‘Women Telling Women’s Stories’ and My Inherent Bias.
I’ve always found it interesting that Dil Chahta Hai (DCH), a film written by a man, about men, has more nuanced and well-presented female characters than its spiritual successor Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (ZNMD), a film written by a woman. Even if the former film asks us to indulge its three male protagonists and their coming-of-age struggles, it also gives us women like Shalini, Pooja, and Tara who have their own problems independent of the men. ZNMD, however, is more focused on the men. It has three women too, but they are afterthoughts, at best, and unbearable stereotypes, at worst.
’Women telling women’s stories’ sounds rather good to hear. I mean, why not? Men tell men’s stories all the time. In fact, they tell the same story over and over and expect us to be amused. So, why not women? Especially when films like Céline Sciamma’s unforgettable Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Greta Gerwig’s Little Women are still lingering in our collective memory. Considering that films that revolve around forbidden love and coming-of-age are pretty popular in Hollywood and elsewhere, the stories told by these two women are in no measure unique. What’s unique and memorable is the way they tell them.
By this, I don’t mean men cannot write memorable cinema with a female protagonist. In fact, some of my favourite female characters have been written by men — Sita from Godavari, Pallavi from Uyare, Grace from Short Term 12, Anjali from Chi La Sow, and any woman in a Mike Mills film. But a man can never, with authority, write a mother-daughter relationship as tumultuous and raw as the one depicted in Ladybird. Neither can a man write the great scene from Portrait of a Lady on Fire, where Sophie is made to sit for a painting in her condition. It is outrageous, the way she is inconvenienced after all she’s been through, but the righteous female rage felt by the three women — four, if you count Céline Sciamma, over the lack of female representation in art, negates and necessitates the insensitivity. Some films can only be made by some people, because their lived experience authenticates their authority over the subject.
Which is to say ‘Women telling women’s stories’ at best should be a beginning to a long and complex conversation that needs to be had, and it should be about perspective. We need more stories from the perspective of women, gender of the protagonist and the writer/filmmaker is inconsequential. Because of the kind of society we live in, women and men, inevitably, look at the world differently. They are forced to. They even look for different things in the same story. And this is what we need: a new set of eyes. And not just women’s either. Every perspective that’s been oppressed and forced into silence has a distinct story to tell.
Another problem I have with the ‘Women telling women’s stories’ appendage is how quickly it can turn into a bad thing for women. It puts unfair expectations on female directors to be insightful about the gender they belong to. Aside from the pressures already faced by them, this creates a complex where a woman director is forced to only choose stories with female protagonists., something she may or may not want to do. A female director’s worth shouldn’t be defined by or confined to the way she tells the story of her gender.
Take Halitha Shameem’s Sillu Karupatti,. An anthology film on love, between different people from different backgrounds. The way Manja’s story never feels like anything but a story of teenage love is because of Shameem’s unassuming gaze. And when a neighbour advises Dhanapal (Samuthirakani) to take his wife out sometime, it doesn’t feel odd or out-of-place. In the world Halitha’s meticulously created, good intentions are commonplace. With a lens that is decidedly warm and rosy, she makes ride-sharing apps seem less daunting and old-age as something to look forward to. Does her being a woman has anything to do with the film? Probably. But is it all? Most definitely not.
Most dangerous of all, this appendage gives the viewer unwarranted power to question and criticize a female director, rather harshly, for writing a female character as insensitively and badly as a man would. I am only saying this because I’ve been this viewer. When I watched Nandini Reddy’s Oh Baby, I was disappointed. I felt betrayed because it didn’t feel like a film made by a woman. I was so overcome by this feeling that I didn’t consider that maybe the filmmaker didn’t want it to be a film made by a woman, about women. Maybe, she just wanted to make an entertainer. I expected a different film from her because she is a woman, and I’m only realizing now how unfair that is.
‘Women telling women’s stories’ presumes that every woman is familiar with every other woman’s life and struggles. Even if it is true to an extent, it isn’t true enough to base a movement on. There are many ways to be a woman, and not every woman has to have an insight into another woman’s life. Patriarchy, sexism, and misogyny — words used to culminate a woman’s interaction with the world — mean different things to different women depending on their caste, class, and geopolitical markers. Intersectionality isn’t a buzzword, it means something. Read Jupaka Subhadra’s phenomenal poem titled “Kongu” to understand how the same thing that suffocates one woman can carcass another like a friend.
People should be encouraged to write what they know, and what they can write well. When you write from experience, you write authentically. Relatability is just a pleasant, yet accidental, by-product, as it should be. Zoya Akhtar or, for that matter, any female filmmaker doesn’t owe me anything other than the film they wants to make. ZNMD might not have memorable women in it, but it has Imran. The scene between him and his biological father is unmatched in its complexity and warmth. If you are someone who read the first line of the essay and thought, ‘What’s so interesting about that?’, then I congratulate you on getting there sooner than I did.
