The Filmic Kali: An Exploration of Laura Mulvey as Cinema’s Maternal Warrior in Angry Indian Goddesses
Kali, the fiercely benevolent Hindu goddess, wields time, creation, change, preservation, and destruction, destroying demonic forces of evil to restore what is good and sacred. She is all at once revered, feared and celebrated as the universe’s strict mother and mighty protector. Cinema, if we imagine it as a universe of its own, is plagued not by fantastical demons of legends past, but instead falls victim to our modern day demons: the “-isms”. This art form’s most heinous beast is the one that the structures of this universe was born out of: the patriarchy. Systematic sexism has seeped into all aspects of the film industry, so how does a woman succeed in an art form and business that never had them in mind in its construction? The misogynistic systems of oppression that plague filmmaking have recently met their enemy: cinema’s Kali. Laura Mulvey and her theories on the gaze begin the film industry’s necessary exorcism. In an artform that was not made for women’s voices, Mulvey demands women’s voices to be heard, allowing films like Pan Nalin’s Angry Indian Goddesses to carry out her legacy and cast out a suffocating patriarchy.
With the ability to manipulate time, change and creation, the cinematic Kali’s feminist criticism has shifted the course of filmmaking and made space for Angry Indian Goddesses to challenge traditional male-centric storytelling. With her article, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative cinema”, being in circulation and in film’s consciousness since the 1970s, Laura Mulvey has pushed the evolution of the artform. In her work, she uses psychoanalysis to decode not only the viewer’s fascination with film, but how social formations have moulded them. She is particularly interested in “socially established interpretations of sexual difference, erotic ways of looking and spectacle.” (803). She is a cinematic mother warrior that uses psychoanalytic theory “as a political weapon, demonstrating the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form”. Nalin, in the creation of his film, takes up his feminist arms. Nalin’s film stands on the shoulders of Laura Mulvey’s feminist criticism, refusing phallocentrism having the seven women in the film take ownership of their gaze create a vision of their own, instead of women solely being the object of the camera’s inherently male gaze. Film is a medium that thrives off of visual pleasure and in an art form created by heterosexual men, this pleasure stems from the objectification of the female body. Angry Indian Goddesses does not allow the seven women on screen to be merely objects. They are given agency, over their body and over the way they are portrayed. Towards the beginning of the film, Jo, is introduced to the other women on the trip through female dominated voyeurism. In a skimpy pair of shorts and tank top, Jo asserts her femininity and sexuality by dancing and playing in the water. Jo represents a celebration of womanhood, boldly dancing as water showers over her. She holds the hose, she chooses to be wet and have a few moments of uncensored fun in her private space. Her body is surveyed by the camera, but her joy and dancing feels like she is showing herself off to both the women around her and the audience at large. She invites the viewer to watch her and even in Laxmi’s case, to join in the dance. There is no shame or secrecy in Jo’s interaction, which threatens the male viewer by suggesting the elimination of their oppressive scopophilic gaze. Nalin goes even further, eliminating any male presence by having Frieda and her friends watch Jo forcing the camera to take on their point of view, effectively regendering the gaze. Man is no longer the “bearer of the look”, it is just a collection of active female on screen. Instead of becoming an omniscient Peeping Tom, the audience steps into the mind of a woman, becoming another guest of Frieda’s bachelorette party. The audience and Jo are Nalin’s political artillery, reclaiming the female body and voice in cinema.
Kali, the angriest Indian goddess, does not merely create; she is most known for her incredible power to destroy even the strongest and most established of evils. In an industry plagued by ingrained sexism, a frustrated Mulvey uses her words to lead filmmakers towards stories that erode male dominance and the persistence of the patriarchy. Angry Indian Goddesses acts as a meditation on Mulvey’s (influenced by Freud) idea of “castration anxiety”, particularly women’s re-possession of the phallus. This psychoanalytic theory discusses the fear of emasculation in both the literal and metaphorical sense. In a patriarchal system, maintaining possession of the phallus is both security and power. It is clear that Pan Nalin made the conscious decision to create a feminist film that not only castrates the film industry, but castrates male centric storytelling. The opening sequence which introduces each of the leading six women, shows each character defying the stereotypical feminine gender role. By showing subversive Indian woman, who refuse to be overpowered by men whether that be by “leaning in” in the workplace, be sexual damsel in distresses, a bystander to systemic misogyny in beauty standards or be the victim of catcalling on a daily basis, Frieda and her friends separate themselves from being merely objects in the film that further a male character’s development. They demand to have a trajectory and story all their own. This causes what Freud calls “castration anxiety”. They castrate male cinematic forces by not only using male actors as props or catalysts for each woman’s story, but by cutting their screen time to sporadic minutes throughout the film. After they cut off male presence and by association, the proverbial phallus, they carry it as their own. This is best depicted in the shootout scene, where both Mad and Su steal the guns of the male gang members that rape Jo and shoot the perpetrators. The gun is representative of each gang members manhood. Much like that of a sword, each stab or each gun shot, is an assertion of power. The men are destroyed by their own phallus as women are now the supreme being, possessing the one thing that made them inherently less than. They reclaim their story by embodying the male and regendering him to fit their story, to own their story. They are the catalysts and action makers of their own narratives, telling their own story and fighting back cinematic and India’s systemic patriarchal oppression.
By having seven women share their lives and their personal struggle with the patriarchal society that they live in in a film that is circulating in international festivals is not only claiming space for women in the film business but stays true to the film’s final message detailed by Nagris’ eulogy for Jo, stating that we must write our own story and take control of our narrative. This film boldly asserts womanhood, Indian/Desi culture as well as sexuality into the world’s consciousness and in the audiences in each showing of the film. In this way, Angry Indian Goddesses is much more than a film, it is a vehicle for social change and the empowerment of women of color, particularly Desi women. The story being told through this film is the cinematic Kali the industry so desperately needs, casting out the evils of our past and present with a collection of powerful voices and stories.
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