Portrait of An Artist as a Young Drag Queen: Art as Transgendering in Natrang

Its Judith Butler meets Anand Yadav. Recently released Marathi film `Natrang’, which is based on a novel by the noted Marathi novelist Anand Yadav, is a moving account of Guna a young moustache twirling peasant who dreams of making it big in tamasha- a traditional folk multimedia comprising of erotic songs and dances. He is an aspiring artist who dreams of playing a King in tamasha and ends up as a Queen. Economic and circumstances force him to play the role of Nachya, a dancing drag queen in tamasha and thus face the social stigmatization, humiliation and sexual abuse.   The Nachya, though is socially humiliated, is crucial for commercial success of tamasha for providing double entendres and homoerotic titillation.

The film depicts the complex power play between gender, art and commerce. The film shows how patriarchy can be as cruel to men as it is to women because it traps people in their genders. His wife and children are harassed and insulted as family of phalkya or drag queen by the villagers. His mistress who loves him refuses to marry Nachya. Precisely at the moment Guna tries to negotiate his double self by narrating the mythical stories of Brihanalla (Arjun in drags) and Mohini (Vishnu as seductress) , he is raped by the Bad Guys. The icon of Nataraj- Shiva as a cosmic dancer (who, incidentally, is also Ardhanarinateshwar- The Lord as Half Woman) is evoked in many places. The film also celebrates the archetypal power of art to transgress all social demarcations and borders including those of gender.

The story goes on to show how he persists in his art even after his family and friends leave him and he ends up a successful artist. The focus of the story is on how an artist has to sacrifice and overcome almost everything. Guna sacrifices masculinity one the most prized possession in a patriarchal set up and this is his highest sacrifice. Though women have been doing it for ages, not often is man shown doing the same and that’s where the success of the film lies. Not often do you see something this serious in Marathi cinema which is almost entering its golden period with Kairee (2001), Dhyaas Parva (2001) Shwaas (2004), Devarai (2005) and recently and Natarang (2010) and self-reflexive Harishchandrachi Factory( 2009) based on Dadasaheb Phalke and his first film Raja Harishchandra to name a few ( there are more very good films too). Shwaas and Harishchandrachi Factory were India’s entries for the Academy Awards. Thankfully it is emerging out of its obsession with mindless `comedy’ and clichéd tearjerker.

Atul Kulkarni is already famous as an extremely accomplished actor and he is simply awesome. He depicts his shift from macho to `wimp’ and agonizing ambivalence of being trapped into two genders: one which he can’t leave behind and the other he cant afford to leave with sensitivity. He actually built his physique for the role of macho Guna and lost dozens of kilograms to portray the nachya. The film has excellent performances by Kishore Kadam and Vibhavari Deshpande. Vibhavari’s role as Guna’s wife is particularly well performed. She is indeed an actress to watch out for.

 Lots of credit goes to the director Ravi Jadhav for what he has succeeded in keeping out. He succeeded in keeping out melodrama and inane humor which is a bane of Marathi cinema and keeping the focus on the story and characters with their ambivalences and agonies. He has also succeeded in keeping out didacticism. The film is a simply told tale without any stylistic gimmicks.  The mythical and archetypal allusions are obliquely suggested by references to Brihannala and Mohini.  If they are going to make films like these in Marathi, I don’t think one would want to watch stupid glossy Hindi films or boring Sci-Fi Technomanic Hollywood stuff. I also loved the music by Ajay Atul.

In spite of repeated warnings of not judging the book by its film, the film has aroused my curiosity regarding the novel. I find out if the focus on gender politics is explicit in the novel or it is in Ravi Jadhav’s interpretation. I am not a great admirer of Anand Yadav, but yes I want to have a go at his book. 

Of Gender , Sexuality and other Disasters

One of my friends asked me to chair a session or two at the forthcoming one-day seminar on ` Gay and Lesbian Studies: The Indian Context' and she said that one of my colleagues had turned down the offer because he was ` straight' and ` still interested in women'. Not very funny perhaps.

I agreed to the idea even if it was not my area of academic research. The area of gender and sexuality is probably one of the most interesting area of research probably. If someone stupid would ask me why I am poking my straight nose into this queer area,I would reply by describing a scene from a very very funny and interesting film ` Love and Other Disasters' where Mathew Rhys who plays a gay room mate of Brittany Murphy  and Santiago Cabera go out for dinner as it is `set up' by Murphy  who thinks that Santiago is gay and sweet for Rhys. Rhys character is obviously shocked when Cabera's character tells him that he is straight and not gay. Funnily, Rhys' character asks him ` Straight? Since when?', to which Santiago says that he is straight since he was eight and however hard he tried to develop interest in men, he would end up with women. The humour is largely due to inversion of the usual situation where it is the `straight' who would ask such questions to the gay and it would be the gay person who would give such a reply. The point probably is that heterosexuality too is as much a construct as homosexuality is. So my answer would be same as that of Santiagos but at the same time it would betray an awareness that people are not born straight, they become one.

Some years back, I was not very enthusiastic about feminism and gender studies as I felt that the subject was exhausted and that there was hardly anything new in the area. But that simply was my ignorance and complacence. My reading and understanding of feminism and gender studies was limited to the French theorists I read during my post-graduation days. I had a faint idea of something like `the Third Wave' of Feminism.But only after joining the MS University, thanks to my colleagues like Dr Deeptha Achar, who is an outstanding researcher in this area,  and the DRS SAP programme which organized seminars,colloqiums and workshops on the questions of Identity,  I got interested in the area of gender. We had find scholars like Prof Nivedita Menon and Prof Jasbir Jain in our Dept.

Besides my renewed interest in Wittgenstein enabled me to appreciate the work of theorists like Judith Butler in a new light. Just like Wittgenstein challenged the idea of ` transcendental meaning' which exists independently of speech acts or specific language use, we can challenge the idea of any such transcendental notions of gender existing independently of the specific language-event. That is gender, like most of other things, can hardly exist outside of specific performances, outside of ` language games'. This is obviously not exactly what Butler is talking about, but my way of reading her is from a Wittgensteinien perspective.

I also protest the idea that someone should be punished and discriminated against just because they are  different. Difference is not a disease. There is a huge amount of variation even within the categories perceived as monoliths like ` heterosexual'. No two heterosexuals have same sexual expressions and at the same time even a single heterosexual can express herself or himself differently over a period of time or in different context. Consider what is a state termed euphemistically as `sexual dysfunction'. A person sexually dysfunctional with a particular person may function `adequately' with another. Sexual expression is inseparable from relationships ( which means it is always socially conditioned).It is in such a huge range of variation of sexual expressions, that one should locate the terms such as ` heterosexual' and ` the homosexual'. The binary terms are not really water tight compartments nor are they `homogeneous' or monolithic, There are homosexualities and there are heterosexualities.

In Indian context, homophobia most commonly manifests itself by equating homosexuality with anal penetration. People forget however, that anal sex is not limited to homosexuality but a part of common heterosexual practices too. Besides, patriarchal outlook delimits homosexuality to male sexuality and has no ways of understanding female homosexuality.
( more to come..)

Love and Poetry Thinking about Meerabai

Love is one of the oldest theme of poetry. In fact, poetry is traditionally considered as an expression of love. This is the reason why writing love poetry is one of the most difficult challenge for a poet today. It is so easy to slip into a cliche or be sentimental in your treatment.

Yet there is no denying the fact that some of the greatest poetry in the world is love poetry: Lorca, Neruda, Paz, Meerabai, Kabir and of course Ghalib.

I believe Meera composed the finest love poetry in the world. Why? Because most of the others mentioned above were unable to transcend their masculine consciousness. Masculine love poetry is always tinged with the violence of lust and certain roughness which reduces the beloved to an object of sexual desire. Meera wrote magnificient love poetry without attempting to write like men. and thats what gives her poetry certain delicate elusive beauty which the male poets lack.