32. Mini Babu

Abstract 32. Mini Babu

Screening and Dissenting Literature:  
Representation of Gender in Three Films Adapted from Literary Texts

Abstract

Any piece of written work, themes of heroism, friendship, loss or quest for eternal life can be considered as literature. Considering the central theme of comparative literature is the literature of two and more linguistic, cultural or national groups. It ranges the inquiry of comparisons of different types of art. Literary criticism and its history can be approached with the help of comparative literature. The review of such criticism will bring into light the important phases of literary relationship.

In the present paper, I have made an attempt to demonstrate and compare some important literary texts when adapted into cinematic texts, especially in the main stream cinema,  they dissent the original texts. These changes may be apparently minor, but the significance can inhere in dissenting the literary text in fundamentally new ways sometimes.

 The term ‘representation’ refers to the ability to evoke a vivid impression of presence through words and figures of speech which involves making things bright and striking and thus stimulating to an audience’s imagination. Representations are the images or ideas formed in the mind and these have vast implications for the real people in real contexts. Both the scarcity and the minority of representations yield what may be called “the burden of representation”. Many important developments in critical and cultural theory are today associated with a crisis in representation. The concept of truth, subjectivity, culture, identity, sign, difference, ideology, etc. has combined to produce a serious crisis in representation.

Feminist film theory has emerged in the past twenty years to become a large and flourishing field in west. Feminist philosophers present alternative views about the construction of women as subjects of knowledge, vision and pleasure. Feminist film theory is a theoretical work within film criticism which derives from feminist politics and feminist theory. Feminist have taken many different approaches to the analysis of cinema.

The present research paper critically studies and compares three recent films, each based on literary text. These films are Rudali, Bride and Prejudice and Parineeta. Rudali is based on Mahashweta Devi’s short story of the same name which treats the issues of survival, class and caste in feudal society where women are exploited and suffer the most. Gurinder Chadha’s Bride and Prejudice represents middle class dream of economic salvation in the first world America and cultural negotiation through her film. This film is based on Jane Austen’s famous novel, Pride and Prejudice. Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Parineeta is a film based on Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel which treats the issue of caste contradiction and economic concern especially as faced by women in India.

The comparison between the film and the novel and how they have dissented the radical power of the original text is an obviously answer to the useful frameworks provided to us by gender studies, especially feminism, in the form of liberal, socialist, materialist and cultural study perspectives.