After getting a few positive
reviews, I finally watched Stree (2018),
a hatke horror-comedy film. The film
was different primarily for the cause of women and secondly for the film’s location
in a small town of Chanderi, Madhya Pradesh. I was happy to see this remote,
historical place being given cinematic space because such remote places bring new
geographies, new outlooks, attitudes towards issues, new elements and themes to
Bollywood films. On the one hand, these films give an impression that there’s
not a great difference to the lives we live in cities/urban spaces. The inroads
done by Television and Internet are baffling and whether in towns, villages or
cities, we are all obsessed by and consume the same news channels, soap operas,
music competitions, youtube videos. On the other hand, watching the rural,
undeveloped spaces in these films makes me uncomfortable, for despite
Independence, our villages have not at all changed in certain aspects. Be it Dev D, Bareli ki Barfi, Tanu weds Manu,
such films show our villages, sleepy, dusty towns where there is a different
intensity to the issues we face in urban areas or the issues themselves are
hitherto not explored in other films. That is why Stree felt different in a few aspects but it failed to explore
certain other complexities worth mentioning.
If the location of the film was
new, another positive aspect of the film is its screenplay laden with humor and
its clever play on words like ‘swayamsevi’. By taunting the ascetic, celibacy
aspects of strong men, the word - swayamsevi as someone not relying on others
for sexual needs, gains a new meaning. Rajkumar Rao and Tewari have displayed
good acting skills and have adopted the local diction very well. Vicky is shown
from the beginning frame as an athletic, fearless, modern guy (he smokes and
drinks) and who is naturally gifted in tailoring. His fearless attitude results
in him inviting Stree on a party night. Later in the film, we discover that
Vicky will have to save the village from the ghost.
Deviation
from the norm - In Bollywood films, we are used to
seeing men of upper castes (read Brahmins, Thakurs, Bhumiyaars) or of certain
class like individuals of aristocratic or bourgeois descent as saviors. These
saviors are shown to have a huge impact on the ordinary masses and often become
messiahs of change and leaders of future. Such heroes are always-often
sanctified, impeccable as they seem to be and then, they are treated as
demi-gods. History often teaches us to treat them with dreadful respect and we
learn to brush their unknown traits, vices and other wrongs under the carpet.
Who would be willing to accept any immoral acts of Shivaji, Gandhiji,
Jayalalitha etc.? If the town is a small collection of communities or a
symbolic, miniscule reproduction of a nation, can someone born illegitimately
be given the task of rescuing the abducted villagers and exorcising the female
ghost? What is different in this Amar Kaushik directed movie is this very
criterion - casting an illegitimate child as a savior. This deviation from the
norm is a welcome change from our traditional heroes/saviors as the resolution
to the crises in Chanderi cannot emerge from a normal individual but from an
artist of illegitimate birth.
The inside-outside
dichotomy – In Stree, the eponymous ghost occupies an
old fort, isolated and situated on the outskirts of the town, just like many
brothels on or beyond the periphery. The female ghost haunts the males of the
town by abducting them at night during a yearly, religious 5 days festival. Horror
films are purported to create fear for which the dichotomy ‘inside/outside’ is often
used. In Stree too, the ghost’s presence (something coming
from outside) creates fear within the residents of Chanderi. The dichotomy is
significant because though on the surface, the fear psychosis is of losing men,
deep inside, it’s the fear of losing one’s manhood. It is like saying; man
without his manhood is reducing him to nothing. Further, an abducted person may
also become ghost-like (Jaana). People thus fear transgression as the abducted men
are stripped naked, lose their manhood and are no more considered ‘normal’. The
fear psychosis works despite the apparent harmless characteristics of ‘Stree’ -
stupid, obedient, literate and she doesn’t force others. She has all the ‘good’
characteristics and the only issue is that she is a ghost and abducts men.
Vicky is wise enough to realize this and his decision of not killing the ghost
(Stree) but only neutralizing her powers is an apt way to treat a woman who was
never respected in her life. In restoring respect to the un-married woman as a
socially unacceptable female, his act becomes truly heroic. At the end, we
realize that the spectral presence needs nothing more than love and respect and
in fact, if given, the ‘Stree’ could eventually protect the village.
Call for action stance –
The
film has a call for action stance as it invites us (men) to think about our
attitudes and outlook towards women. The men are shown to undergo restrictions
often imposed on women. They always need to be accompanied as ‘Stree’ attacks
men wandering alone at night. Then, men are taught not to heed attention to any
woman calling out their name. It does make one laugh to see that men are compelled
to go out in saris for fear of getting abducted. These scenes try to sensitize
men on certain practices, behaviors imposed and expected of women. The film makes
an appeal to change our patriarchal mindsets and this is shown through the ghost’s
story. The un-married woman is an object of sexual desires of men. In the film,
as the writer of the book informs, when the un-married woman had sought a union
with her lover, the village men, not willing to permit a love relation between
the two, had ruthlessly killed the two lovers. By desiring, the woman becomes a
willing subject; and her murder suggests suppression of woman’s desires at the
hand of men folk. It suggests that they are the sole share holders of a woman’s
libidinal economy and that any change has to be authorized by them. No wonder
that the ghost comes back every year for her unfulfilled desires, in search of
her wish to consummate her relationship with her lover. Interestingly, the fact
that the character Stree, - which means ‘the female’ in Hindi, doesn’t have any
particular name suggests that it implies all biological women irrespective of
any other identity markers. The perpetual return of the ghost signifies her
quest for fulfillment of her desires, her want of sexual freedom. It means she
will come back as long as her desires continue to be repressed. The underlying
message of the film is therefore to treat women respectfully irrespective of
their class, caste, occupations, religion, etc., and urges us (all the males)
to be aware of the consequences of ill-treatment to women.
Despite this underlying message, it
would have been nice to see a layered cinematic representation of the issue concerning
respect towards women. The general discourse about women empowerment is often
governed by an appeal to the male community. Males are asked to respect women
and treat them as equals. For one, the film is crowded by men characters and
except for Stree and friend’s mother, hardly any other woman occupies any
space. Then, the film doesn’t do any justice to show the myriad struggles of
women and different ways of oppression at work in society. Film’s message and
the resolution it suggests for gender becomes uni-dimensional.
