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2007, 2009, adam's rib, Anushka Shetty, Arundhati, Mumaith Khan, Mysamma IPS, Sayaji Shinde, Sonu Sood, Telugu
[Content Note: this post contains discussion of rape]
In my experience, Indian cinema tends to be really hero-centric. Although this is starting to change in Bollywood, it still holds true in the Tamil and Telugu film industries, where the overwhelming majority of mainstream films are built around and designed to showcase the hero’s persona. Occasionally, however, heroine-centric films do appear. Two of these that I’ve seen are Mysamma IPS (2007) and Arundhati (2009), and what these two films have in common suggests an implicit message about what is (or should be) considered most important to women.
Mysamma IPS is a decidedly B-movie starring the popular ‘item girl’ Mumaith Khan. In the movie, Mumaith plays Mysamma, a police officer in Hyderabad who turns into a pleather-clad vigilante to dispense with those who have committed sexual assaults and rapes but have evaded conventional justice. She also has a long-term plan to destroy a corrupt politician, played by Sayaji Shinde, who was once married to Mysamma’s beloved older sister, but prostituted her for his own political gain, then attempted to sexually assault the young Mysamma, and caused the sister’s gruesome death. Mysamma is brutally beaten and tortured by the politician’s henchmen, and buried alive. Following a rousing temple song that links Mysamma the police officer with the goddess Maisamma, Mysamma punches her way out of her grave and defeats the politician and his henchmen in a fight scene with so much fake blood and bad special effects that it descends – or maybe ascends – into Monty Python territory.
The other heroine-centric film I’ve seen is Arundhati, starring Anushka Shetty. This movie is more mainstream than Mysamma IPS, and is in fact one of the highest grossing Telugu films of all time. In it, Anushka plays Arundhati, who discovers on the eve of her wedding that she is the reincarnation of her great-grandmother Arundhati (also called Jejamma), daughter of the Raja of Gadwal. Jejamma’s brother-in-law Pasupathi, played by Sonu Sood, raped and killed her dance instructor, and as a result her sister committed suicide, so Jejamma ordered him beaten and dragged out of the kingdom by a horse. However, Pasupathi does not die but is found by a group of aghoras from whom he learns dark magic, and he returns on the eve of Jejamma’s wedding to get his revenge by raping and killing her. Jejamma manages to trap Pasupathi and has him entombed alive and restrained by protective spells. Jejamma then goes looking for a way to finally defeat Pasupathi and learns that she must be reborn before she can achieve this, so she submits to a grusome death. In the present, Pasupathi has managed to escape his tomb and is attempting to get his revenge on Arundhati/Jejamma by – you guessed it – raping and killing her. Arundhati discovers that a dagger was made out of her great-grandmother’s bones and, soaking it in her own blood to activate its powers, she uses it to finally kill Pasupathi.
What strikes me about these two movies, in addition to the fact that they both have heroines motivated in part by the death of a beloved older sister, is that in both of them the villain is a rapist. Telugu movie villains are frequently shown mistreating women, but it tends to be presented as just another aspect of their badness. However, in Mysamma IPS and Arundhati rape is the ‘Big Bad’. Mysamma IPS could have just as easily been a movie about a vigilante fighting against corrupt politicians. Arundhati could have just as easily been a movie about a princess fighting against an evil prince who wants to usurp her throne. But they weren’t. Personally, I find it interesting to think about the message that is implied by these movies as a result, about what is seen as important to men (social justice, political power) versus what is seen as important to women (sexual gatekeeping).
In these movies rape is presented as the worst thing that could possibly happen to a woman – there is no surviving it, there is no recovery from it. In fact, Pasupathi taunts Arundhati with this very thing, saying to her, “A woman considers chastity more than her life, right?” (Eerily similar to something Raj tells Simran in the first half of DDLJ, but let’s not go there today). It’s not that I’m not happy to see heroine-centric Telugu movies, especially movies where the heroine’s role is action-oriented, because I am. I’ll just be happier when the movies are about, as I mentioned, a female police officer who turns vigilante to take down corrupt politicians, or a princess who battles against an evil male relative who is trying to usurp her throne – because those movies will reflect that issues such as social justice or political power are just as important to women as they are to men, and that a woman’s area of concern goes beyond mere sexual gatekeeping.
This post was written as part of Adam’s Rib, a month devoted to women in Indian cinema, and a Totally Filmi initiative. For more Adam’s Rib posts please visit the Delicious page.
Thanks for another thought-provoking read! As a male, I’d like to offer a possible counterpoint. I understand your point, that “a woman’s area of concern goes beyond mere sexual gatekeeping” and there can be no arguing against that. But, given the frequency with which rape is trivialised in Indian films, a case can be made for saying that films which are built around “sisters doing it for themselves” in exacting justice of sorts against rapists is a good thing. I flinch every time I hear the hero or his supporting actors joke about rape in Hindi films, and so I think that films which treat rape as the repugnant evil that is are to be celebrated. Especially since the point is often made that rape is not primarily about sex but about power. So these films show women taking back the power, and that can’t be a bad thing.
The films may be guilty of a patriarchal hyperbole in saying that “there’s no surviving, nor recovery from it”, but surely they are not too far wrong in saying that on a personal level “rape is the worst thing that could happen to a woman”? Films, particularly mainstream films, work best when they have a simple message, I would think, and the personal, individual tragedy of a rape is likely to be an easier sell to the audience than the broader socio-political concerns you offer (quite correctly) as being of equal importance to both men and women. The film career of Nandita Das serves to illustrate this – many of her films touch on those broader issues, but those that do were none of them commercially mainstream films, so the audience for their message was much smaller. Perhaps films like these you’ve reviewed could be viewed as a start, opening the door to heroine-centric films with a wider range of themse, by acclimatising the audience to very idea of women taking control of their own destinies?
Thanks for your thoughtful (as always!) comment, StuartNZ. That these movies treat rape as repugnant and show the heroines exacting justice against rapists is of course a good thing (I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise!) but I don’t think it’s good enough – there’s still plenty of room to improve, and to call for better heroine-centric films from the Telugu film industry. I certainly hope that these movies will act as a gateway to heroine-centric films with a wider range of themes.
WRT the second half of your comment, I didn’t make it clear in my post, but in these movies rape is explicitly related to a woman’s “honour” – when a woman is raped she loses her “honour” and, it’s implied, her life is ruined forever, worthless. That’s what I meant about rape being presented as the worst thing that could happen to a woman – and in that context I definitely think it’s a terrible message to send. Rape is horrible, but it shouldn’t render a woman’s life worthless.
” in these movies rape is explicitly related to a woman’s “honour” – when a woman is raped she loses her “honour” and, it’s implied, her life is ruined forever, worthless.” Ah, well that’s quite simply indefensible, although sadly unsurprising. Actually, the more I read that phrase, the angrier it makes me, so I’ll stop now. Thanks for the clarification!
All I can say is…WORD. Such an important point and I’m so glad you made it. Awhile ago I was thinking about films in which women have very active arcs, and I realized how many of even those are driven by revenge or retaliation of some kind. This bothered me for many of the reasons you mention and also because it still ties women and their actions and decisions to a perception and portrayal of victimhood (at worst, or perhaps mere reactiveness at best, though I really don’t think it’s just reacting most of the time). Women acting sheerly out of their own ambition or drive that comes from within them, rather than in response to something that has been achieved or perpetrated by someone else (almost always male, too), was harder to find than I thought. There are such films, of course – Naach is one of my favorite examples – but they’re an even smaller subset of the already lesser-in-number “women seriously do some stuff” films.
“Women acting sheerly out of their own ambition or drive that comes from within them, rather than in response to something that has been achieved or perpetrated by someone else (almost always male, too), was harder to find than I thought”
Such a rarity is what I would have expected of films from India, though. Indeed, such films would have been hard to find in Western cinema a hundred years ago, too. As Indian society expands the options available to women, as Indian women seize those opportunities, and as Indian men begin to accept those changes, I would hope to see more of such films appear. In the meantime, the truly progressive films will surely continue to be small, niche-marketed creations, and thus likely to be hard to find outside of India. Which, for me, makes the role of more commercially accessible films like these important, despite their flaws and limitations.
anushka is good actor and mumaith khan is a item girl this compare is waste and arundhati is top 5 movie in telugu