ESSAY: Women Who Have Jobs And Other Troublesome Pursuits (Part 2)VAMPITUDE
by Joyojeet Pal
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Vampitude here is defined as the desire of a woman to undermine the rectitude of a man, usually with her sexuality as her primary weapon. The mythological nymph Menaka who helped trip over the sage Vishwamitra with her wiles is our exemplar. The classic though unwitting vamp of Tamil literature is Madhavi, the dancer who Kovalan, the husband of the virtuous Kannagi moves in with in Silappatikaram. In the epic, the dancer is herself an intellectual, and a deeply complex character who eventually gives up her life for monkhood, though RS Mani’s popular pre-independence screen adaptation (Kannagi, 1942) of Madhavi was that of a seductress, and the bête noire of Kannagi, the iconic heroine in waiting. In short, Madhavi is the starting point Kodambakkam vampitude.
The Tamilness of Madhavi is in most vamps replaced with the westernization of the professional screen seductress. Much like Helen and Bindu did in the Bombay film industry, actresses like Silk Smitha made entire careers in vampitude, working on the villain’s behalf to test the hero’s resolve. Occasionally, there was the Menaka of good intent – such as Radhika in Moondru Mugan who helps fix a temporarily pious Rajinikanth, but for the most part, the vamp had the job of dressing in some garish imagination of western decadence, smoking, drinking, and being lascivious.
Male stars like Sivaji and Jaishankar less burdened by their image could occasionally have looser morals and indulge a vamp in dance or brief affair. By the time Rajnikant came to fore, his origins as a screen villain made it easier for him to have a vamp on each side, but in time, he went back to the Puritanism of mass movies in which the hero’s uprightness requires that he never fall pray to an evil woman (unless, conveniently, it is in a dream sequence). To date, ‘mass films’ aimed at rural audiences starring Vijaykanth or Vijay will rarely have the hero waver to the wiles of a vamp. The completeness of the Tamil superhero is tied up by his incorruptibility at the hands of the vamp. The vamp, for her inopportune choice of career, is doomed to a guaranteed comeuppance. If she’s fortunate, she can, like Madhavi, pick monkhood.
Finally, one of the most disconcerting features of the depiction of the western dancer, and the westernized woman in general is that of violence towards them. Murder mysteries in Tamil are freqently a number of films including Kalaignan, Pulanvisarai, Oomai Vizhigal, Tik Tik Tik, the murdered woman is a model or dancer. The working woman in Tik Tik Tik is shown as dressing suggestively, fantasizing about men lying on a swing, living alone in a debauched life that includes entertaining men inside the home and disturbing neighbours. The implication in many such films is that a westernized demeanour has causal relationships with violence, in some films such as Puthiya Paarvai or Sivappu Rojakkal, the narrative entreats the audience to empathize with the guilty male driven to the act of desperate violence.
CLASS: APPROPRIATE JOBS FOR THE RICH, AND FOR THE POOR
From the days when most Tamil cinema was mythological, there has always been the job of the underclass available to screen women. Thus early Tamil film had the princess’ attendants, by the 1940s, when secular cinema started to grow, the first few films with maid servants began to appear. One of the early instances was Velaikari (1949), a film about the scion of a rich household who falls in love with a servant maid. The film, written by Dravidian movement icon CN Annadurai himself came to present a cinematic personification of good and bad women, and also of the tension in inter-class romantic relationships. Importantly, the bad woman here was a fashionable, westernized woman who claims to take part in social work activities. The negative ‘social worker stereotype’ of the idle rich woman wearing sunglasses has persisted years after Velaikari – two critical negatives are implied here – first, the westernized dress and behaviour, and second, the interest in affairs outside of the threshold of one’s own home.
The primary protagonist as domestic maid servant in Tamil cinema has declined thematically over the years. There are two propositions for this – first the domestic worker offers little by means of aspirational value for the predominantly male audience that consumes these films, as opposed to the more glamorous alternatives such as the heiress or the college student. Second, even when the film does feature a ‘poor’ female protagonist, the rural belle makes a superior alternative to the urban maid, since the former engenders a greater value of earthy Tamil authenticity. As a result, the few cases of lead actresses as maid servants in the last few decades such as in Padaiyappa, have tended to be domestic help in large rural households. Most screen domestic workers have been in the supporting cast or the comedy track. Character actress Manorama practically made an art of this back in the 1960s. The Manorama domestic servant routine often featured Nagesh as a romantic double and lesser male relative of the hero or patriarchal family. This routine has continued with comedians like Vadivelu, Senthil, and Goundamani replacing Nagesh in these scenarios. Putting the maid servant in a comedy routine in part helps dehumanize the class relationship and especially where romantic connection with a male relative is involved, there is also a broader insinuation of class equity. The insinuation of equity is typically in the mode of benevolence from the master, such as the range of films in which an old servant is treated as a family member based on their years of loyalty. A closer approximation of the prevalent view of servants comes from Nagesh’s monologue to Manorama in En Kadamai. On her first day of work as a cook, she is given three conditions for her employment – 1. She will remain a servant, and not try to become a master, 2. She will not cook for herself, 3. She will not steal money when buying vegetables.
An unusual class occupation in Tamil cinema has been the secretary-at-home. Examples include Lakshmi as Manorama’s secretary in Kasethan Kadavulada, Rambha as Khushboo’s secretary in Minsara Kanna, or Lakshmi as Sivaji’s secretary in Vasantha Maligai. Such a character plays a mediator of class, since the secretary is herself educated, thus able to traverse class, and frequently offers a personality contrast to the haughtiness of wealth. The at-home-secretary is not only virtuous, but also changes those around her for the better, and usually ends up in a romantic relationship with the male lead. However, the transcending of work and home spaces invariably causes tensions, and the presence of an unwed female in the home of another brings about discomforts for the woman and the occasional aspersion on her character and/or intent. Take for instance MGR’s Idhaya Kani. In this film, his new-found home all purpose assistant (Radha Saluja) is being grilled by villagers for living in a man’s home without a formal relationship. Instead of shooing away the villagers because it is none of their business, MGR allows them to start to drag her away for a beating, and then stops them only to ask her if she will marry him. Now, at this point, their relationship is officially acceptable, thus denying anyone the right to question her legitimacy in his home.
Interestingly, while the secretary in the office facing discomfort is frequently dealt with disdain by the camera, the same is not true for the secretary in the home, because being a woman, being in a home and running the affairs of the home is still within her designated role as a good woman. In the latter case, the eventual union of the secretary-at-home with the male lead is the final justification of the woman’s thus far alien presence in his family’s home. This cross over to respectability, ie marriage, is critical, since without it the woman’s position remains tenuous in the home.
The at-home secretary is significantly different than the at office secretary. The latter is in a space for men, and consequently a tenuous space for a respectable woman. The first office scene of Bharatiraja’s Sigappu Rojakkal is indicative of this tension. A group of women are waiting to be interviewed – an administrator comes through the room asking the girls for pre-interview details in a lewd manner. None of the girls are offended at his behaviour, implying thus that such treatment of women in an office space ought not to be seen as surprising. Further, one of the girls is confident and outspoken, and in the interview comes across as modern and goal driven. This girl gets the job, and is swiftly murdered later. In Vasantha Maligai, Vanisri, looking for a job as a secretary approaches a hotel manager for an interview, his first question to her is, “Are you married?” which the manager explains as stemming from the fact that married women cannot work properly as their home is always on their minds.
Upon appointment, Vanisri is expected to show up at a party as part of her duties, the manager thereupon tries to rape her. Two implications – first a job at an office automatically means negotiating the possible extension of duties. Second, married women cannot hold jobs since they are (rightly?) occupied with matters of the home. An alternate interpretation would be that since the job is fundamentally a means for the manager to take advantage of a woman, it is necessary that such a woman be unmarried – since a married woman is necessarily unwilling, or protected by a man from such endeavours.
Perhaps the most convoluted plot was that of Priyamnavale, in which a secretary agrees to a one-year marriage arrangement with her boss’ son because of her family’s poverty. In all three cases here, the absence of a able and authentic Tamil male justifies the woman’s search for the secretarial job – in Vasantha Maligai, the girl’s father is disabled, in Priyamanavale, the father is dead, and in Sivappu Rojakkal, the brother is an airline pilot – established as a modern thinking man who is absent a lot of the time, and lets his sister work. This last case is a particularly important means of establishing a lack of Tamil values in a working woman’s family. Through much of the 70s and 80s, where a woman held a job despite the lack of economic need, male authority figure was shown as an indulgent westernized man like Sarath Babu in Duet (or the stereotypical boorish or nouveau riche spoiling father of an arrogant college girl, as was typical in the 60s), who allows the woman to work, thus unwittingly allowing for the conditions of the woman’s exploitation.
The office secretary however is not only the target of mischief, but often also the source. In Uthama Purushan, Bharata Vilas, and Thodarum, an attractive office secretary is the starting point for the husband’s indiscretion. In Ulagam Sutrum Vaaliban, scientist MGR’s has a secretary called Lily, and it turns out she is working for the villains, trying to steal his ‘formula.’ In MGR’s films, where the focus on female virtue is particularly sharp, this secretary stands out as everything that is not an authentic Tamil woman – she has an English name, dresses in western clothes, works for evil, and gasps lustfully when she sees MGR. Even before she has committed her act of treachery, everything about her personality has already condemned her to a demonized status of non-Tamilness.
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