Women In Cinema: Asian Women In Western Eyes
By Maria Mohsin
Asian women are subservient, they don floor-length outfits called saris, put a spot on their forehead, wear fancy gold jewellery, are persistent, good at bargaining, they have dark eyes, black hair and dark skin. This is how Sydney Levine described her instant perception of Asian women.
This is how Asian women are shown to us through cinema, Levine, a trainer, writer and film festival consultant from the USA, said as she presented a keynote paper on The perception of South Asian women by Western women through cinema at the 4th Dhaka International Conference on Women in Cinema, held January 13-14 at the Alliance Francaise de Dhaka recently.
It is natural that Western viewers get such notions about Asian women from films that are shown to them, and most movies that are showcased overseas are male centric, she said. So, there is no way to know the (Asian) women better than that.
Levine said before doing research for her paper on the topic, she had watched Asian-themed films like The Big City, The Lunchbox, Elemental Trilogy, Slumdog Millionaire, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Patience Stone and My Beautiful Laundrette. And those are the movies that her assumptions about Asian women are based on.
When she started her research to discover Asian women through cinema, she met some women from the Asian film industry, like Deepa Mehta, Mira Nair and Samia Zaman, who made her see there was a very big gap in her perception before.
As she was introduced to films like Wajma and The Breadwinner (about Afghanistan), her eyes opened up to the emotions and struggles that Asian women go through. The films made her see the stronger side of Asian women, and with more research, I found out, with the exception of Bhutan and Iran, every single county in Asia has had its highest political position occupied by a woman at least once. So why have Western people never seen this stronger representation of women through cinema?
After meeting some more Asian men and women from the film industry, I drew another conclusion about the place of women in the larger system. While we women strive to do the best job possible, we often leave the men in their self-satisfied, and I must say smug, and unimaginative positions in the dust.
At that point, a discussant at the session, Aparna Sen, noted filmmaker and social activist from India, responded: We have women-centred films, we have films that show real women and strong women representation, but those are not showcased enough globally. Those films dont get the opportunity to tell their story, our womens story, to the world.
Then pointing to her own Parama, and others like Lipstick Under My Burkha and Parched (from India), Sen said such films should be screened overseas more widely to let the world know more about Asian women and how different they are from what they are seen as.
Not only through their stories, women working in the film industry always have to struggle a lot to prove their ability and skills just because they are women, And that fact is not only true about Asia, Western counties like USA, UK and Australia also face the same problem when it comes to women and cinema.
There are exceptions, however. Levine added that in Canada, all heads of all media corporations are women and that is a very rare picture, which is not seen even in a country like the United States.
On the other hand, the perception of Western women for us is they are stronger, bolder, they know what they want and they know how to speak up for themselves, other discussants at the session observed. That message is conveyed to us through cinema.
But women in most South Asian movies, at least those that are most popular or successful commercially, are all about women appearing gorgeous, being emotional and kind-hearted, they said. But South Asia, too, has films that show our women are strong, bold, and they can speak up against all odds, but their voices are often muffled by the society. But they keep on with their protests and, thus, write a greater story of achievement.
We may find countless movies like that in almost every country in South Asia that are made by women, about women and for women. But those movies are not publicised well and hardly reach the borders. If we want to change the overall perception of Asia in Western eyes, we have to bring a positive change to that situation, they concluded.
The two-day conference was organised by Rainbow Film Society in association with the Department of Women and Gender Studies, University of Dhaka, as part of the 16th Dhaka International Film Festival.
Photos: Courtesy.
