WHO FRAMED HER

Gender identification in cinema 

Dr. NIVEDHITHA DEVADAS

“FRAMED” is a term used in “Women’s Liberation Demonstration” by August 26, 1970 at New York City. “Eave was framed” was the slogan of that day. We are going to analyse how women is framed in Cinema. Woman is framed in films; in Public spaces, private spaces, secret spaces, and intra spaces. What is framing? “Adam framed Eve in the Garden of Eden” woman says. Eden is a beautiful Garden with every thing fulfilled. The same way Cinema is a fulfilled art. It is called the seventh art, which inherences all the other six arts architecture sculpture painting dance music poetry and cinema. In this art woman is framed almost beautifully. This study is to identify the one who framed her.       

Framing in film language, is the way the visual elements are arranged. Picture making is not about arranging beautiful pictures it is about arranging appropriate pictures. “The pictures you choose and arrange are expressing your point of view; how you have interpreted a situation; what you want to say about it.” ( Millerson, 1987).  ‘‘The way in which subjects and objects are framed within a shot produces specific readings” (Hayward, 2004). Women have been always framed for a specific reading, which means, women is framed as men’s desire.

Woman is the centered attracting unavoidable element in all the cinemas. “The way men view women and the way women view themselves and others is imbalance”, argues Mulvey. The audience is forced to view the text from the perceptivities of heterosexual male. The films focus on women’s images and the events that happen to them are portrayed at a men’s angle of view. As audiences view the film voyeuristically and fetishistically become onlookers of their life. Mulvey says this can lead to two effects: objectification and narcissistic identification. Voyeurism involves turning the represented figure into a fetish so it becomes increasingly beautiful but more objectified.

“Gaze” the debate around what Mulvey called ‘the male gaze’ is of central importance to contemporary film studies. What happens to the female spectator? And how does she derive pleasure? For these questions Mulvey says that she must either identify with the passive, fetishized position of the female character on screen (a position of unpleasure, her lack of a penis signifying the threat of castration) or, if she is to derive pleasure, must assume a male positioning (a masculine third person) (Hayward 2004). This is really a mind set or spectator’s framing of Cinema

Laura Mulvey’s ground-breaking essay is Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, 1975.In her essay she examined how the woman are looked at, from male point of view within the film and, the spectator who identifies with the male character or protagonist. She describes this process of viewing as scopophilia-pleasure in viewing. Feminist film critics examined Hollywood cinema for their male-centered point-of-view or framing the objectification of women.

The filmmakers are fans and fanatics who want to gain name, fame and wealth through the exposure of women in a saleable way. Apart from all these aspects cinema is man’s pride to show his creative knowledge about beautifying women. When cinema went into the hands of   businessman the attraction of the cinema is women’s body and how it is framed for beauty. (You can see in all Raj Kapoor’s Hindi films the mother character is also exposed with big and sexy boos).  I use the word framing instead of composition because composing is to project the facts of an image. Composition of the society is socialization, composition of nature is civilization, composition of words is poetry, prose, drama and dialogue, composition of relative musical notes is music, and composition of hands and body gestures rhythmically to the tune is dance. But framing is different which involves the mindset of the person who frames the image or images, the concept, the narration.

 Many kind of fetishisms are exploited in the films like breast fetishism (often close-up of the breasts are shown with jiggling movement, breast profile uncovered and top angle shot of breasts’ cleavage, slow motion in showing breast shakes and hip jerks); aquaphilia fetishism (showing women as swimming or in swimming suits, introduction of the character in the rain, waterfalls, river, sea etc to emphasis the body contour, foot fetishism (close shots of feet, buying and wearing anklets, tickling and handling); spandex fetishism (women wearing shiny stretch  dress, navel fetishism (close shots of navel, handling it in a different way by making a top to run on the navel region, making egg omelet, doing massage, wearing an ornament, painting on navel etc); stripping fetishism (dress removal shots and expanding of this action through various cuts); and tickling fetishism (through a play or game). These are the common kind of fetishism that is used in almost all commercial films showing romantic scenes. For this a well-built woman with proper shape, good shining fair skin texture without any blemishes are chosen. Not only the visuals but also the sounds were chosen to be beautiful, attractive and sexy. It is very obvious that the parts that are helpful to provoke the sex desire within man are highly exposed in all angles. Men have framed cinema where women are from the patriarchal perspective that is reflected in every aspect of life and it also reflects in films.

The Cinema framed by men reflects the thoughts what the patriarchal society framed woman in this society.

Aristotle defines that women are naturally lacking in intelligence and rationality. Their bodies lack the necessary warmth that makes for human intelligence.

 Being natural fools, women do not deserve to be citizens who participate in public affairs (Geetha, 2006 ).

Manu, author of the Dharmashastra, argues that at the moment of creation itself, women are allotted the habit of lying, sitting around, with an indiscriminate love for ornaments, and qualities such anger, meanness, treachery and bad conduct.

Islam too believes that men were created to rule over and manages the lives and affairs of women.

The Christian Bible Genesis tells that God created Man in his image, while woman was created as an after thought, from Adam’s rib.

The Cinema narration framed man always to upper level than the woman.

In most of the cinema the hero comes to save the heroine, or save the country or to save the society. This is a very successful and great formula, which is practiced by commercial films in many countries. The filmmakers as patriarch consciously or unconsciously and orchestrates the male oriented stories.

The narration of Cinema is framed from narration of text that existed in the patriarchal society.

Happily lived for ever- The End-full stop. Almost all the fairy tales that is written for the children has a closed structure promising to end the story with “happily lived for ever”.  Very popular fairy tales “snow white”, “beauty and the beast”, “princess and the frog" are patriarch in nature. In all these three tales the females were put under test. Snow white is gifted to the Prince who saves the country from a magical crises, beast becomes handsome Prince when a few drops of sincere tears of love falls on the beast, and frog becomes Prince when a Princess kisses the frog with love. Making a woman to love a beast and a frog very sincerely and appreciating the gestures is very patriarchal in nature.

The silver screen is the men’s imaginary castle where he screens women, as he would love to look at her. On the screen the man (the spectator) creates her as a mother as a daughter as a friend as a call girl as a lover ctc. After that he looks at her, sights her, glares her, stares her, gaze at her, glance at her, glimpse her, peep at her etc. Men frame mainly by his emotions, actions and reactions. The intelligences of men, politics of men, philosophy of men, perspective of men turns to Oedipus complex. His lover in the frame is a lover to the character but at the same time she is exhibited to the spectator as a gaze, a beloved whore. It is a mysterious truth to know that a lover and a whore a in one image. In cinema the female protagonist are portrayed as virgin and as whore; we can call it two in one. It is a concept of the virginity persists in a whore. This is a typical framing of woman in cinema.     

In today’s cinema dream girls are very popular, highly hailed, and pampered by the public. Most of the films of today survive only due to their appearance. Dream girls get themselves involved not only in the film industry but also in many public activities. The film industry is empowered, public activities are empowered by glamorizing a girl, and thereby the woman is disempowered. They market the picture, market themselves and also market the character they portray. Cinema not only objectifies woman but also gives the license for the male audience to contemplate a woman as sex object in the day as well as in the night dreams.

And the interesting fact is that the dream girls are very sensitive to realize that they are tarnished in the mind of many men. I would like to say it is a pleasure for those who enjoy being an attractive woman. This dream implements vanity in woman’s life that leads being supplementary of beauty. This supplementary of beauty is framed to impress the man who is firmly rooted with vanity. Battistelli 1929 explains vanity has been conceptualized on one extreme as originating sexual struggle.

The concept of creating a dream girl for the dream world is only for men, a woman doesn’t have the right (sociological ethics) to dream about a man. In Hindu mythology, a saint named Jamathagni’s wife Renuka is a woman of chastity and virgin. She has the power of making pot out of raw mud, with that she used to bring water to her husband to do his prayers. One day while doing so on a river bank she happened to see the reflection of Indira the God of beauty on the water and admires him; the next minute she loses her chastity and was not able to carry water in pot which is made out of raw mud. The husband who was waiting for her understands the happenings, becomes very angry and asks his son to cut off the head of Renuka. Such was the punishment a woman had to undergo for admiring another man. Since still this social or moral issues encouraged by the patriarchal society the concept of dream boys has not become very popular. Psychologically woman expects from men are so many other aspects (being a protector, an achiever, a warrior, a professional, a performer and very recently a spiritual man). Their dream is not much on flesh related like men. It is an everlasting pride for woman. Our man made cinema still maintains the narration of mainstream cinema with this concept.

 Our constitutional culture itself perpetuates inequality of women before law along with the social and political factors responsible for the subordination of women (Jaising and Wolfe 2006). In the essay “The Ignoble Servility of Pati Parmeshwar: Towards Equality for Women,” Jaising and Wolfe argue that women are treated like animals in reality but in the Constitution of India and in front of the law they are given a good position. Jaising and Wolfe argue that Indian constitution is male chauvinist and treats woman in different manner and women servility and survival are polar opposites. Until equality is understood in a feminist perspective, the jurisprudence of the Indian Constitution will continue to be male. This leads the Indian cinema is in favor of male officers or a team of male board members to censor the cinema. They are the men who approve the framed production of men. Here I have to mention important information about the Indian Government National award comity for cinema is either ignorant or innocent about the framing of eves in the silver screen. This was my research theory about Indian award won films; there I have analysed how the male chauvinist are encouraged by the award comity.

With respect to the film world, film inventors, film producers, film makers, film theorists, film critics, film technicians, film fans, film spectators are mostly men and it is a male dominated film world. Women are seen as sex object and to satisfy a man’s pleasure. As a sex object they should look attractive and beautiful. So cinema is gendered.

Film Inventors, during the ancient age, Ptolemy of Alexandria wrote on the laws of reflection and phenomenon of persistence of vision during which existed in130AD. In1500 Leonardo Da Vinci articulated the camera obscure in his painting, the ‘dark room’ inside the room viewers can see a projected image of the sunlit world outside, got through a petite hole. I would like to inform you a single person did not invent that cinema. Over a period of time, every portion of cinema was invented by many personalities of different times. Men invented the most basic and very essential inventions. The pre history of cinematography begins in the year 1832 with Plateau’s Phenakisticope and Stampfer’s stroboscope. Joseph   Antoine Ferdinand Plateau’s published   his first research on persistence of vision in 1829. In 1836 he established the laws of stroboscopic effect. He also created a device proving the illusion of movement. Zootrope was invented in 1834 by William George Horner. Praxinoscope was invented by Emile Reynaud. Magic lantern   by Father Althanasius Kircher. This is the forerunner of the cinema projector. Phantasmagoria-Magic Lantern was invented by E. G. Robertson. Panoramawas invented by Robert Barker in 1792. The Diorama was invented by Daguerre. Thaumatrope was invented in1825 by Dr.John Ayrton at Paris. Nicephore Niepce and Parisian painter Louis Jacques Mand`e Daguerre during 1831 and 1835 founded a procedure which yielded clear picture on a silver copper plate. Robert Paul, British pioneer of the motion picture, invented a cine-camera and also devised a projector in 1895, which was called as Theatrograph. William Henry Fox Talbot invented many positive prints on silver- chloride paper. Edward Muybridge he put his photographs together into a moving picture. The success of this series pictures was international. Photograghy Gun- Chronophotography (Strip Films) – Rifle shaped camera is the first portable motion picture camera designed by the physiologist E. J. Marey ‘chronophotographic’ camera using rolls of paper film instead of glass plates, which took a series of forty pictures. He succeeded in taking up to a hundred pictures a second. Marey’s camera was portable. George Eastman, an American is the promoter of roll film and he invented the Kodak in 1888. Very soon the Edison’s kinetoscope, is the advanced cinematographic apparatus, an individual viewing system which is a form of peepshow. He invented gramophone and perforated his film stripes with four holes per frame, the frames kept equidistance and kept moving smoothly. Edison’s perforations set the standard of size for film which has remained the norm( Ceram ) Till today all kind of technical advancements are made mostly by men with very less contributions towards the technical advancement by female inventors.

Prominent and world famous Filmmakers: The first film “workers leaving the factory”  was shown by Lumiere brothers on December 28,1895 at grand Café, Paris for one franc to 35 members. The first projected photographic picture, the Lumiere cinematograph combined cine camera, printer and projector. D.W.Griffith (The Birth of the Nation- Classical Hollywood Narrative style) who founded the grammer of filmaking popularly known as Father of world cinema, Edwin S. Porter, George Melies (A trip to the Moon- Mise-en-scene),Sergei Eisenstein ( Battleship Potempkin-montage theory), Robert wiene (The cabinet of Dr. Caligari-Expressionistic film) Orson Welles (complex and alternative narrative structure), Alfred Hitch cock (Murder Mystery genre), Ingmar Bergman,  Charlie Chaplin (slapstick and satirical comedy), Satyajit Ray(Indian new wave), David Lean epic style),Cecil B.DeMille (biblical dramas), Robert Flaherty ( father of realistic Documentary), Abel Gance (Impressionistic film style-Napolean), Lui Buneul and Sarvador Dali (An andalusian Dog- french surrealistic film),   Akira Kuosawa, Vittorio-de-Sice (Italian Neo realism), FrancoisTruffaut , Jean-Luc- Godard,  Fredrico Fellini (French New wave), Fritz lang (terror of technological society), Frank Capra, John ford, Howard Hawks, John Huston, Spiel Berg etc (Sinyard 1985) are all males. Most of the commercial makers and knowingly or unknowingly have been framing women from males view point .

Film Theorists: Great classical film theorists are of two categories, one those who believe in formalism and the others those who believe in realism. Eisenstein, Podovkin, Christian Metz, Hugo Munsterberg, Rodolf Arheim, BelaBelaz are formalists and Andre Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer are realists. All those film theorists did not have any consideration about feminist’s film but only during the post structural period postmodern period, feminist film theory came into existence.

Christian Metz explains Spectator as  ‘Spectator-fish taking in everything with their eyes, nothing with their bodies: the institution of cinema requires a silent, motionless spectator, a vacant spectator at once happy, acrobatically hooked up to himself by the invisible thread of sight. And to make the audience seated, females are used as sex objects and that to very attractive object’.

References:

Andrew, Dudley. The Major Film Theories: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.

Ceram, C.W. Archeology of the cinema. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1965.

Geetha, V. Theorizing Feminism, Calcutta: Stree, 2006.

Hayward, Susan. Key Concepts in Cinema Studies, London and New York: Routledge, 2004.

Jaising, Indira, and Andrea Wolfe. “The ‘Ignoble Servility’ of Pati Parameshwar.” Brinda Bose, ed. Gender and Censorship. New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2006.

Metz, Christian. Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema. Translated by Michael Taylor. New York: Oxford  University Press, 1974.

Millerson,Gerald. ‘Video Production Handbook’. London, Focal press: 1987.

Mulvey, L. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen, vol, 16 , no.3, 1975.

K.BALACHANDER

Auteur Theory in the Films of K.Balachander

Dr.D.Nivedhitha 

This study is about the portrayal of working women in the films of K.Balachander. The filmmaker K.Balachander recently received Dada Sahib Phalke Award. He has produced and directed many Tamil films on diverse plot pattern like romance, triangle pattern, sacrifice pattern, return pattern, conversion pattern, vengeance pattern, success pattern and family pattern. K.Balachander has his own unique style of filmmaking. Most of his stories are based on middle class family and their struggle. Songs in his films establishes the situation, character, mood and tone of the film. He uses Symbolisms to convey certain subtle emotions and values. In most of his films, he has portrayed woman as educated, intelligent and working. They are capable of solving many social and family problems but implicitly they are pseudo-emancipated woman.

In France (1920s) the filmmaker is the author of the film even if the writer is different. Sometimes the filmmaker will also write the script. Hayward (2004) says that ‘the Politique des auteurs’ was a polemic initiated by the Cahiers group, the term auteur refers to a filmmaker’s discernable style through the filmmaking practices where the Director’s signature was as much in evidence on the script/scenario as it was on the product itself.

Signature of K.Balachander

The signature of K.Balachander is Joint family, middle class people who care for the convention and tradition, housewives who are guaranteed with family life, unemployment and sacrificing of working woman who fail in private life, working women are suspected on virginity and chastity, encouraging polygamy for men and a complex family relation as web that is contrived and melodramatic.

Working Women‘s Gendered Profession

In the film ‘Iru Kodugal, Janaki, the female protagonist is a collector, ‘Bama Vijayum’ four female protagonist, three are irresponsible daughter-in-laws and one is a film star, ‘Aval Oru Thodar Kadhai’- Kavitha is a officegoer, in Kalki, Kalki is an advertisement person, ‘Manathil Uruthi Vendum’ Nandhini is a nurse, ‘Arangetrum’ Lalitha is a typist later becomes a sex worker, Apoorva Raagangal’ Bhairavi is a karnatic musician, ‘Velli Vizhaa’the female protagonist is a teacher, ‘Kalyana Agathigal’ four female protagonists take up different jobs and as part time they have a music troupe, ‘Moondru Mudichi’ Selvi is a ward, Avargal’Anu is a office goer,’, ‘Sindhu Bhairavi’-Sindhu is a music teacher,  ‘Oru Veedu Iru Vaasal’two female protagonist- one is a homemaker and the other one is a junior artist in film Industry, ‘Paarthale Paravasum’ Simmi is a office goer. All homemakers though they struggle they live a comfortable marital life but in all those above mentioned films the women at work is not having a successful marital life. Gender has a socio-cultural origin that is ideological in purpose and must be seen as quite distinct from the notions of biological sex and sexuality, says Hayward (2004).

Woman – The Family Head

Letting woman the family head leads to problematic is the problem of K.Balachander.  In the film ‘Arangetrum’ (the debut) typist Lalitha becomes a sex worker when she becomes unable to lead her large family. Later when she settles in married life with one who knows her passed life the director doesn’t recognize her. Issuing the head position of the family to a girl leads malpractice is the concept of the director. Kavitha of ‘Aval oru thodarkathai’ (she is a serialized story), is a stenographer, shoulders her family, sacrifices her lover for her widow sister, her would be for her another sister on the very day of her wedding, and continues to work for caring her family which is without a head. If the breadwinner gets married she cannot look after her family is the conclusion of the story. In other word she has to leave every thing and run behind her husband. Instead being spinster and heading the family is the right solution to a woman.  This is the moral said in the above story. Nurse Nandhini of ‘Manthil Urudhi Vendum’ is never awarded family life, for she had two marital lives and divorce.

Men’s Polygamy

Gender is all culture and not nature; the only aspect of gender is sexual differentiation. Gender refers to the sexual category of an individual, masculine, or feminine, and to behavioral traits connected with each category, says Berger. Whenever a bride is seen as a match for a groom, the important expectation from the groom is less in age, height, education, and the salary of she receives. Woman should be less in all the ways other than attraction. Janaki of Iru Kodugal who was once married to Ganesan, not accepted by her husband’s family starts to live independently and becomes collector and posted in the office where her husband works as a clerk. After he is separated from Janaki he gets married to Jayanthi and now with two children he struggles to maintain his family. Heavy clash happens between the first and the second wife, but the story comes to the conclusion of sending the workingwoman Janaki abroad as a simple solution of men’s polygamy. There was nothing to do with man who practiced polygamy. Educated woman was sent out of the country like excommunicating, and the housewife is protected. Sindhu the music teacher lives alone, for falling in love with a married man. Sindhu makes JKB’s family in tact and gifts her child to the barren Bhairavi who is the wife of her lover singer JKB; and converts her illegitimate child into legitimate child. Dependent wife is always awarded with security. In most of his films workingwoman is sentenced with a lonely life, and a homemaker is saved and made to live with her husband. In structuring his screenplay he gives economical and moral support to the homemakers. All his housewives are good and innocent, but dependent. So it is mandatory for a wife to live with her husband. This thought is again and again repeated in most of his films

Women With a Handbag

Woman with a handbag is a sign of financial independence. But in India the handbag belongs to woman but the money that is inside what she earned belongs to her man. In reality, workingwomen of India are exploited. Stenographer Kavitha, typist Lalitha, nurse Nandhini, they all have family burdens and their handbags are emptied for her family. Kavitha’s drunken irresponsible brother calls her bitch when she refuses to give him money. Lalitha being a sex professional raised all her brothers and sisters was always empty handed. The family of Nandhini with a big list to spend always exploits Nandhini.

In search of Third Space

Those women’s who has lost their space in private sphere, fighting to get space in public sphere (33% job opportunity) and struggle in a hybrid sphere which is the effect of post colonialism.

Pseudo Emancipated Heroines

K.Balachander has portrayed woman as educated, intelligent and working. They are capable of solving many social and family problems but implicitly they are pseudo-emancipated woman. Several sociologists attacked on the film’s blindness to the ideology it presents, especially on women’s norms and status. The man reins the film vision and also appears as the agent of authority. Two types of female protagonists are portrayed in the film world, one is virgin and the other is whore.  But in most of the K.Balachander’s films working women who lose their virginity either by sexual assault or by molestation or by having extra marital life, or premarital life, or a lonely life (divorcee) is devoid of legal marital life. As Frantz Fanon says the effect of post colonialism is English education and English way of living. So there is always a conflict between Western thought and Eastern thought. Working woman is always viewed from western centric view point. More over lack of in-depth knowledge in understanding different cultures leads to socio cultural ruptures. Female is considered lower than male in India. Which gives many meaning like she is fit only for the domestic sphere or the private sphere. She can do only certain jobs (teacher the ultimate), stenographer, nurse, clerical jobs, computer software persons, lawyer, etc, which belong to indoor public sphere.  Sales representative, drivers, film productions, stage artist, (dancers) belong to outdoor public sphere. Workingwomen those are involved in outdoor working sphere as well as indoor working sphere find sexual challenges and harassment in being a workingwoman. K.Balachander proves the above statement and in his view being working woman is the sickness to the society or being outsider is ideal for a workingwoman.

Complex Family Relation

Apoorva Raagam- Bhairavi due to pre marital has a daughter and she hides the fact and brings up her own daughter as an adopted child. One day the daughter finds the truth and leaves the family dejectedly. She falls in love with an elderly person who survives with a rude son. This rude son of that elderly person loves Bhairavi the mother of the dejected girl and she also reciprocates. This entanglement is romances of significant age disparity. It is nothing but two insecured persons, a mother and her daughter find secured in opposite sex; who are men the patriarchal structure. Duet is a triangle love story with a complicated subplot of the protagonist father’s second relationship with a woman. Manathil Urudhi Vendum, Nandhini’s burden is doubled due to her father’s second relationship with a woman. Punnagaimannan is a love story, but it is a love lost and love gained pattern, with the protagonist father having a second relation. The main plot of the film ‘vaname ellai’ is about few dejected youngsters decide and join together for committing suicide for their various failures they faced in the society. In that a young couple decide to commit suicide because of the reason that the boys widower father and the girl’s widow mother get married to each other to stop the marriage of the their own children. This sub plot deviates away from the main story. And this kind of treatment is very abnormal to Tamil Culture and also very illogical, contrived and melodramatic in its approach. Sindhu Bhairavi-Both Sindhu and her mother have premarital sex but the mother gets married to a Judge after leaving her illegitimate child in the orphan. In the film Arangetram, the lover of Lalitha finds her in a prostitution place. Paarthale paravasam, Madhava is a doctor. He marries Simi but a revelation about his past separates them and takes them as far as divorce. They remain friends though, even going so far as to fix up each other's second marriages. That becomes a flop and again they get married after a good understanding. Avargal is a concept of three boys and a girl, a lover, a husband and a friend. It is like water, everywhere not a drop to drink. Moondru Mudichi-Prasath and Balaji are room-mates, Prasath loves Selvi openly and Balaji loves her secretly. Selvi suspects Balaji’s attitude and tells it to Prasath. But Prasath doesn’t believe her. One day when all this three go for boating accidentally Prasanth falls into the water and drowns, Balaji who new swimming did not save him. Later Balaji proposes her, Selvi in an act of taking revenge gets married to Balaji’s father who is widower.

Postcolonial Effect

The Britishers from 1858 to 1947 ruled India, the effect of it sustains between the British shadowed society and Indian Culture. Cultural war between the Indian Culture and British Culture constantly persists in India. The cultural and social imbalance has happened among the people who had the opportunity to work very closely with the Britishers in their office. This tradition extends even today. Indian traditional dresses flew away. Even till last decade all Indian females identified the pyjama as an alternate to western pant. To day the globalism changes every thing in to one. But K. Balachaner was maintaining the post colonial effects on female to identify them the outsider.ven after the Indian independence, most of the high-class people who were influenced by colonial thoughts and action have started to ape the Whites way of living and thinking. Almost all his films dialogue will carry English words using figure of speeches and punning on words. A very famous dialogue between the husband and wife in the office in Irukodugal, life and file will be pinned on while talking serious matters. This is well established in his films, either the people who support the English way of living is criticised or Indian culture is over emphasized. In both the ways, the emphasize on caring and growing the cultural deeds are made to be held in the hands of women.

Findings

K. Balachander has made more than hundred films, after studying the whole body of his work, most of his films deal with complicated human relations and contrived and melodramatic situation which are unimaginable and illogical with heavy character flaw. Indian women is caught in complicated web of patriarchal world, be it culture, society, politics and religion The woman with a handbag, hair bun and lipstick, is always an object of criticism. Modernity is not very easily accepted in Indian culture and it is always criticized in the private sphere and encouraged in public sphere. Always the women are caught in between these two spheres. Workingwomen are suspected and housewives are hailed. Sacrifice is forced only on woman. Though workingwomen are hailed, hypocritically they are made isolated from their family life. Polygamy is encouraged for men .The works of Balachandar appears to be a state of confusion.

Suggestion

Woman with a handbag, hair bun and lipstick are not the sign of liberation. Being bold in having illicit relationship is not the real boldness. Throwing away the formalities of the society is not maturity. The concept of liberation should be looked at different angles. The films that discourage the woman employment are to be banned, because it is a criminal offence to corrupt the mentality of the audience. Film is a very powerful audiovisual medium, which should not be misused. The horrible part is those films are awarded by the Government. Film literacy is seriously required for the government official for censoring as well as awarding.

References:

Berger, A.A. Agitpop: Political Culture and Communication Theory. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1990.

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. New York: Penguin Books, 1972.

Braudy, Leo and Cohen Marshall. (eds). Film Theory and Critisism: Introductory Readings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Hayward, Susan. Key Concepts in Cinema Studies. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.

CINEMA SOUND

 CINEMA SOUND

By

Dr.NIVEDHITHA

and

A MEMBER OF

METAPHYSICAL HOME

  SOUND: 

Sound exists everywhere, and every time; with so many variations and verities; all living beings live integrating with sound. Till we listen the morning sounds, dawn and dusk sounds, night sounds, a sparrow’s chirping, a baby’s cry we too are intervened with Nature. The language of Nature is sound, and till today it is unchanged; it is common to all living beings; it is universal and simple. We human beings, who have the efficiency to learn, adopt the language of Nature and build our own language that is inherent to the geographical and sociological environment where we live. Language is sound with so many variations; and we have learned to create millions of sound to give millions of meaning. Language is encoding and decoding of sound variations. When we gave symbols to language, sound has denoted in to alphabets to form writings; except syllabary. Writings are the sign of sounds created in language, (any alphabet can be used for any language) as we have notation for music. In fact the first recording of sound is writing, with the facilities of encoding and decoding from language to sound and sound to language. But this recording is done only for the linguistically meaning of sound, but it missed to record all the other factors that sound has in its myth. That is why Writing and Reading exist as a separate art from sound. There, not only the writer, but also the reader is an artist. When a Reader reads he identifies his emotion in the text or in other way he adds up his emotion and feeling and reads; to individual identity.

          

SOUND RECORDING:

Sound recording is an art as well as science. To become a good sound recordist one needs the knowledge of science of sound and creativity of its infinite myths at different applications. The first qualification to become a sound recordist is to be a good listener; in the sense, one should be able to differentiate the difference between two cuckoos when they sing together. The quality of recording depends upon the knowledge over the recording techniques and aesthetics of sound.

The knowledge of sound recording techniques is;

o       Understanding the physics of sound

o       Understanding the nature of sound

o       Understanding the science of sound

o       Understanding the texture of sound

o       Understanding the atmosphere where it is created

o       Understanding the atmosphere where it is played back

The knowledge of aesthetic of sound recordings is;

§     Understanding the feel of sound that triggers the sprit

§     Understanding the representation of sound

§     Understanding the ontology of sound

§     Understanding sound and space

§     Understanding the relativity of sound

§     Understanding the correlation of sound

§     Understanding the perspectives of sound

§     Understanding the phenomena of sound

§     Understanding the anthropology of sound

§     Understanding the silence

Mind and sound:

Sound is metaphysical, so it is mystical; an unseen force that triggers the emotion of all living beings, than any other force in the world. It is multi dimensional, even then there is a common understanding depending the culture, environment and experience that reaches different people in different angle.  The human brain identifies the sound mostly to the nearest of an identification and relates it to the immediate and earliest identification. The listener is the most important part of sound because sound is depicted on listener’s mind, where the listeners’ mind is not uniform. That is why, even though the approach of sound is mass it affects and effects personally. The unique quality of sound is that, other than the listeners’ ears, it doesn’t affect any sense to feel the nature of it. Sound is a moving element; it is always moving; quickly, rapidly, and repetitively. So a listener is gathering sound with the same movement and with the same speed to maintain the order. Another unique quality of ear is, it is unreserved and Omni directional and easily susceptible to loudness. Time space and sound is much integrated to procure the mind without mind’s knowledge. Mind is always ditched by time space and sound to make better understanding. When the space extends sound gets stopped.  When sound is stopped it reaches the origin where it started, that is silence. Silence is the mother of sound. Silence is the space where sound creates its path to travel and reach atlas.

silence:

 Silence is the most beautiful part of sound. It communicates so many meanings. As an effect of sound it is terribly heavy, as well as deadly cold. It is peace; it is understanding; it is joy; it is acceptance; it is romance; it is thrill; etc….etc…It is the place where sound takes rest. In western music notation, silence is noted as ‘rest’. In fact ‘rest’ in music means the existence of the musician but without music.  The rest of the sound and its existence without sound is an important role in all our life.  The sound of the dinosaur is much thriller than the sound of a dinosaur when it is unheard. When your lover walks without sound of an anklet, it rings the chimes of your heart. The existence of sound in silent movies of our great directors is still unforgettable. Silence is one of the great arts of conversation, as allowed by Cicero himself, who says, “there is not only an art but eloquence in it”. The modes of speech are scarcely more variable than the modes of silence.” Blair. The rest of sound in any application of art has got it is own elaborate meaning.  Technically silence means in different way. The human ear has got a limit of Listening; its range is between 20HZ and 20,000HZ for a young person. Any sound below 20HZ is called subsonic and any sound above 20,000HZ is called supersonic or hypersonic. So what we are listening is only between20HZ and 20,000HZ of sound. A human ear needs a pressure to listen sound. The minimum pressure what we need to listen is called 0 dB. So, 0 dB is not absolute silence, but the threshold of hearing. That is the lowest sound pressure level that an average listener with good hearing can detect. We can say technically the unheard sound is called as silence.

Physics of sound:

When an object vibrates it generates sound

1.             Plucking a string

2.             Bowing a violin

The generated sound needs a medium to travel whose molecule can set in motion

·               Air

·               Solid particle

The medium transmits the vibration in the form of changes in pressure

When a string is plucked- vibration happens-this vibration passes in the air-so the molecules of air get compressed with the pressure passed on from one molecule to another

aesthetic of sound:

Every art is shaped, not only by political philosophical and economic factors, but also by its technology. The relationship is always clear. Sometimes the technological development leads to a change in the esthetic system of the art; sometimes esthetic requirements call for a new technology; often the development of the technology itself is the result of a confluence of ideological and economical factors. But until artistic impulses can be expressed through technology, there is no artifact. The invention of photography in the early nineteenth century marks an important line in division between the pre technological era and the present.

The development of printing technologies has caused too many influences on the art of writing. Stage dramas were readily altered when new lighting technologies came. The invention and development of oil paint provided a wonderful versatility to the artist. But cinema expelled from all these as a great single artistic contribution of the industrial age, the recording arts- film, sound recording and photography are inherently dependent on a complex, ingenious, and even more sophisticated technology. No one can ever hope to comprehend fully the way these effects are accomplished with a rudimentary understanding of the scientific and systemic procedures that make them possible

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The invention of photography in the early nineteenth century makes an important line of division between the pre technological eras and the present .The basic artistic impulses that drive us to mimic nature were some essentially both before and after that time, but the augmented technical capacity to record and reproduce sounds and images of the twentieth century presents us with an exciting new set of choices. Previously we were limited, in a sense by our own physical abilities: the musicians created sounds by blowing, strumming or singing; the printer who captured real images entirely on his own eyes to pursue them; the novelist and the poet not engaged in strictly physical arts, were nevertheless limited in describing events or characters by their own powers of observation. The technology of sound and image now offers us the opportunity of recording sounds, images and events and transmitting them directly to the observer without the interposition of the artist’s personality and talents. A new channel of communication has been opened, equal in importance to the development written language.

 

ANTECEDENTS OF MOTION PICTURE:

Although the camera did not come into practical use until the early nineteenth century, efforts to create such a magical tool, which would record reality directly, dated much earlier. The invention of paper negative gave a lead to modern photography of negatives recording and positive reproduction. The paper negative was soon replaced by the flexible collodion film negative, which is not only marked a distinct improvement in the quality of images but also suggested a line of development for the recording of motion pictures. The magic lantern, capable of projecting an image on the screen, was quickly adapted to photographic use in the 1850s.Praxinoscope came in 1877, a practicable device for projecting successive images on a screen. And in 1889 George Eastman applied for a patent on hi flexible photography film developed for the roll camera and the last element of cinematography was in place. By 1895 all these elements had been combined and cinemas were born.

CINEMA WITHOUT SOUND:

Even though sound recoding was invented much earlier than cinematography; cinema was invented without sound. The reason behind was the invention of cinema rooted out with the existing material of photography and printing. So still cinema is called as film, motion picture, video or television; undemanding the incorporation of audio concept. When filmmaker received synchronizing sound, they found sound as an added quality to cinema. It was considered as the aesthetic quality to cinema. Cinema was cinema before the sound track was added, they said, so the sound cannot be fundamental component of cinematic experience. Historically sound is add on, an after that, and thus of secondary in importance. Ironically it is precisely because of insufficient historical knowledge and reflection that these avengers err. There is a valuable argument that silent films had never been without sound; it had always confirmed to the mid twenties model of standarised organ or orchestral accompaniment. On one side there are ethereal cinema of silence, punctuated by carefully chosen music; on other side the talkies with their incessant anti poetic dialogues. Too heavily dependent on the practice of the twenties this is an unacceptable assessment of the first thirty years of cinema history. Camera phone, chordophones, cinephone, and dozens of competing systems were not only invented in 1910s; during the end of the century and first decade they were installed in hundreds of theatre, across Europe and from coast to coast in the United States. Their completion came, by the way, not from silent films, with or without musical accompaniment but from the road shows with extremely sophisticated and carefully synchronized effects and from many “wheels” of human voices behind the screen. In short the world did not want until Don Juan and the Jazz Singer to discover the entertainment value of synchronized sound. Anyhow silent film changed the form into talkie; that is an entirely new form; there the cinema changed; even the theory for cinema also changed by the influence of sound. Still cinema changes and the action of sound is one of the prime reasons for the changes.

CINEMA WITH SOUND:

 Edition’s phonograph, which does for sound, what the camera/projector system does for images dates from 1877. The desire to capture and reproduce still picture pre dated the development of moving picture by many years. But there is no such thing as a “still” sound; so the development of sound recording, of necessity, took place all at once. In many ways, it is more extraordinary than cinematography, since it has no antecedents to speak of. Because of technical problems posed by Edition’s mechanical recording system, mainly synchronization – the effective marriage of sound and images did not occur thirty years later; but the desire to reproduce sound and image in concert existed from the early days of cinematography history.

THE REPRODUCTION OF SOUND:

The recording of sound from its very beginning has been very fascinated; whereas an image that is photography clearly reduces the three-dimensional original into two dimensions. Sound appears to reproduce the original faithfully, in its full three dimensionalities. By and large, critics remain convinced that sound is literally reproduced by high quality recording and play back system. Sound, cannot be constructed independently of the volume of air in which it is heard. Typically we notate sound (through writing or musical notation) as if sounds were ideal entities. But volume, frequency and treble cannot exist independently of several material factors, which preclude reproduction as such. To be sure in sense, G is G, whether it is played at home or in stage, but that does not make the two sounds identical. All we want to know about is, that it is G then all the Gs are the same; but if we care about the material difference between the two sounds and the spatial configuration that are present there, then we must recognize that no recording is possible to reproduce an original sound. Recording do not reproduce sound, they represent sound. According to the choice of recording location, type of microphone, recording system, amplification, postproduction, manipulation, storage medium, playback arrangement, and playback location each recording proposes an interpretation of the original sound. To be sure, one of the common strategies involved in this process is to attempt to convince the audience that they are listening not a representation but reproduction. Considered as reproduction, recording seems to fall under the aegis of technology and engineering construed as a representation. However sound inherits the double mantle of art. Simultaneously capable of misrepresentation and of artistically using all the possibilities of representation, sound thus recovers some of the fascination lost to its reputation as handmaiden of the image. Indeed it is recording’s very ability to manipulate sound that makes it so apply worth of our interest.

REALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM:

In order to show that recording cannot possibly reproduce the original sound, critics have regularly made the following points:

Sound exists as pressure within a volume.

It is possible to collect all the sound of a particular performance, since it disperses differently into various part of the theatre or other surrounding space.

Even at a live performance different spectators hear different sound, depending on where they are seated and which way the performers are turned.

Sound system always enforces a particular set of volume in selecting microphone, location, frequency response, volume levels and many other recording and playback characteristics.

Playback back involves in the same set of differences and choices involved in recording. For example there is a difference between the sound heard in the orchestra and same as heard in balcony.

This is a problem of communication having heard the ‘same’ sound to overcome that they actually perceived physically different sound. This is precisely where we stand today sound. Every audition of the same performance actually hears different sound; we need actually to interrogate the cultural phenomena that permit us to communicate about the sounds, which are heard. It is more important to remember that signification can occur only through repression of the signifier and to call for increased sensitivity to the many strategies adopted by various cultures to assure the differences in favor of language’s communicative value.