Race and Gender - Women in Bollywood Film - Essay Example

Race and gender Name Institutional affiliation Race and gender Introduction The terms race and gender feature in the analysis of the two movies cases are among the major traits that used to denote the forms of discrimination among the different nation states around the world. Colonization and barter trade and slavery contributed to all the massive movement of humanity from lone continent to another in regard to what was termed as slavery. The populations from different parts of the world that were taken to particular places to work as slaves later on become settlers of those particular countries they were working in. in the process of settlement, they ended up intermarrying thus giving birth to another nation that lacked identity (Feldman, 2004). From the findings of social science, attitude, behaviour and opinions can be influenced in one's life and this bad trait in people has been transferred from generation to generation with no hopes that one day this attitude of discrimination based on opinions of color and identity would have an end. According to Glenn Feldman, the way of living in some countries like the united states of America and in particularly the culture has never allowed people to realize the ills in the society in the failure the realize the fact that some issues in today's human life just have to be made clear. Structural unfairness has completely not been able to be realized in the community thus failure to realize the racial hierarchy that the gaps created in the solving of the issue places or does confer on the whites in the United States of America. Feldman further asserts that the hardest or the most challenging thing in the United States of America is to make them come to the support of the affirmative action and other elated race conscious issues around the state. In regard to gender, Mira Nair's movie `the monsoon wedding', the tradition l culture does not really allow women to participate in some activities as it erodes the culture of this particular community. The Indians have a strong religious background which is one of the strongest religions around the world. Hinduism is one of the most prime and indigenous religion of the Hindus. It stands as one of the oldest and distinctive religious traditions owing to the fact that its origins are not founded on prophetic ways compared to religions such as Christianity, Islam and Buddhism (Flood 23). In addition, the distinctiveness of Hinduism is based on the fact that its teachings of a particular prophet or any dogmas that were preached by a given people, implying that it is a religion that is free from devotion. Women in this case are therefore seen to live double sided lives in such a way that they are supposed to uphold to the norms of the society particularly religion and on the other hand trying to create a new aesthetic style. This movie also illustrates or shows the white limitation in the women's power when it comes to decision making. We are told that Simran rejected the husband that her father had actually located for her but she meets a rude shock when the boy she intends to marry too refuses to marry her unless the ladies father has given an approval over it. It is depicted that the Hindus were only supposed to marry Hindus or people of their own race and this is barely seen when Raj is questioned over his English originality and therefore if he married the lady, he would then have taken the lady away to England which would have on the other hand detached her from her religion and even culture something that the Hindus really treasure. According to the movie, patriarchal authority was really treasured and women had always to do what the man who is her father decided to do regardless of whether the decision was right or wrong. The white in this movie shows an Indian lady as a person constrained by the culture of her background and she is limited from doing a lot of things in public like kissing publicly which I strongly prohibited by the Hindu culture. The whites also view the Hindu marriage as an imposed one where marriages are always arranged for the couples that to get married. In addition to this, whites view an Hindu woman as one who is supposed to abstain till her marriage time and she has no choice at all in this issue showing a conflict between the modernity and old culture in the life of an Hindu woman. The woman in the new diaspora is referred or called upon by the West to occupy the position of the postcolonial subaltern or the disenfranchised transnational migrant of labor. According to Film: Bride and Prejudice 2004, the diasporic woman is thus positioned by multiple nationalisms, contested citizenships, patriarchies that are strained, and the expansion of capital in the upcoming nation-state. Her role in global and local cultural politics is glass ceiled by her transnational positioning as a woman. This issue of racial disparities is seen to have greatly affected the victims who in this case are the African American who the Whiteman believes he is well and ready to go public and declare that the said groups are well when he knows very well that the group has been denied chance in the national cake. According to Glenn, the whites seem not to recognize what affirmative action is and the value placed upon it by the African American population. For instance, the African American has been meeting a lot of challenges when it comes to the purchase of real estates and even the securing of the loans from financial institution. There are gaps in the areas like the education sector, healthcare and so many others(Feldman, 2004). The political sector is said not to be ready to support the issue too and this therefore diminishes the efforts into the translation of the support to the realization of the conscious policies in countries with major racial gaps. The whites appear to have as an absolutely negative opinion or ideology about the whole issue and therefore think this is will be an honor to unqualified beneficiaries who in this case are the African American yet this is something that is seen by most of the people as a road to the destiny of values of fairness, the colorblindness, equal opportunities and the maintenance of racial hierarchy in the merits and the individualism. From the movie `A Rose' the author deals or highlights the complex contemporary issues that are portraying separatism in Kashmir and other wider notion particularly that of the Indian nationalism, Roja juxta narrates the personal story of one young Tamil cryptologist who is said to have been kidnapped by the Kashmiri militants where his wife's desperate efforts to free him from the burning and the political questions that India was facing in the years of 1990s. The history of the black diaspora in India is like Gilroy's or Hanchard's, historically locate diasporic displacement directly in relation to the history of slavery, suggesting that these diasporic discourses cannot be reapplied easily to other regimes without regard to their modes of displacement or historical formations. Resisting an appropriation and misapplication of scholarship on black diasporas raises the question of the suitability of these theories of diasporas in regard to other transnational formations, particularly South Asian ones. South Asian diasporas, resulting not from slavery but from various modes of displacement including indentured servitude, colonialism, and uneven capital development do not produce the same political possibilities in their subsequent conceptualization of diaspora and diasporic politics. In other words, with different but overlapping histories and political economies, not only do these transnational formations vary but so do the frameworks necessary for analyzing them. We must theorize differently contemporary South Asian migrant subjects who indicate different geopolitical positioning in their negotiations of the nation-state, capital, and modernity. According to the movie, the military operations do not realize that India is one state but the aspect of ethnicity based on color and other factors like the songs were used to distinguish them from one another, it arguably follows that those that live in this Kashmir are also part of the other. the film depicts that there is no Kashmiris apart from one Kashmiri Muslim newspaper boy,just a few Kashmiri Muslim militants and other many, pretty looking Kashmiri women and children that look dressed in Kashmiri ethnic wear that is used as props in some of the songs, that in kopst occasions one is forced to conclude that the otherone is basically a Kashmiri Muslim. In another scene that is seen to be influential, in the authors reiteration essay, skewers Roja's is simply a purported art of the spirit of nationalism, Tejaswini Niranjana is seen to contend that Roja refuses a new middle-class position that is distinctly of the Hindu at their heart with the spirit of Hindutva being in a core in its soul and he does this through consistently depicting the Muslims. Its background score, editing choices, use of light etc. all normalise Hindu ethnicity on one hand while demonizing Muslim ethnicity on the other. The author asserts that the impending ethnicity of Rishi and Roja's wedding is in direct comparison to the blatant view of the Muslim ethnicity that is depicted through the dress of the Kashmiri militants and their constant praying their (Muslim) ethnicity reveals them as anti-modern (therefore anti-national or anti-Indian), intolerant and fundamentalist, while Hindu ethnicity as displayed by the chief protagonists is merely part of the complexity of being Indian,'' she concludes (Niranjana, 80). Rustam Bharucha therefore compares the Niranjana's overarching theme of othering of the the Muslim and uses it in the ruminating of Roja's links to the art of fascism that is portrayed in the movie. He writes, ``Here there are no villains in the earlier sense, but the enemy figures who are specifically marked as `Kashmiri' and `Muslim''' (Bharucha, 1391). Another concern is about the troubling for Bharucha which is seen as the degree of realism which Mani Ratnam is to largely use in the movie to depict these militants' actions. In the Film Lagaan (Land Tax) 2001, the black person especially in this contest the black Indian is supposedly never expected to be rich for it can't be explained how this could happen under any circumstances. in addition to this, the author labels Jay's objections to his relationship with Mina the lady as racism. This is clearly depicted when he says and I quote, ``I know that you and your folks can come down here from God knows where, and be about as black as the ace of spades, and as soon as you get here you start acting white and treating us like we your doormats. '' The author criticizes his assertion of the Indian-American anti-black racism, the racial superiority, and even the white identification. Although the author does not identify Jay's racial discrimination and privilege in the relation to the class, but he nevertheless, professional-class South Asian diasporans, whose high incomes make Indian-Americans the second wealthiest person who is from ethnic camp in the United States of American continent. He is also seen to often distance themselves by race and class from blacks and other people of color. Jay is seen to argue that his detachment results not from racial and class prejudice but from his previous affiliations to and experiences in the homeland issues to do with securities, specifically his friendship with Okelo. This is therefore seen as Jay trying to frame his rejection of Demetrius not as of a white identification but as the betrayer of Okelo and the numerous futility of racial intensity and the failure of the multicultural nation-state. On the other hand, Kinnu doesn't participate to the same degree in this racism and classism. References Crenshaw and Kimberley. (2000): ``Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. '' The Black Feminist Reader. Ed Joy James and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting. Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 208-238. Davies, Carole Boyce (2004): Black Women, Writing, and Identity: Migrations of the Subject. London: Routledge, pp. 79. Feldman, G. Modern South 302, 268-309. United States of America. University of Alabama Press. Film: Bride and Prejudice 2004 - Gurinder Chadha Jane Austen Meets Gurinder Chadha'' - Christine Geraghty Film: Lagaan (Land Tax) 2001 - Ashutosh Gowarikar Subaltern Studies, Bollywood and Lagaan'' Chandrima Chakraborty Subalterns, Cricket and The Nation': The silences of Lagaan'' Nissim Mannathukkaren Race and gender Read More