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The limits of desire

IRABHASKAR

A woman is seated on the floor, with her head on an arm on the bed against
which she leans, staring out into space, while a blind singer outside sings of
separationanddeepanguishironicallyevokingragamalhartheragaofunion
andjoy.
Indeepspacecomposition,intheforeground,awomaninblackliesonabedon
aterraceunderafloweringtree,andinprofilelooksoffandawayatthefestive
terrace opposite where wedding celebrations take place while her life ebbs
away.
Ayoungmanliesdying,unabletospeak,underatreeoutsidethepalatialhouse
of the woman whom he loved, whom he could not accept and for whom he
destroyedhimself,whilesheisunabletoemergeandtakeleaveofhim.

SCENARIOS of extremity: these are limit situations that concern

ultimatequestionsoflife,love,deathandmeaning.Thesequences
from which the scenes cited above are taken Mahesh Kauls
Gopinath(1948),KamalAmrohisDaera(1953)andBimalRoys
Devdas (1955) represent the characters tragic denouement that
brings into sharp relief a particular melodramatic embodiment of
genderandidentityinBombaycinemaofthe1940sand50s.What
are the issues at stake? What is the historical conjuncture that
pressures gender and genre to take the form that these films take?
What significances does the aesthetic mode employed here press
forth from the situations that the films outline? What are the
specificcontoursthattheIndianmelodramaticformtakestosignify
itshistoricalmeanings?ThesearesomeofthequestionsthatIwill
attempttoraiseandaddressbrieflyinthispaper.
Shiftingthegroundfromdiscussionsofmelodramaasgenre,recent
workonmelodramahasfocusedonunderstandingtheworkingsof
the melodramatic mode, demonstrating how constitutive it is of
cinema itself.1 As one of the most popular and enduring cultural
forms through which contemporary social and political crises are
cinematicallyrepresentedandnegotiated,melodramascapacityto
respond to the questions of modernity2 accounts for its pervasive
influence in different cinemas of the world. Theorized as an
aestheticformthatemergesintransitionalperiods,melodramahas
beenseentonegotiatethedislocatingtraumasofclassandgender
struggle, and to answer the doubts and aporias consequent to the
breakdownofthetraditionalsacred.3
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Locating myself within this force field, and using the prism of
gender relations, I will attempt to respond to questions of
melodramaandmodernityinthecontextofBombaycinemainthe
40sand50s.Crucialtothisexaminationviathefilmsmentioned
above are the particular cinematic effects that generate the
melodramatic affect of these films. In order to identify and
understand the aesthetic, moral and social significances that these
melodramas articulate, I will outline certain critical historical and
culturalconstellationsthatgivethemmeaning.

While made in the first decade after Independence, none of the

three films respond to a postcolonial Nehruvian imaginary that
imbued other films from the 50s. On the other hand, it is with a
more general experience of modernity that the films engage in
differentways,amodernitythatchallengesandbringsinto critical
focusrelationsofcaste,classandgenderandtheirconstitutiveand
determiningimpactonindividualsubjectivity.Atthesametime,in
theirdarkandtragicevocationofmelodramaticpathos,theydiffer
fromotherfilmsandgenres(action,stunt,crimeandeventhesocial
melodramas)thatrespondedtothedynamism,frenzyandthethrills
oftheurbanexperienceofthemodern.Thecity,inasmuchasthe
films deal with it, has dark connotations in Gopinath, Daera and
Devdas,andrepresentsnotanenablingmatrixofselfdevelopment
and growth, but rather the inescapable, dangerous and destructive
potentialofthemodern.

While in Devdas, the modern is constituted as the horizon that

challenges a feudal worldview, in Gopinath, modernity is
specifically embodied as the allure of cinema that represents a
spaceofenchantment,ofmobility,ofselfenablement,butonethat
isalsocomplicitinthedestructionofother,deeperformsofbeing.
InDaera,themodernisonceagainanenticingframeofreference,
ofapotentialforselffulfilmentthatisabortedbeforeitcanevenbe
articulated.Allthreedealwiththebetrayalandfailureofwomenby
men, but also with the inability of men to either effectively face
their own desires, confront their own unresolved schisms, or take
affirmative action against the force of circumstances. An incipient
transformative modernity releases desires that exceed the abilities
of individuals for realization. The melodramatic mode underlines
thepathosofanunsuccessfulhumanstruggleagainstanexistential
condition within which are inscribed an authoritative patriarchal
law,randomness,chanceanddiscontinuity.
Twinned with the experience of colonialism, modernity in India
alsogeneratedamongtheeliteacriticallookattradition,andlater
inthe19thcenturyanascentnationalisturgeforselfreliance,both
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ofwhichresultedindifferentreformmovementsduringthisperiod.
Obscurantist religious practices, education and especially the
position of women in society were central to the controversial
debatesoversocialreformthathadbeeninspiredbyEnlightenment
idealsandliberalideasfromEurope.Thewomensquestionwasa
central issue here, but historians wonder at the sudden
disappearance of questions related to womens position in society
fromtherealmofpublicdebatetowardstheendofthecentury.The
politicsofnationalismseemedtohaveovertakengenderissues.

Partha

Chatterjees seminal formulation of the nationalist

resolutionofthewomensquestionexplicateshowandwhyissues
related to women and modern society were relocated within the
nationalist ideological realm, specifically, in an inner domain of
sovereignty,farremovedfromthearenaofpoliticalcontestwiththe
colonialstate.4Thismoveplacededucatedandmodernwomenat
thecentreofthenationalistproject,butalsoplaceduponthemthe
burden of preserving the true spiritual and cultural identity of the
nation, crucial to an essential and inner sovereignty despite the
subjection to the colonial state. And it is from this inner and
sovereigndomainofspiritualessence,embodiedinthehome with
thewomanasitsrepresentation5thatthebattleforsovereigntyin
theexternalmaterialworldofpoliticsandeconomicswouldalsobe
launched.

If social

roles were thus clearly identified by gender in a

patriarchal,nationalistideology,thisdidnotrepresentasChatterjee
pointsoutthedismissalofmodernitybutwasinfactanattempt
to make modernity consistent with the nationalist project.6 The
desire for the modern was the obverse face of the desire for the
nation. Moreover, if education was central to the project of
womens emancipation, it also meant the development by the
educatedwomanofkeyfemininevirtuesofchastity,selfsacrifice,
submission, devotion, kindness, patience and the labours of love,
as well as the inculcation of the typically bourgeois virtues
characteristicofthenewsocialformsofdisciplining.7 Historians
like Chatterjee, Chakravarty8 and Sarkar9 have demonstrated how
women subscribed to this hegemonic construct of the new
woman, producing themselves in accordance with the nationalist
projectofcreatingthemodernnation.
Womens writing from the 19th and early 20th centuries is a
testimony to the coalescence of their sense of emancipation via
education with the ideological burden of embodying a reformed,
classisized and disciplined tradition. At the same time, the
narrativesofstruggleforeducationandselfemancipationareshot
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through with other desires that do not quite square with the
disciplinaryregimesandidealsofmodernselfhoodthatnationalist
ideology gifted women. And it is these contradictions and
ambivalences constitutive of gender identities and of a modernity
that was itself not one10 that makes for a drama of inertia and
entropy11that characterizes a particular form of the melodramatic
thatthefilmsIamtalkingaboutrepresent.

Theimpactofthecontradictionsoftheprojectofculturalreform
whichnationalistideologyhadplacedonitsagendainthelatterhalf
ofthe19thcenturycontinuedtobefeltinthenextcenturyaswell,
as decadent feudal aristocracies and entrenched class structures
experiencedthedisintegratingforcesofthemodern.Thepopularity
ofBimalRoysDevdas,aremakeofP.C.Baruasfilmfrom1935,
isindicativeofsomethingsignificant about itsappeal.Perhapsthe
filmic narrative, like Saratchandras novel, spoke to irresolvable
conflictsofclassandcasteandofferedgenderrolesandimagesthat
bespokethepoignancyofamomentwhenindividualswereunable
togoagainstdeterminingandconstrictingstructuresofcaste,class
and family to seize and mould their lives in accordance with
individualdesire.

TheperformanceofsufferingParoinDevdas.

Initsportrayalofthesufferingmaleprotagonist,thetragictaleof
the alcoholic Devdas, drinking himself to death at the loss of his
beloved Paro, unable to completely accept the courtesan
Chandramukhis devotion and love, is a destabilization of gender
roles with a complete inversion of the image of the active male
figure of nationalist ideology. Having failed in his attempt to go
againstfamilyand patriarchal strictures against dishonour through
associationwithaninferiorcasteandclass,andasserthislovefor
Paro, Devdass only form of protest is perhaps an effete one to
rejectthenormsandstandardsofaworldwithwhichheisatodds.
Selfdestructionthenmarkstheentropicfailureandcollapseofthe
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attempttoreconcilepatriarchallawanddesire.Whilethenarrative
of Devdas clearly marks the melodramatic crisis of an individual
identity out of sync with the relations of authority which are
required to legitimate it,12 resulting in angst, internalized self
violenceandpsychicdisorders,cinematicallytheexperienceofthe
film communicates via the privileging of a performance of
suffering,andanintensificationofemotionviamusicandmise en
scene.

ThisbringsmetocrucialfeaturesoftheIndianmelodramaticform
that I want to outline here the privileging and amplification of
emotion,andthecentralityofmusicandthesongasthevehiclefor
this expression, as well as the development of the song as the
languageoftheineffable.Inmanyways,whatthesefeaturesofthe
Indian melodramatic form do is to manifest in a hyperbolic form
what a lot of theorists of melodrama have identified as its key
constitutivefeaturetheforegroundingofsubjective emotion and
anexpressiveperformancemode.

In key and climactic moments in Devdas, it is the song that

expresses the central meaning of the sequence. These meanings
havetodowiththesubjectivityofthecharacter,his/herinnerstate,
and the pressing need to make intelligible that which the world
outsidewouldratherignoreorrepress.Thuswhetheritisthemitwa
song that Devdas sings in desperation to mark his loneliness, and
hishelplessnesstoaddresstheinextinguishable fire that consumes
him,orthetwosongssungbyVaishnavmendicantsthatexteriorize
andevenironicallycommentonParosemotionalcondition,orthe
Jise tu kabool kar le song that Chandramukhi sings, each one
exteriorisesandamplifiestheinteriorityofthecharacter.
Paradoxically,thetextofmuteness13 takes a very particular form
inIndiancinema.Ifconventionallanguageisinadequatetoexpress
the stress of emotion, the language of poetry, music and gesture
enablesaspontaneousandimmediatecontactwiththeoccultrealm
oftruefeelingandvalue.14Thesongusedinthiswayisnotthena
disaggregatedparanarrativeelement,addedforspectaculareffect
duringtheperformanceofwhichnarrativesuspensiontakesplace.15
On the other hand, the song is central to the Indian melodramatic
narrational form, an element that, when used creatively and
intelligently, is crucial to the focus and development of the
narrative, in addition of course, to the characteristic pleasure that
thisnarrationalformaffords.

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If

the amplification and exteriorizing of emotion has one

manifestation via the song in the Indian melodramatic form of
Bombay cinema, another form of the foregrounding of emotion is
onethatthiscinemashareswithothertraditionsofmelodrama.This
istheintensificationofemotion,andanexpressionofinteriorityvia
notjustperformance,butanexpressiveanddynamicmiseenscene,
with uses of studied composition,16 tableaus and an expressive
playofmourningandpathos.17Iwouldliketouseanexamplefrom
KamalAmrohisDaera to make this point. While the film makes
an explicit commitment to discourses of reform, especially to the
unfairnessofthepracticeofmarryingyounggirlstooldmen,and
to the issue of widow remarriage, the form of the film is an
extendedtableauwithahyperbolizationofdesireviamiseenscene.

ThecaptivatingvisionDaera.

Ayoungman,Sharan,iscaptivatedbythesightofawomanlying
on a bed under a flowering tree on the terrace opposite.
Complicated and complex crane and tracking movements connect
thetwoterracesandtheflowofdesireacrossfromonesidetothe
other,whilesongsputintowordstheconnectionsthatthecamerais
making. All the while, in midspace between the terraces, two
carpenters on a raised platform saw a huge plank of wood that
finallyfallsapartattheendofthefilm.WhileSharanspassionis
exteriorized via mise en scene, Sheetal, the dying woman on the
terrace, married to an old consumptive from whom she too has
contractedthedisease,respondswithaseemingindifferencetohis
passion of which she does soon become aware, but remains
committedallthewhiletoherdharmatoherhusband.
The ideology of feminine devotion is undermined, however, by
MeenaKumaristragicperformanceaswellasbyonesongfilmed
onherthatusesthemetaphorofaburningheartthatburnswiththe
wickinthelamp,thusdestabilizingherassumedrole:deepkesang
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jalunmeinaagmeinjaisejalebaati/jaisejalebaativaisejalejiya
mor/hairamvaisejalejiyamor.Meanwhile,themiseenscenethat
issoakedwithdesiredoesbegintofigureforthahystericaltextin
which unrepresentable and unspeakable material is siphonedoff
intoanexcessivemiseenscene.18Thestylized,saturatedmiseen
scene is thus intensely expressive of unrealizable desire: a desire
thatneedstobeabortedforthehistoricalmomentofitsbirthisnot
yethere.

The struggle for subjective individuation, for an articulation of

acceptable individual desire, and the ultimate failure of its
realizationthatalltheseexamplesexpressincludingtheonethatI
amnowgoingtousefromMaheshKaulsGopinath,arealldeeply
connected to the project of the modern, to its desires, its
ambivalences and the excesses that spill over and cannot be
contained within its disciplinary regimes. Paradoxically, the
languageofthespillover,theexcessinthesefilmsisthelanguage
ofVaishnavbhakti, a traditional devotional idiom that on the face
ofitseemstoruncountertothemelodramaticmodern.
This brings me to the third point that I want to raise about the
Indian melodramatic form that does not seem to occupy the post
sacred world and a desacralized secular space that melodrama
theoristshaveidentifiedasitspublicspaceofsocialimaginings.19
According to Brooks, melodrama uncovers the moral occult in
lieu of the destroyed traditional sacred in an urge towards
resacralization,20 and a means of investing individual everyday
lives with significance and justification.21 Given that the
traditionalsacredisverymuchintactinIndianmelodrama,isthe
expressiveworkofmelodramaintheIndianformanurgetowards
resacralization,foritdoesnotseemtofunctioninoppositiontoor
asanalternativetotheformer?Oneanswercouldbethatwhat we
see at work here is the sacralization of the everyday, a ritual
affirmationoffaithinthespiritualthatisintegrallyconnectedtothe
significant place of tradition in the nationalist ideology of the
modernthatwasrootednotinanidentitybutadifferencewiththe
perceivedformsofculturalmodernityintheWest.22Arediscovered
andreformedtraditionwithspiritualityasitscorewascrucialto
theinnerdomainofnationalculturethatmarkedthedistinctiveness
oftheIndianmodern.

However,theworkthatthisidiomofthesacreddoesinthesefilms
isalittlemorespecificthanwouldseemfromtheaboveaccount.I
wanttouseMaheshKaulsGopinathtomakethispoint.Thefilmis
anarrativeaboutayoungman,Mohanssimultaneousattractionfor
two women: Neela, a film actress who takes a fancy to his
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innocence and naivete, qualities that are rare in the world of

cinema, and his childhood sweetheart Gopi who continues to
passionatelyadorehim.GopiisalsoMohansmotherschoicefor
him,achoicethatMohanresistsonlybecausehewouldliketobe
moremodernintheproceduresbywhichawifeischosen.Loveas
itisarticulatedincinemaishismodel,andhewantstoexperience
suchamagicforhimself.
Gopisdesireisarticulatedinadisplacedformviathesacrederotic
songs of Meera and Soordas, a tradition of Vaishnav bhakti
(devotion) in which the sacred and the profane are intertwined
realms that imbue each other, and in which human desire has a
spiritual aspiration and resonance. Neelas power play finally
destroysGopiforwhommadnessistheoutcomeoftheirresolvable
contradiction between her love and Mohans aspiration for a form
of subjectivity represented by the allure of cinema, at the very
moment when Mohan awakens to Neelas perfidy and insincerity.
By then Gopi is lost to the world, lost in an interior world where
nothingexists but Mohan, and where she sees Mohan everywhere
andineveryone.

Of course, Gopis love for Mohan is resonant with Meeras for

Krishna. What the sacred idiom is doing here as in the other two
examples cited earlier, is dual. On the one hand, it intensifies
humanexperienceinthelightofthesacred,orratherestablishesa
continuum between the human and the divine, thereby giving
hyperbolic expression to human desire. Devotion is not just the
tropeoftheeroticitsacralizesthehumaneroticanduncovers the
spiritual at the core of erotic experience. On the other hand, the
idiomofVaishnavbhaktialsounderscoresthecircumscribed,even
tragicnatureofhumanpossibilities.Atthispoint,therealmofthe
sacred provides a horizon of transcendence achieved via
renunciation or an immersion in the divine. While the idiom of
Vaishnav bhakti is an older cultural idiom, and is not necessarily
modern, it inflects the cinematic modern at a crucial point in its
history, and gives voice to the ambivalences, the failures of the
modernandembodiestheexcessthatthemoderncannotcontain.

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GopilostinaninteriorworldGopinath.

Whiletheallureandthefearofthemodernissymbolicallyfigured
inGopinathasthecinema,thetragicconsequencesofdesireinall
thesefilmsthatIhaveused,underscorethefailureoftherealization
ofsubjectiveindividuationforbothmenandwomenatthismoment
of incipient modernity. While human desire is articulated, the
possibilities of its full bodied realization and consummation are
denied. The instabilities of cultural and historical transition that
leadtoaquestioningofclass,caste,andgenderroleshavenotled
toabreakingawayfromtheconstructionsofthepast,orcongealed
into newer forms. At this point, not only do we see a full bodied
melodramaticembodimentoftheissuesoutlinedabove,itisevident
thatitismelodramathatasgenericformprovidesthemodalitiesby
whichthestrugglesoversubjectivityandgenderidentitiesintheir
locationinspecifichistoricalandsocialmatricesarearticulated.

However, one cannot assume an unproblematic identification of

gender and melodrama. Individual subjectification rather than
gender may actually be the typical space of melodrama. At the
sametime,Ihaveattemptedtodemonstratethattheintersectionsof
genderwithclass,casteandaparticularsocialandculturalhistory
constitute both gender and genre in particular ways even while
expressiveformslikemelodramamaybeurforms.Ifconditionsof
impossibility circumscribe especially female, but also male desire
in these films, the pressure of a melodramatic modern articulates
this failure cinematically. Perhaps one can say, adapting Hansen,
that melodrama is the form of the vernacular modern that
encapsulatesandexpressesthecontradictionsofmodernity.23

* I would like to thank Christine Gledhill for her comments on a draft of this
piece,andalsoforgivingmeanopportunitytopresentaversionofthispaperon
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herpanelGenreandGender:RethinkingCulturalandAestheticIntersectionsat
theAnnualSocietyforCinemaandMediaStudies(SCMS)Conference,Chicago,
March 2007. A more detailed version of this piece will appear in her volume
Genre and Gender: Culture and Aesthetics in Contemporary Cinema
(forthcomingfromUniversityofIllinoisPress,2009).Iwouldalsoliketothank
Shashidharan,formerDirector of the National Film Archives and others at the
Archivesforalltheir help with access to the films, material and stills: Dhiwar,
Chief Preservation Officer, Urmila Joshi, Librarian, Lakshmi and Arti of the
DocumentationSectionandSalaamandManohar.
Footnotes:
1.ChristineGledhill(ed.),Home is Where the Heart is: Studies in Melodrama
and the Womans Film. BFI Publishing, London, 1987 Christine Gledhill,
RethinkingGenre,inChristineGledhillandLindaWilliams(eds.),Reinventing
FilmStudies,Arnold,London,2000andLindaWilliams,MelodramaRevised,
in Nick Brown (ed.), Refiguring American Film Genres: Theory and History,
UniversityofCaliforniaPress,Berkeley/LosAngeles/London,1998,pp.4282.
2.Gledhill,2000,opcit.,p.232
3.ThephraseisPeterBrooksTheMelodramaticImagination:Balzac,Henry
James, Melodrama and the Mode of Excess, Columbia University Press, New
York,1984,p.5.Mostofthewritersonmelodramahavespokenofitsemergence
intransitionalperiodsBrooks1984,ibid.ThomasElsaesser,TalesofSound
andFury:Observationsonthe Family Melodrama, in Christine Gledhill (ed.),
op cit., 1987 Linda Williams, 1998, op cit. Ben Singer, Melodrama and
Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and its Contexts, Columbia University
Press,NewYork,2001andE.AnnKaplan,Melodrama,CinemaandTrauma,
Screen42(2),Summer2001,201205.
4.ParthaChatterjee,TheNationanditsWomen:theParadox of the Womens
Question, in his The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial
Histories,PrincetonUniversityPress,Princeton,1993,p.117.
5.Ibid.,p.120.
6.Ibid.,p.121.
7.Ibid.,p.129.
8.DipeshChakrabarty,TheDifferenceDeferralofaColonialModernity:Public
DebatesonDomesticityinBritishIndia,inDavidArnoldandDavidHardiman
(eds.), Subaltern Studies VIII: Essays in Honour of Ranajit Guha, Oxford
UniversityPress,NewDelhi,1994.
9.TanikaSarkar,HinduWife,HinduNation:Community,ReligionandCultural
Nationalism,PermanentBlack,NewDelhi,2001.
10.DipeshChakravarty,opcit.,p.87.
11. David N. Rodowick, Madness, Authority and Ideology: The Domestic
Melodramaofthe1950s,inChristineGledhill(ed.),HomeisWheretheHeart
is:StudiesinMelodramaandtheWomansFilm.BFIPublishing,London,1987,
p.275.
12.Ibid.,p.271.
13.SeeBrooksdiscussionofmelodramaasthetextofmuteness,opcit.,1984,
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pp.5680.
14.Brooksdefinesthemoraloccultasthedomainofoperativespiritualvalues
whichisbothindicatedwithinandmaskedbythesurfaceofreality.Ibid.,p.5.
15.RaviVasudevanseesthesonganddanceandthecomicsequences as not
merely part of a narrative continuum, but then also suggests that these para
narrative elements insert the film and the spectator into a larger field of
coherence, one that stretches beyond the immediate experience of viewing
films. See his The Melodramatic Mode and the Commerical Hindi Cinema:
NotesonFilmHistory,NarrativeandPerformanceinthe1950s,Screen 30(3),
Summer 1989, pp. 4546. I am arguing for a conception of narrative and
narrationalforminwhichthesonghasacrucialfunction.
16.PatricePetro,JoylessStreets:WomenandMelodramaticRepresentationin
WeimarGermany,PrincetonUniversityPress,Princeton,1989,p.32.
17.Ibid.,xxiii.
18.Gledhill,1987,opcit.,p.9.
19.Gledhill,2000,opcit.,p.232.
20.Ibid.,p.16.
21.Gledhill,1987,opcit.,p.29.
22.ParthaChatterjee,opcit.,p.117.
23. See Hansens The Mass Production of the Senses: Classical Cinema as
Vernacular Modernism, in Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams (ed.),
Reinventing Film Studies, op cit. Hansen sees classical Hollywood cinema as
vernacularmodernism.Whileheranalysisofclassicalcinemassensationalism
and its ability to render a distinctively modern sensorium is quite correct, her
conflationofmodernityandmodernismisproblematic,forculturalandaesthetic
forms cannot be equated. Using Williams (1998), Gledhill (2000) and Singer
(2001),Isuggestthatwerethinkthevernacularformasmelodrama.

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