Gendered Modernity and Indian Cinema: The Women in Satyajit Ray’s Films

133 Pages·2021·7.661 MB·English

by  Devapriya Sanyal

Gendered Modernity and Indian Cinema
This book analyses the role of women in the films of one of the leading
filmmakers of the “Third World” in the 1950s, Satyajit Ray, a national icon
in filmmaking in India.
Thebookexplorestheportrayalofwomeninthecontextofthecreationof
national culture after India became independent. Gender issues were very
important to India under Jawaharlal Nehru in the 1950s, with the enactment
of inheritance and divorce laws. Ray’s portrayal of women in his films
anticipatesmuchofthetheorizingoflatter-dayfeminism.Thisbookanalyses
cinematic textswith special reference to the women characters using feminist
film theory and representation along with a study of the socio-political and
economic conditions pertinent to the times – both relevant to the film’s
making and its setting. The primary texts studied are films spanning over
fourdecadesfrom PatherPanchali (1955)to hislast trilogyand arebased on
a categorization of the broad feminine “types” represented in the films –
based on the socio-political situations in which they are placed – and their
relationshipswiththeothercharacterspresent.Ray’sportrayalofwomenhas
an enormous bearing on our understanding of how modern India evolved in
the Nehru era and after, and this book explores just that: the place of the
woman as it is and should be in ayoung nation encumbered by patriarchy.
Gendered Modernity and Indian Cinemawill be of interest to academics in
the field of World cinema, Indian and Bengali cinema and Film Studies, as
well as Gender Studies and South Asian culture and society.
Devapriya Sanyal is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Women’s Studies,
JawaharlalNehruUniversity,India,andtheIndianCouncilofSocialScience
Research.
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Gendered Modernity and Indian Cinema
The Women in Satyajit Ray’s Films
Devapriya Sanyal
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Gendered Modernity and Indian
Cinema
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The Women in Satyajit Ray s Films
Devapriya Sanyal
Firstpublished2022
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Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction: Satyajit Ray: nation, modernity, and gender 1
1 Searching for antecedents: Feminine portrayals in literature and
cinema 15
2 The receding mother figure: Pather Panchali (Sarbojaya), Devi
(Doyamoyee), Kanchenjhunga (Anima and Labanya), Aranyer
Din Ratri (Joya) 30
3 Transgressors: Charulata (Charulata), Ghare Baire (Bimala),
Pikoo (Seema) 44
4 Moral beacons: Nayak (Aditi), Aranyer Din Ratri (Aparna),
Seemabaddha (Tutul) 57
5 The new woman: Mahanagar (Arati), “Samapti” (Mrinmoyee),
Kanchenjunga (Monisha), Kapurush (Karuna) 72
6 The amoral woman: Pratidwandi (Sutapa) Jana Aranya (Kauna
and the prostitutes) 86
7 Women on the periphery: Apur Sansar (Aparna), Abhijan
(Gulabi and Neeli), Ashani Sanket (Ananga), Shatranj ke Khiladi
(the wives), and the last trilogy 98
Conclusion: Satyajit Ray and Indian art cinema: the issue of agency 111
Index 120
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank my parents, especially my mother for being there for me
always and for her unflinching support and courage. I also thank other
family members for their love, their unstinting belief in me and for introducing
me to the world of Satyajit Ray’s cinema.
I am grateful to M.K. Raghavendra for his invaluable feedback and com-
ments on this manuscript. The book in its present form owes a lot to him.
I would also like to thank Gulam Rasool, librarian at the School of Arts
and Aesthetics, JNU for allowing me access to the resources and for giving
me a space to work in which this book germinated and most specially for
giving me much needed breaks by talking about myriad things that kept me
going.
Goutam Chatterjee deserves a special mention for his generosity all these
years in letting me access the books at the Nandan Film Library, Calcutta,
and his advice on Ray’s cinema, as also do the staff at the library.
I wish to thank my teacher at the Centre for English Studies, JNU,
Makarand Paranjape, who taught us Film and Literature in my second
semesterofMastersatJNUandwhomadefilmwatchingsomuchmorefun.
I would also like to thank Lata Singh, Navaneetha Mokkil, and Mallarika
Sinha Roy of the Centre for Women’s Studies, JNU, whose various courses
on Gender helped me understand my own sex better. Their contributions to
my understanding of women’s issues is substantial and invaluable and helped
much in framing my ideas for this book.
I would like to thank Dorothea Schaefterof Routledge, UK, who believed
in the project and accepted it for publication. I am grateful for her support.
A special word of thanks goes to Alexandra DeBruw, who very patiently
answered all my questions.
And lastly, I thank my brother Devaditya for always accompanying me
every year during the puja holidays in watching Ray’s Sonar Kella and Joy
Baba Felunath, unfailingly.
Introduction
Satyajit Ray: nation, modernity, and gender
Satyajit Ray and his background
This book is dedicated to aspects of Satyajit Ray’s films and their portrayals
of women. Ray was an auteur, a filmmaker with apersonal vision to offer; it
would evidently be appropriate to begin with him as a person, then move on
to his times. Ray’s training in the Indian ways of thinking about art and
culturewaslargelyduetohisbhadralok(respectablemiddle-class)upbringing
in the Ray and later Das households – the illustrious family into which he
was born at 100 Garpar Road and, later, the south Kolkata home of his
mother to which the family would shift after the death of his father (Robinson
2004: 34). Both the families were torchbearers of the Brahmo Samaj that
went on to have an impact on the rest of Hindu society. He attended the
Presidency College for his undergraduate studies and later went to Viswa
Bharati University at Shantiniketan to study fine arts at the behest of his
mother and family friend Rabindranath Tagore. However, he did not com-
plete his degree but left at the end of two-and-a-half years, returning to
Kolkatawhere he took up a job at D.J. Keymer, a British advertising agency.
On a tour of various places in India that boasted of artistic wonders, Ray
rediscovered the link to his Indian roots; he writes about this in My Years
with Apu, “Along with three friends, I visited the more important places of
artistic interest in India. Ajanta, Ellora and Khajuraho were eye-openers”
(Ray 1994: 7) There is a suggestion in his writing that “India” came to Ray
later,since he had been more quicklydrawn to Hollywood films and Western
music. His training in films, from the very beginning, was based on exposure
to Western notions of cinema – mainly Hollywood. He also later denied any
Indian influences in his filmmaking when he criticised Bengali commercial
cinemabefore his time in abookof essays in 1982 called Bishay Chalachitra
(translated and published in 2005 as Speaking of Films) although he had
some kindwords for a few Bengali comedies of the 1950s – that nonetheless
didnothaveanyimpactonhisbrandoffilmmaking.In1948hewouldgoon
to found the Calcutta Film Society along with film critic Chidananda Das
Gupta, Harisadhan Dasgupta, and a few other like-minded people, which
brought world cinema to Indian audiences, still an esoteric experience for
DOI: 10.4324/9781003196389-1