1.3 An Accented Cinema
1.3.4 The Accented Style
Naficy has identified various and specific elements of filmmaking that combine together to form an accented style of filmmaking25. Those elements that relate to the topic and research of this dissertation are: accented structures of feeling26, tactile optics, border consciousness/border subjectivity and themes.
Structures of feeling emerge out of the accented filmmaker‟s response to deterritorialisation.
This response travels back and forth along a continuum of what Naficy refers to as dysphoria and euphoria (Naficy, 2001: 26 –27). These feeling structures arise out of a perception of “the homeland as utopian and open and of exile [and sometimes diaspora] as dystopian and claustrophobic”27 (Naficy, 2001: 27). These feelings toward the homeland are sometimes manifested in the synecdoches, fetishes and signifieds of the homeland. These could be sounds, symbols or images that are reminiscent of the homeland. In Nair and Mehta‟s film, the elements of India (the homeland) that convey their structures of feeling, dysphoric or euphoric, are clothing, religious and cultural practices and ritual, language or accent, and, most times, the actual Indian setting. However, the most important of these signifieds, as discussed, is the focus on the Indian female. Nair and Mehta‟s storylines centre around their women characters. The attention given to the women in their films is not an attempt to conform to and maintain nationalist ideology, but rather an attempt to capture their transitions, their awakening and their agency. These women‟s lives, as Indian women in various contexts, are given prominence. In so doing, Nair and Mehta illustrate the manner in which symbolic representation maybe questioned, disrupted and reconsidered.
The notion of tactile optics, in „accented‟ cinema, privileges issues surrounding the circumstantial experience of the human body. The experience can be external (in the sense of reflection, photographic and filmic representation, and the reactions of others) or internal (in the sense of self-perception). Either way, the certainty of the unity and entirety of the body (and, subsequently, the mind) are put into question when people in exile or diaspora are faced with negative experiences like racism or hostility. Naficy argues,
25Naficy warns that the „accented‟ style is an emergent category that it is not yet completely recognised or formalised (2001: 26).
26 Naficy has appropriated this term from the work of Raymond Williams (1977), „Structure of feeling‟, in Marxism and Literature, London: Oxford University Press, pp. 128 – 135.
27In some instances, the „homeland‟ is not always imagined or remembered as an ideal space. Often, this is the case with accented filmmakers “who have escaped authoritarian regimes and societies” or “who insist on
The body‟s integrity, requiring a coincidence of inside and outside, is threatened, as a result of which it may be felt to be separated, collapsed, fractured, eviscerated, or pithed.
The […] dislocation can be experienced simultaneously at both quotidian and profound, and corporeal and spiritual levels. (2001: 28)
The body and its senses are thus poignant signifiers of difference. The senses reinforce an unfamiliar environment and the body, being physical evidence of difference, emphasises the feeling of not belonging or the feeling of being uncomfortable with who you are and where you are. This notion of the body and the significant manner in which it is manipulated to maintain difference and perpetuate differential treatment will be discussed in the sections on postcolonial feminisms. In particular, there will be a focus on how the gendered Indian female body has been contained in the name of nationalism.
Vivian Sobchack makes interesting observations about the body and its experience of displacement and discord at both the physical and spiritual level. Her observations are appropriate in light of Naficy‟s ideas:
[...] the body can be seen as home, as house, and as prison - as, in the first instance, the place that grounds us in a felicitous condition of enablement, that provides our original and initial opening upon and access to the world, and that gives dimension and sense of value to our lives through its motility and senses and gravity; as, in the second instance, the place in which we live in a variable relationship of hermeneutic objectification, that we decorate and display for the edification of both ourselves and others, that confounds us with problems and expense but allows us still a certain familiarity, a place to hang our hats, to let it all hang out; and, in the third instance, the same but phenomenologically quite different place, that grounds us in negativity and denies us access to the world constraint and discipline, that locks us in a room everyone regards as ours but which we understand as really belonging to others. (in Naficy, 1999: 47)
This is important for the analysis of the films of Nair and Mehta because it is the bodies of their female characters that are used to make important political statements regarding the conventional perceptions and representations of Indian women. Their films illustrate the struggle that their female protagonists, as Indian women, undergo with regard to the patriarchal control of their bodies and the limitation of their sexuality. At some crucial point in the films, these women make a controversial decision to use their bodies and explore their sexualities in defiance of control, limitation and the norms governing their behaviour28. These women, in other words, work toward establishing their bodies as their “homes” and not their
fighting oppression [intellectually, creatively or artistically]” (Naficy, 2001: 181). These filmmakers may often depict their homeland as a site of claustrophobia and control.
“prisons”. The active rejection of their physical and spiritual imprisonment reveals that these characters are not passive victims of their experiences.
In relation to this, borders are an important aspect: they can be either a connection or a division between the „home‟ and „elsewhere‟, or the familiar and unfamiliar. Borders are interesting locations (physical or imagined) where a variety of factors (race, class, gender, history and national identity) diverge and intersect. Border consciousness arises out of being situated at a border location and can be described as “multiperspectival and tolerant of ambiguity, ambivalence, and chaos” (Naficy, 2001: 31). Naficy therefore posits that the subjectivities emerging from these borders are interstitial. These subjectivities are often evident in the character types found within accented films. Characters are often split, doubled, crossed, and hybridised. Sometimes, they even perform their identities. In relation to Nair and Mehta, their characters often seem to be in a state of tension regarding who they‟re expected to be and who they would like to be. Often, these characters transform through a crossing over of borders within themselves. These are evident in choices made against the grain, the satisfaction of desire or engagement in rebellious activity.
The themes of accented films usually relate to journeys that can be either actual or imaginary.
According to Naficy (2001: 33), journeys are motivated. He identifies three types of journeys undertaken by the characters in the films. The first type relates to outward journeys of escape, homeseeking, and home founding. The second type relates to journeys of quest, homelessness and lostness. The final type relates to inward journeys of homecoming. Naficy adds a disclaimer to this categorisation:
Not all journeys involve physical travel. There are also metaphoric and philosophical journeys of identity and transformation that involve the films‟ characters and sometimes the filmmakers themselves, […]. (Naficy, 2001: 33)
While border crossing relates to the change over or refashioning of identity, journeys relate to the content of the transition that occurs during the processes of changing over and refashioning.
28Chapter Two and Three will investigate in detail how the concept of the gendered body plays itself out in Nair and Mehta‟s films.