Sita, silhouetted against a fiery orange window in a green sari, is about to embrace Radha, her lover (image 1). Against their family’s morals and their country’s traditions, these women are in love. Fire, an Indian film by Mehta Deepa, is a film which deals with the topic of lesbianism in India, and the dominance of males over females. Aesthetically, Fire has a second layer of meaning conveyed through the use of symbolic imagery, light, and colour. This paper will analyze the symbolic emblems, lighting techniques, and colour choices which enhance the major themes in this film.
Deepa Mehta’s Fire uses a lesbian relationship to challenge the idea of women in India being undermined, sexually constrained, and emotionally repressed, especially in their arranged marriages. Sita and Radha are sisters-in-law, living within a joint family in New Delhi. Radha is married to Ashok, who, with the help of Radha, Sita, and the servant Mundu, runs a take out-food business. Sita is married to Ashok’s brother Jatin, who runs a family business video-rental shop1. Both marriages suffer as neither of the husbands devote enough passion and emotion to their wives.2 Ashok refuses to have a sexual relationship with Radha after finding out that she is infertile, he uses this as an opportunity to make a vow of Grandhian celibacy3, in which he tests his ability to resist his wife sexually by lying next to her and resisting sexual desires. He calls this her “duty to him as his wife”, leaving Radha emotionally and sexually suppressed. Sita, who has just married Jatin, is in a similarly dispassionate relationship as Jatin is in love with an Asian woman and agreed to marry Sita only for the purpose of pleasing Biji and his family. As the film progresses, Si...
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...r, with investigation into the visual elements of this film, meanings of this film expand beyond the literal dialog and -- existing in the film.
Works Cited
Desai, Jigna. 2004. “Homo on the Range: Queering Postcoloniality and Globalization in Deepa Mehta’s Fire,” inBeyond Bollywood. New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 160.
Perterson, L.K., & Cullen, Cheryl. 2000. “Hindu symbolism and colour meanings dominate Indian culture and society,” in Global Graphics: Gloucester, Massachusetts:Rockpoint Publishers, pp.175-176.
Stonjanova, Christina. 2010. “Beyond Tradition and Modernity: The Transnational Universe of Deepa Mehta,” in Brenda Austin-Smith & George Melnyk, Canadian Woman Filmakers:The Genered Screen. Ontario, Canada: Canada Council for Fine Arts, pp 217.
Colmhogan, Patrick. 2008. Understanding Indian Movies. Austin, Texus: University of Texas Press
Love, partnership and commitment have been the subjects of a multitude of novels, plays poems, movies and great works of art. Throughout these works, the image of love and commitment in love have taken many different forms. Today, we easily recognize symbols of commitment in love to be items such as hearts, wedding bands, roses, etc. However, in literature, especially, more abstract and creative symbols of commitment to a loved one are often present. Additionally, the symbols of devotion that exist in literature do not always involve romantic love as opposed to many movies, painting and sculptures. For example, in the short story, “Saving Sourdi” by May-Lee Chai, symbols of loyalty to a loved one manifest between two sisters. In opposition to symbols of loyalty existing in a platonic manner as it does in “Saving Sourdi,” Peter Meinke’s “The Cranes,” provides symbols of commitment in an amorous relationship.
This analysis will explore these cinematic techniques employed by Pontecorvo within a short sequence and examine their effects on our understanding of the issues and themes raised within the film.
Film making has gone through quite the substantial change since it’s initial coining just before the turn of the 19th century, and one would tend argue that the largest amount of this change has come quite recently or more so in the latter part of film’s history as a whole. One of the more prominent changes having taken place being the role of women in film. Once upon a time having a very set role in the industry, such as editing for example. To mention briefly the likes of Dede Allen, Verna Fields, Thelma Schoonmaker and so forth. Our female counterparts now occupy virtually every aspect of the film making industry that males do; and in many instances excel past us. Quite clearly this change has taken place behind the lens, but has it taken
Jacquelyin Kilpatrick , Celluloid Indians. Native Americans and Film. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1999
The symbolism of the Red Indian further suggests a desire for freedom from restriction. The Red Indian represents a freedom from restricti...
Arnheim’s body of theory suggests that the necessity of human intervention to implement plot, tropes, and culturally legible symbols raises a film to a higher level than a mere copy of reality, and that this interpretation and expression of meaning is “a question of feeling” or intuition on the part of the filmmaker. (“Film Theory and Criticism” 283) One consequence of effective directorial intervention is that differences in speed, stops and starts, and what would otherwise be jarring gaps in continuity can be accepted by viewers, because if the essentials of reality are present, th...
Just about everyone can voice their opinions on a film that viewed as we all do after leaving the theatre. It may be found to be useful when a friend or individual is interested in seeing the film themselves. However, I believe the only way that you could understand a film is by analyzing the film beyond the average person. When one begins to analyze they begin to develop an understanding of the film and may grow to love the film. The director Hitchcock is a fairly well known director. He has directed many different films from Vertigo to Psycho that are found to be popular with the viewers. In this paper I am going to analyze certain elements that spoke out to me during the film. Those elements that spoke to me the most during the film was the lighting techniques, camera movement, and symbols.
Do the Right Thing is a dramatic comedic film that was directed by Spike Lee. The movie was released in 1989. Lee served in three capacities for the film: writer, director and producer of the movie, Ernest Dickenson was the cinematographer and Barry Alexander Brown was the film’s editor. For this film, Lee garnered together some notable actors and actresses, including Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Rosie Perez, Samuel L. Jackson, John Tuturro and Martin Lawrence. The setting of the movie is in Bedford-Stuyvesant; which is a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. This particular neighborhood is made up of several ethnic groups that include African Americas, Italians, Koreans, and Puerto Ricans. The movie takes place on a particularly hot day during the summer time. The extreme heat causes tensions between the different races in the neighborhood. In this paper, I will attempt to show how mise-en-scène, camera work, editing, and sound are used to convey “explicit” and “implicit” meaning in one scene in Do the Right Thing.
...the predominant theme of disorientation and lack of understanding throughout the film. The audience is never clear of if the scene happening is authentic or if there is a false reality.
Postmodernism is fully committed to accommodating the voices of the eccentric and the marginalized. Herein lays the close connection between feminism and postmodernism. The women writer manipulates stances that critique domination and thus lays bare the multivocal worlds of different societies and different cultures. Indian women writers assert that a Feminist theory should be explicitly historical, attuned to the cultural specificity of different societies and periods and to different groups within societies and periods. They wish to analyse the workings of patriarchy in all its manifestations, desire to think in terms of pluralities and diversities rather than unities and universals and articulate ways of thinking about gender without simply reversing the old hierarchies or confirming them.
The multiple diasporic elements she refers to, take her to a unique zenith of diasporic emplacement and are successful in creating the identity, which she has always tried locating in various migrant situations and circumstances. She symbolizes the contemporary group of writers who are concerned with crossing over from one culture to another without compromising either, negotiating new borders, and reconstructing themselves. “I have in me these worlds that need to be brought together- very crudely, India and America- and sometimes I feel that I keep treading the edge of the fault line in between,” states Meena Alexander in Yellow Light: The Flowering of Asian American Arts (“Meena Alexander” 84). ‘Fault line’, which is the central metaphor in Alexander’s work, draws upon her history of travel in order to display the link between movement and identity or ‘self’. For Meena Alexander’s migrant narrative, language offers a home. The various terrains Alexander has shifted through resonate in her writing, allowing her works to explore the position of the immigrant, marginalized subject. The author continues to explore the notion of creating a life in her writing. She asks what is definitely the most recurring and poignant question in all immigrant literatures: “Can I become just what I want? So is this the land of opportunity, the America of dreams?” (Fault Lines
Rao, S. (2007). The globalization of bollywood: An ethnography of non-elite audiences in india. The communication Review, 10(1), 57-76. doi: 10.1080/10714420601168491
The tragedy in the novels of middle phase rises from the intimate interactions of the expatriate women with the Indians in post – independence era since there is no more any shielding protection of the colonial officialdom of British imperialism. The brutal rape of Lee, the seduction of Olivia and her step – granddaughter are some symbolic portrayals of the disparity between the romantic illusions that in turn could provide them nothing but sexuality betrayal and falsehood. In portraying the subjugation of the European women by Indian lover’s husbands or the spiritual gurus Jhabvala hints at the moral and spiritual degradation in modern India. The search of the expatriate women for love beauty or spirituality ends in their victimisation at the hands of male rapacity and they are in a predicament of self – destructive commitments or flight for survival.
One thing that sets this film apart from other Bollywood films is that it deals with taboo issues in its portrayal of Uncle Tej’s pedophilia. This is seen from the point of view of his pat victim, Ria. The audience is not told explicitly what is occurring, but through the use of shots of Ria appearing distressed followed by shots of Tej, it becomes apparent that something sinister is happening. This particular storyline climaxes with Ria’s public accusation...
This essay focuses on the theme of forbidden love, The God of Small Things written by Arundhati Roy. This novel explores love and how love can’t be ignored when confronted with social boundaries. The novel examines how conventional society seeks to destroy true love as this novel is constantly connected to loss, death and sadness. This essay will explore the theme of forbidden love, by discussing and analysing Ammu and Velutha's love that is forbidden because of the ‘Love Laws’ in relation to the caste system which results in Velutha’s death. It is evident that forbidden love negatively impacts and influences other characters, such as Estha and Rahel, which results in Estha and Rahel’s incestuous encounter.