Sunday, April 29, 2012
Victimization of Indian Women
Film Trailer: Trishna
About the film: Trishna IMbd
After our class discussion on Arab women, how they are represented in our media, and whether or not they "need saving," I began to wonder about other representations of women in nations across the ocean.
The film Trishna is a tragic love story based in India. Set in contemporary times, and the main character is torn between her familial traditions, and her independence brought through education and the industrialization of the world around her. Is this a glimpse into what a woman may actually be going through in India today? Or, is this another case of misconstrued victimization of women? Or, is this story attempting to see "negative effects" of educating women and in giving them equal opportunities? Nothing could be better for our world than educating women, so I hope this was not the intention.
Furthermore, the movie is based on Thomas Hardy's novel, Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), which is set in the impoverished rural Wessex during the Long Depression -- So, how interesting that the film's writers decided to recreate the story setting in contemporary India. What do you think this says about our conception/representation of culture in film? Why do you think that Trishna is portrayed as being torn between education and tradition, and what implications do you think this holds?
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Interesting! I personally have not seen the film, but I can offer my take based on your post.
ReplyDeleteIndia has definitely been impacted - often negatively - by rapid development. For a country that has achieved high economic growth rates and technological advancement, it still fails to provide basic food, clean water and sanitation facilities for most of its poor. I think that this kind of "quantitative" development is dangerous and contributes to further widening of the income gap.
As far as the issue of the Indian woman grappling with tradition vs. modernity is concerned, it is not all-encompassing. From my personal experiences, many Indian women have found a good balance between the two, and they understand that it does not have to be mutually exclusive.
That is not to say that this issue of tradition vs. modernity does not exist. It does, especially in the case of people who make the transition from rural to urban areas (since the two are strikingly different in every conceivable way).
But it is not something that can be taken to define or represent Indian women as a whole.