When female athlete Pinki Pramanik
was arrested for 'rape', an MMS of the gold medallist undergoing a
gender test went viral, and Eastern Railways stripped her of her job. A
leading fortnightly wondered then "if anyone has bought movie rights to
this story?"
When Santhi Soundarajan, another female athlete stripped of her laurels, was showing the hands that held gold medals peeling from her current job as a daily wage earner at a brick kiln, many writers itched to script a Bollywood saga. And some day, theatres might screen a film on Caster Semenya, the South African who won gold, was subjected to sex tests because she ran 'too fast', debarred, then allowed to run in the London Olympics where she bagged silver.
These incidences of the unfair treatment of sportswomen who've shown the 'might' of a man - and the reactions to the incidents - go to show that high-testosterone drama is integral to any exploration of Sexual Identity Crisis and so, bound to inspire good cinema. It happened with Boys Don't Cry (1999) and Osama (2003), and it's happening with Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish.
Hollywood's Kimberly Pierce had dramatised the life of Teena Brandon, a biologically born female who identified as man, intersexed, fell for a woman, only to be brutally raped, assaulted and killed by her male friends. Essaying 'Brandon Teena' won debutant Hillary Swank the Oscar for Best Actress. Inspirational?
Perhaps, for aspiring actors who can learn from Swank's preparation for the role. For a month she dressed and lived like Brandon, wrapping her chest in tension bandges and putting socks down the front of her pants.
Osama was the first movie out of Afghanistan since Taliban banned filmmaking in 1996. Director Siddiq Barmak admitted it was "at least partially inspired" by a girl "who disguised herself as a boy to attend school". Talibani Kabul was especially repressive to those born with XX chromosomes: Women could not expose any part of their body, go outdoors unescorted or work outside home. This made survival impossible for a family comprising of a young girl, her mother who'd lost her husband, brother and father to Soviet invasions, and the grandmother.
The pre-teen child is dressed as a boy and sent to work, despite fears of death if the guise is revealed. The masquerade gets tough when the regime forces every boy to attend a madrassa and take military training. Osama can brave the boys who pick on her but how can she join the ablution sessions, or hide her menstruation? Before long she's discovered - but unlike western journalists who're put to death, Osama's married off to the 'considerate' maulvi with three wives!
Far from being incidental, the name Osama was chosen to describe the terror women felt. From the opening - where policemen dispel burqa-clad widows - to the finale where Osama's husband conducts the ablution he taught boys to practise after sleeping with their wives, it's all about tyranny unleashed by a society where gender made women vulnerable.
While Pierce and Barmak took care not to "mythologise" their films, Rituparno Ghosh builds the near-autobiographical Chitrangada on Tagore's use of mythology. Tagore had tweaked a nugget from the Mahabharat that followed Arjun to Manipur where the king had raised his daughter as a son. The Amazonian princess lost her heart to Arjun and pleaded with Madan, the god of love, to transform her into a seductress. When her wish comes true, Arjun is seduced but no one recognises Chitrangada in her silk and perfume.
While Tagore explored the relation between inner and outer beauty, Rituparno discovers a nuanced subtext that he relates to - and transforms Cupid into a plastic surgeon, perhaps a psychoanalyst. As the gay choreo-grapher Rudra, he is passionately drawn to junkie percussionist Partho and wants to tie him down with a family. But gay Indians are not permitted to adopt. So Rudra decides to become a woman and undergoes therapy, hormone treatment, breast implant and vaginal reconstruction. How does this affect his dance? And does his lover want a 'synthetic' woman when naturals are around in plenty?
But when you love someone, you set him free, not chain him down. So reborn Rudra remains committed to his own identity - a 'flawed' man who doesn't need to be a 'flawed' woman. His parents too realise that non-normative identity is also an identity, and accept Rudra the way he was created by god, nature, or chromosomes. This accords a rare human dignity to androgynes who've been so sorely treated by society.
Chitrangada is not prey to humiliation perhaps because, unlike Brandon Teena or Osama, Rudra's split identity isn't a 'crisis' for Rituparno: "It's a crisis for people who see hetero-sexuality as inevitable. Anything outside is aberration. It may not be a mainstream identity but why should that be 'crisis'?"
Chitrangada, then, celebrates gender fluidity. If Tagore had initiated a disguised discourse on non-normative gender, its empowerment was given mythical sanction by the Mahabharat which assigned a significant role to Shikhandi, who was a woman before she was reborn a hermaphrodite. Rituparno takes this fluidity a step further. His 'Crowning Wish' is the empowerment of gender choices - even for Pinki, Santhi and Caster, whose medical tests will remain inconclusive since science shows there are no markers, only nuances to tell male from female.
When Santhi Soundarajan, another female athlete stripped of her laurels, was showing the hands that held gold medals peeling from her current job as a daily wage earner at a brick kiln, many writers itched to script a Bollywood saga. And some day, theatres might screen a film on Caster Semenya, the South African who won gold, was subjected to sex tests because she ran 'too fast', debarred, then allowed to run in the London Olympics where she bagged silver.
These incidences of the unfair treatment of sportswomen who've shown the 'might' of a man - and the reactions to the incidents - go to show that high-testosterone drama is integral to any exploration of Sexual Identity Crisis and so, bound to inspire good cinema. It happened with Boys Don't Cry (1999) and Osama (2003), and it's happening with Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish.
Hollywood's Kimberly Pierce had dramatised the life of Teena Brandon, a biologically born female who identified as man, intersexed, fell for a woman, only to be brutally raped, assaulted and killed by her male friends. Essaying 'Brandon Teena' won debutant Hillary Swank the Oscar for Best Actress. Inspirational?
Perhaps, for aspiring actors who can learn from Swank's preparation for the role. For a month she dressed and lived like Brandon, wrapping her chest in tension bandges and putting socks down the front of her pants.
Osama was the first movie out of Afghanistan since Taliban banned filmmaking in 1996. Director Siddiq Barmak admitted it was "at least partially inspired" by a girl "who disguised herself as a boy to attend school". Talibani Kabul was especially repressive to those born with XX chromosomes: Women could not expose any part of their body, go outdoors unescorted or work outside home. This made survival impossible for a family comprising of a young girl, her mother who'd lost her husband, brother and father to Soviet invasions, and the grandmother.
The pre-teen child is dressed as a boy and sent to work, despite fears of death if the guise is revealed. The masquerade gets tough when the regime forces every boy to attend a madrassa and take military training. Osama can brave the boys who pick on her but how can she join the ablution sessions, or hide her menstruation? Before long she's discovered - but unlike western journalists who're put to death, Osama's married off to the 'considerate' maulvi with three wives!
Far from being incidental, the name Osama was chosen to describe the terror women felt. From the opening - where policemen dispel burqa-clad widows - to the finale where Osama's husband conducts the ablution he taught boys to practise after sleeping with their wives, it's all about tyranny unleashed by a society where gender made women vulnerable.
While Pierce and Barmak took care not to "mythologise" their films, Rituparno Ghosh builds the near-autobiographical Chitrangada on Tagore's use of mythology. Tagore had tweaked a nugget from the Mahabharat that followed Arjun to Manipur where the king had raised his daughter as a son. The Amazonian princess lost her heart to Arjun and pleaded with Madan, the god of love, to transform her into a seductress. When her wish comes true, Arjun is seduced but no one recognises Chitrangada in her silk and perfume.
While Tagore explored the relation between inner and outer beauty, Rituparno discovers a nuanced subtext that he relates to - and transforms Cupid into a plastic surgeon, perhaps a psychoanalyst. As the gay choreo-grapher Rudra, he is passionately drawn to junkie percussionist Partho and wants to tie him down with a family. But gay Indians are not permitted to adopt. So Rudra decides to become a woman and undergoes therapy, hormone treatment, breast implant and vaginal reconstruction. How does this affect his dance? And does his lover want a 'synthetic' woman when naturals are around in plenty?
But when you love someone, you set him free, not chain him down. So reborn Rudra remains committed to his own identity - a 'flawed' man who doesn't need to be a 'flawed' woman. His parents too realise that non-normative identity is also an identity, and accept Rudra the way he was created by god, nature, or chromosomes. This accords a rare human dignity to androgynes who've been so sorely treated by society.
Chitrangada is not prey to humiliation perhaps because, unlike Brandon Teena or Osama, Rudra's split identity isn't a 'crisis' for Rituparno: "It's a crisis for people who see hetero-sexuality as inevitable. Anything outside is aberration. It may not be a mainstream identity but why should that be 'crisis'?"
Chitrangada, then, celebrates gender fluidity. If Tagore had initiated a disguised discourse on non-normative gender, its empowerment was given mythical sanction by the Mahabharat which assigned a significant role to Shikhandi, who was a woman before she was reborn a hermaphrodite. Rituparno takes this fluidity a step further. His 'Crowning Wish' is the empowerment of gender choices - even for Pinki, Santhi and Caster, whose medical tests will remain inconclusive since science shows there are no markers, only nuances to tell male from female.
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