Irony

For a self-proclaimed feminist, I wonder how Suhasini okayed the following lyrics in her movie 'Indira' for the song 'Thoda thoda':
Pasithavan amudham parugidathane 17 vasanthangal idhazh valarthen...

2 comments:

Prabhu S said...

should a feminist[in this case the female lead in the movie] by definition be devoid of love and lust?..

Prasad Venkat said...

Prabhu,
I believe feminism inherently opposes the sexual suppression of women and the power/pleasure that men derive from a sense of 'control' they might 'enjoy' over women. Although feminists fight for equality in all aspects of life, sexual freedom has been at the core. To answer your question, a feminist can be lustful. In fact, sex-positive feminism encourages sexual liberalization. But a loose translation of that line means: I've been waiting 17 years to be deflowered by you. Though this isn't in contrast with any feminist principle per se, I find it somewhat ironical that a strong female protagonist would find grooming herself for her prince charming to bed her.

To put in another way, Suhasini would not have green-lighted the line in a dialogue form -- where Anu Hassan mouths out words that imply what Vairamuthu wrote. Suhasini must have thought: Since it's a song, laced with music and already has a dream-like texture to it, why not give the poet his freedom. But this doesn't happen with a better director. When Payne was directing About Schmidt, Jack Nicholson said something very smart while the camera was running and the director edited it out. Payne said that it was something Nicholson would have said, but not Schmidt (the character he was playing).