(on) Bandit Queen by Thea Lim
I came across an article on the film Bandit Queen, which chronicles the life of a revolutionary woman that has captivated my attention for some years now; Phoolan Devi, in the latest F-Word zine - "The Outlaws Issue". The film I own and has been kept in a special spot on my book shelf, however I always seemed to have some problem with they way some of the scenes were shot. The article's logic really struck a chord with me and it also cast a light on a fact I was unaware of; the movie was produced without the initial consent of Phoolan.
I thought I would type out the article and share with you all. Feel free to share your thoughts. My comments are included below in brackets.
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Bandit Queen by Thea Lim
If a feminist movie is made in a very un-feminist way, is it still feminist? I set out to write an article about how empowering, realistic and feminist-fantastic the 1994 movie Bandit Queen - but then I did a little Googling, and everything fell apart.
Bandit Queen is based on the story of the real life Phoolan Devi, who led groups of bandits in India to pillage high caste villages for money in the 80's. She was notorious and fearsome, and this was a big, shocking, deal - because not only was she a woman, she was a low cast woman. Devi was a kind of Robin Hood with a gender twist: at 11 Devi was married to a 30-something man who raped and mistreated her. As an adult she found him and beat him in front of his village, as a warning for old men who marry young girls.
Devi was always described to me as a hero for poor people, and women, mythologized as the one woman who just wasn't going to take it anymore. She was tough shit! She was brutalized, pushed around a dehumanized by patriarchal culture - but she actually pushed back!
So a movie about the life of this feminist hero - ok, the violence she committed makes her a problematic feminist hero - would definitely be a feminist movie wouldn't you say? Well, this is where the confusion kicks in.
What I liked most about Bandit Queen is how it offers such an unflinching unsentimental portrayal of life for women in a patriarchal culture. It seems there was a lot of sexual violence in Devi's life, and the violence against women in Bandit Queen is essentially constant and blatant (I didn't say it was a fun movie to watch). What this barrage of brutality says is that it's not just that some men are bad apples, and it's not just that women will experience gender violence once in their lives. It's that under a patriarchal system the threat of violence and the incidence of violence against women is constant and total.
BUT, that's exactly the problem with Bandit Queen: the constant gender violence. The question of how to responsibly represent rape in cinema is one that has enraged and puzzled people for eons. Inga Musico in Cunt has this to say:
"One out of eight movies produced in Hollywood contains a rape scene. In American cinema, rape scenes tend to be violently eroticized...when viewing a rape scene, scads of men feel confused and disgusted with themselves if it turns them on."(p. 161 of the 2nd edition, if you want to read along)
Interestingly in the same section, Musico sites Bandit Queen as a movie that responsibly deals with rape, referencing a scene in the movie where Devi is gang raped for three days. [This was especially difficult for me to watch and I did wonder to myself why this scene had to be so detailed and lengthy.] I would agree with Musico, except one big issue: Devi, the real Devi, did not want Bandit Queen to be made. She disputed the accuracy of the film and even threatened to set herself on fire outside the theatre it was screened.
In an article written after Devi was shot and killed in 2001, Indira Jaisingh, who represented Devi in court when she sued the filmmakers of Bandit Queen said:
"[Devi] did not admitshe had been gang-raped. This was one incident in her life she did not want to talk about. She just glossed over it. And what was Bandit Queen all about? Rape is not entertainment...that is what we were trying to say...Phoolan Devi did not want to talk about her rape."
Arundhati Roy has also written at length about the film, saying that the film goes to great lengths to completely strip Devi of any complexity, reducing her to a rape victim:
"Bandit Queen the film, does not make a case against Rape. It makes its case against the Rape of nice (read moral), women...[in the film] Rape is the main dish. Caste is the sauce that it swims in."
On top of this, it seems that Devi was swindled out of the rights to her life - she signed a contract in prison agreeing to let Mala Sen write a book about her, which later formed the basis for the movie, but she was paid a very small sum, and the contract was in English - Devi could not speak English.
Shekhar Kapur, the director of Bandit Queen, according to the Sunday Observer, had no interest in meeting Phoolan Devi herself. He did not feel the need to meet her.
If the ultimate basis of violence against women is the silencing women's voices, what does it mean that, in making the film Kapur - who is a man, highly educated and wealthy, while Devi was none of those things - was essentially silencing Devi?
The most confusing thing about Bandit Queen to me is that in and of itself, I would say it is a fine movie, and definitely a feminist one. But can you critique a movie about a real person in and of itself, when if the real life person didn't want it made? While Devi eventually did agree to have the movie released, the question holds: if Devi felt completely disempowered by the movie, can it still be empowering for women who watch it?
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Thea Lim's writings can be found at the Shameless Magazine blog: http://www.shamelessmag.com/blog/
She also the author of The Same Woman.
You can get a copy of the latest issue of F-Word on the PM Press site: https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=78
I thought I would type out the article and share with you all. Feel free to share your thoughts. My comments are included below in brackets.
--------------
Bandit Queen by Thea Lim
If a feminist movie is made in a very un-feminist way, is it still feminist? I set out to write an article about how empowering, realistic and feminist-fantastic the 1994 movie Bandit Queen - but then I did a little Googling, and everything fell apart.
Bandit Queen is based on the story of the real life Phoolan Devi, who led groups of bandits in India to pillage high caste villages for money in the 80's. She was notorious and fearsome, and this was a big, shocking, deal - because not only was she a woman, she was a low cast woman. Devi was a kind of Robin Hood with a gender twist: at 11 Devi was married to a 30-something man who raped and mistreated her. As an adult she found him and beat him in front of his village, as a warning for old men who marry young girls.
Devi was always described to me as a hero for poor people, and women, mythologized as the one woman who just wasn't going to take it anymore. She was tough shit! She was brutalized, pushed around a dehumanized by patriarchal culture - but she actually pushed back!
So a movie about the life of this feminist hero - ok, the violence she committed makes her a problematic feminist hero - would definitely be a feminist movie wouldn't you say? Well, this is where the confusion kicks in.
What I liked most about Bandit Queen is how it offers such an unflinching unsentimental portrayal of life for women in a patriarchal culture. It seems there was a lot of sexual violence in Devi's life, and the violence against women in Bandit Queen is essentially constant and blatant (I didn't say it was a fun movie to watch). What this barrage of brutality says is that it's not just that some men are bad apples, and it's not just that women will experience gender violence once in their lives. It's that under a patriarchal system the threat of violence and the incidence of violence against women is constant and total.
BUT, that's exactly the problem with Bandit Queen: the constant gender violence. The question of how to responsibly represent rape in cinema is one that has enraged and puzzled people for eons. Inga Musico in Cunt has this to say:
"One out of eight movies produced in Hollywood contains a rape scene. In American cinema, rape scenes tend to be violently eroticized...when viewing a rape scene, scads of men feel confused and disgusted with themselves if it turns them on."(p. 161 of the 2nd edition, if you want to read along)
Interestingly in the same section, Musico sites Bandit Queen as a movie that responsibly deals with rape, referencing a scene in the movie where Devi is gang raped for three days. [This was especially difficult for me to watch and I did wonder to myself why this scene had to be so detailed and lengthy.] I would agree with Musico, except one big issue: Devi, the real Devi, did not want Bandit Queen to be made. She disputed the accuracy of the film and even threatened to set herself on fire outside the theatre it was screened.
In an article written after Devi was shot and killed in 2001, Indira Jaisingh, who represented Devi in court when she sued the filmmakers of Bandit Queen said:
"[Devi] did not admitshe had been gang-raped. This was one incident in her life she did not want to talk about. She just glossed over it. And what was Bandit Queen all about? Rape is not entertainment...that is what we were trying to say...Phoolan Devi did not want to talk about her rape."
Arundhati Roy has also written at length about the film, saying that the film goes to great lengths to completely strip Devi of any complexity, reducing her to a rape victim:
"Bandit Queen the film, does not make a case against Rape. It makes its case against the Rape of nice (read moral), women...[in the film] Rape is the main dish. Caste is the sauce that it swims in."
On top of this, it seems that Devi was swindled out of the rights to her life - she signed a contract in prison agreeing to let Mala Sen write a book about her, which later formed the basis for the movie, but she was paid a very small sum, and the contract was in English - Devi could not speak English.
Shekhar Kapur, the director of Bandit Queen, according to the Sunday Observer, had no interest in meeting Phoolan Devi herself. He did not feel the need to meet her.
If the ultimate basis of violence against women is the silencing women's voices, what does it mean that, in making the film Kapur - who is a man, highly educated and wealthy, while Devi was none of those things - was essentially silencing Devi?
The most confusing thing about Bandit Queen to me is that in and of itself, I would say it is a fine movie, and definitely a feminist one. But can you critique a movie about a real person in and of itself, when if the real life person didn't want it made? While Devi eventually did agree to have the movie released, the question holds: if Devi felt completely disempowered by the movie, can it still be empowering for women who watch it?
------------
Thea Lim's writings can be found at the Shameless Magazine blog: http://www.shamelessmag.com/blog/
She also the author of The Same Woman.
You can get a copy of the latest issue of F-Word on the PM Press site: https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=78