited again, even after she is dead? (The biggest tragedy of her life came after she died, my husband told me while we were driving back). If the female body is not up for auction, as the film may argue, one could argue that the tragedy resulting out of this bargain is not for sale either. Siluku, I think, deserved for her story to be told in a more straightforward manner. While tragedy always brings the potential for exploitation in the form of retelling or “tribute,” this impulse must be resisted beyond a point. The story must show, not tell, and in this respect, it really failed for me. I saw the story of a star in the film, but it was not Siluku Smitha who was multi-dimensional. All around me I saw men (and women) enjoying the spectacle of the woman being gazed at, the woman who was taught to orchestrate enjoyment at being seen, but very few people seemed to be seeing through this artificiality. Remember, the actress in a film like this is trying to emulate the woman who herself was trying to act (believably) like she enjoyed being leered at. Did Silk the person really enjoy being the object of desire, unequivocally, at all times, or was that what she did for survival? We don’t know for sure. Think about it.  Or read it about it. Or ask Vinu Chakravarthy.

But please, Vidya, like “today’s girls,” Silk was not “in command of her life and sexuality.” I am not sure any actresses are, since the gaze is constantly at work. If not the male gaze, then the gaze of the ungendered generic viewer (if that is possible at all) is always asking, always searching for more. At some level, an actor, particularly a female one, is constantly acting out what others perceive as desirable or worthy of being seen.  I am okay if Vidya opines that  Siluku was “bindas.” It does seem that she was a “rebel.” In fact, there was something resembling the instance that Paul Zacharia describes, when Silk refused to stand up when Sivaji Ganesan entered the room. In fact, he even goes on to say that Silk the “camera-creature had a sociological dimension beyond the body they asked her to reveal.”  I wanted to see that come through in the film–that three dimensionality! Also, once again, Paul Zacharia’s nuanced written analysis stayed with me in a way that was more positive than the film itself.

In the movie, there is a scene when Silk is starting out as an item girl and she says “this acting is not for me,” whereas, that couldn’t be far from the truth. Siluku wanted meaningful roles; who wouldn’t? To be taken seriously in an arena where the narrative is primarily hero-centric (see Feminist Frequency, Sociological Images, or just google women in cinema for more discussions on the subject) requires you to be subversive in some measure. Zacharia touches on this. Siluku tried her hand at dancing numbers but she was stunning, just stunning, in both Alaigal Oivathallai and Moonram Pirai. These are just popular examples; there are more if you are a serious viewer of Tamil cinema. Even if I didn’t know a thing about Siluku the person, I did know from my reading that her production efforts failed and soon after, she committed suicide. (There was also some “love failure” which I don’t know the details of). This demonstrates that she was invested in the artistic process. Unlike this review, which admits that Silk was a creation of the male gaze, I do not think of this movie was “liberating” or a “feminist critique,” even though Ektaa Kapoor was the brain behind the idea, and even though, while Balan says the movie only being “inspired” by Silk, Ektaa has made it clear that this is a biopic, which is a little more than “inspiration” and moves into the realm of creative nonfiction within cinema. A feminist critique requires not only a strong female cast and crew but also a feminist aesthetic and sensibility. If the job of an actress is to be heard by primarily being viewed (which is a given in cinema since it is primarily about the viewing experience, after all), then the least that can be offered to her in terms of resistance is a space that is free of the oppressive nature of the male gaze. I did read that Vidya was uncomfortable with the wardrobe when told about it, but did it all the same because it is a powerful role. Yes, it IS a powerful role, albeit one with great responsibility. The responsibility to create a character that isn’t just a “sex symbol” even if that is all she seemed to be on screen. What is the point of merely creating a “sex symbol” to describe another “sex symbol?” Of course, I do concede that Vidya, as a seasoned actress, goes over and beyond the screenplay in whatever way she can, because is an artist. And that comes through in a scene like the one where she is almost forced into shooting a porn movie, because it is there that we are repulsed by how the director sweet-talks her and slips a drug in her coffee. It is also there that we see the character come alive—she sees reflections of herself in puddles and in mirrors and sees what she has chosen to create and realizes that she has lost control over her creative expression. She can no longer create what she wants because the reins are not longer in her hands; they are in the hands of the men who fashioned her. That, in addition to the implication that the hallucination-causing drugs combined with alcohol and her sleeping pills caused her death really stayed with me. I wished that kind of trouble had been taken to show her ascent in the movie; what we get instead are dance numbers and a dance-off with “Shakeela.”

I’m not saying that all films must be committed to a critique of patriarchal/ male hegemonic control. But if reviewers are going to throw that idea around (since I haven’t read the makers or actors use the words “feminist critique”), the least I can do is point out that this is problematic or even dangerous territory. I think The Dirty Picture is an interesting film, with much to offer, and even if it is aiming for anything other than “entertainment, entertainment, entertainment,” it shouldn’t be construed as a revolutionary feminist critique, regardless of how good-natured its intentions may be.

Cross posted on my blog.