ESSAY: Disability and Indian Cinema

SENSORY IMPAIRMENTS AND CINEMA IN INDIA

By Joyojeet Pal 

Studies of disability in India show widely prevalent views of disabilities as being deserved as a result of some action attributable to a previous life, or a sin of another life, even among the disabled themselves. To understand how such beliefs are held and reinforced in modern-day India, we examine the portrayal of the disabled in Indian cinema to document ways in which ideas about disability may be reinforced by popular media. This article studies the portrayal of disability in Indian cinema from the early talkie era to contemporary cineplex blockbusters. We begin by relating popular cinema against the depiction of  disability in Hindu mythology with characters such as Dhritarashtra, Ashtavakra, Manthara, Surpanakha and Shravan and find much resonance of these with some of the typecast representations in Indian cinema. The article argues that the stereotyping of disability has been done in a few important ways, and citing over 200 examples primarily from Hindi and Tamil cinema, we examine these in detail

We specifically study four important trends—disability as a form of punishment, disability as some form of inherent dependence—thus someone with a disability as being dependent on others for survival or charity or unable to take of their own or family members' affairs, disability as a form of disequilibrium that is an unnatural and often temporary state that can be reversed, and finally a new trend of disability in recent cinema that includes disabled characters as lead characters. We find evolving views of disability representing a complex array of perspectives and perceptions of disability that have changed in some ways, but in others have remained fundamentally the same. In a society where films play an incredibly important role in our social and public consciousness, examining what filmmakers perceive as acceptable portrayal of disability helps us reflect on disability more broadly in Indian society.

Here are a few excerpts from the article, to read the entire piece, click here.

The 2009 film Lafangey Parindey was centred on a dancer played by Deepika Padukone who loses her sight before a major competition, briefly loses her faith in her abilities, and then is mentored back to excellence on the dance floor by a prizefighter, Neil Nitin Mukesh, who specialises in blindfolded freestyle fighting and happens to cause her to lose her sight in an accident. The film has an interesting mixed message. On the surface, the film emphasises the point that people with disabilities can achieve, and overachieve in what may be considered a mainstream activity for the able-bodied, and at the time of its release was lauded by the popular press for the lead actress’ attempts at method acting by the actress who spent several months and had to “observe a lot of blind people” to prepare for the role.

But not far beneath the surface of the plot, a hodgepodge of stereotype cloaked by a story of the blind protagonist’s determination, delivered as part of a fast-paced romance. After the accident, Padukone broods gently over her shattered dreams of being a prize dancer, and the guilt-ridden thug decides to turn Bodhisattva by leading her to redemption. He starts by beating her and nearly drowning her in a vat of water, emphasising that her desire to overcome her disability need be as desperate as the desire to breathe she felt when he was shoving her head underwater. The argument appeals to Padukone who proceeds to rectify her disability by sharply honing her listening skills, with the repentant thug who more or less eliminates any need for sight by giving her an A-grade Shaolin-temple-esque training on navigating with sound. The film ends on a note that not only suggests that the rectification of disabilities is largely at the will of the individual, but more importantly, that the path can be revealed to the weak woman by an enlightened man willing to mete out some tough love.

Disability on Indian screen is not nuanced with mixed message. From the occasional supercrip portrayal {Hartnett, 2000 #276} of Deaf lip-readers and blind people with near sonar ability to sense objects, to discourses of dependency around the pathos of disabled life, Indian cinema seemingly encompasses the range of canonical globally prevalent stereotypes…

Perhaps the most enduring portrayal of dismemberment as punitive is that of the ‘Thakur’ the protagonist from possibly the most-watched film in India, Sholay (Sippy 1975). In this film, Thakur, the police officer (Sanjeev Kumar) has his arms amputated by the bandit Gabbar (Amjad Khan). Unable to avenge himself, the Thakur employs two mercenaries to clean out the bandit’s gang, but sets up a climactic duel between himself and Gabbar. He begins the duel by noting that even without his arms, Gabbar is no match for him, and concludes it not by killing Gabbar, but by crushing his arms with spikes. The punishment for the evil is not a swift bullet, but an enduring disability similar to the one imposed on the protagonist.

Perhaps the most important reason why the Thakur is a critical starting point in the discussion of disability in Indian cinema is the ridicule of his disability on a range of public forums. There have been entire television comedy shows that mock the character without arms, a popular MTV joke which features other characters also losing their hands in the film, viral videos often put together by groups of friends, and even national advertisements by major corporations. Airtel, the country’s largest cellular network, has an advertisement that mocks the Thakur’s inability to type text messages, Monster.com, the international job search features the Thakur as a sports umpire who cannot raise his arms to make signals, followed by the catchline “Caught in the wrong job?”, and Channel [V] India’s music television channel which spoofs Thakur’s inability to make a “V” sign for a group photo…

While mental illnesses have frequently been exploited in crude terms in Mumbai and South Indian cinema alike, physical or sensory disabilities, especially of male leads, has seldom been the central theme of mainstream films.  Gulzar’s Koshish from 1972 was one such film in which the male and female leads – Sanjeev Kumar and Jaya Bhaduri respectively are Deaf-Mute, and the third main character, Om Shivpuri, is blind. The film, often seen as a landmark in the portrayal of disability in Indian cinema, opens with sign language alphabet in its credits, and at several points in the film takes what may be called an ‘educational’ stance to its audience by instructing one or another character in the film how a Deaf person may communicate, participate economically , etc. Though the protagonists in the film live independently, at several points their ability to do so is threatened by society and the people around them. An exploitative brother-in-law cheats and steals from them, their own infant child dies because they do not hear him cry, they are frequently poor and generally depicted as kindhearted unfortunates. Two situations in the film are particularly troubling—when the couple have a child and the parents watch the infant cautiously to find out if he can speak and hear, and are much relieved when an aunt tells them that he can. They run into a panic later when they think he is deaf as well, only to find out to their delight that he is not...

A filmmaker with a very complicated contribution to the understanding of disability in Indian cinema is director Sanjay Bhansali. He has made three films—Khamoshi (1996) in which the protagonists are Deaf-Mute, Black (2005) in which one protagonist has Alzheimer’s and another is Deaf-Blind-Mute, and Guzaarish (2010) in which the protagonist has quadriplegia. Not commenting on Bhansali’s own reasons for picking themes related to disability repeatedly, the consistent alternating narrative of pith and fortitude in his films strongly reinforce an othering view of disability in India.

Khamoshi features Nana Patekar and Seema Biswas as a Deaf-Mute couple who brave through a number of difficulties in raising their children (one of who dies). The film has some use of rudimentary sign language, and even though it uses more sign per se than Koshish, the use of deafness in the film is often disquieting. The central theme of the film is the importance of music in the lives of two of the four characters, who are the mother (Helen) and the daughter (Manisha Koirala) of Nana Patekar. Through most of the film, Patekar and Biswas claim to ‘hate music’ which itself is disappointing to their daughter who wants to be a musician. The film frequently turns to the value of rhythm and notes in the lives of Helen and Koirala who love dancing and singing, and both are required to sacrifice their love for music for the Deaf couple through a series of situations. This peak when Koirala starts screaming in their home to make a point to her suitor who wants to encourage her to have a career in music. She says in frustration, “Scream and shout, there is nobody who can hear you here.”

Perhaps the most unsettling facet of the film is its emphasis on exaggerated situations in which the characters are insulted for their disability, at the start of the film Patekar is told “You have no option but to beg. I pitied you because you were deaf, but you cannot handle any job.” The character is further dehumanised when as a salesman, Patekar takes his daughter along home to home as an interlocutor in scenes that reverse the roles between adult and child, thus placing more agency in the child who rattles off the sales-pitch and reducing the father to the menial carrier of goods. Later in the film, Patekar burns a hand and a doctor tells his employer, “Why do you keep such disabled people at work. Because of his not being able to hear, any mishap can take place” following which he is promptly fired. While the exclusion from the workplace is very central to the experience of disability in India, the use of melodramatic cruelty in films caricaturises this economic reality and turns the individual into a recipient of charity by focusing pointedly at the inability to perform one of another task, and highlighting the economic burden of a disabled aren’t on a child…

Joyojeet Pal is a professor of Information Studies at the University of Michigan where he conducts research on the use of assistive technology by people with vision impairments.

Comments

[aishwarya]

Thank you Joyojeet for an excellent article. I had a few thoughts when I read this summary that I wanted to share. I hope to read the full article soon.

1) The balance between portaying difficult real situations of oppression and highlighting the agency of the persons suffering that oppression is a tough one... it takes some genius to get the balance right.... and so far, the best balance I have seen on this topic is in the Tamizh film 'Mozhi'

2) Hindi cinema survives on stereotyping ... though we seem to have lost the older traditions of nuance that our myths present.... ravana is a scholar and a skilled ruler, but with the fatal flaw of lust.... duryodhana is loyalty personified.... krishna tricks the rules to get his job done... it might be good for us to go back in time, to learn how stories that are engrossing and that stand the test of centuries can be told with nuanced multi-faceted characters.

3) There is something to be said of just having some visibility for issues around disability presented in these popular culture forms. Else, our country is built to exclude those with disabilities at present.... no ramps anywhere, only stairs.... no systematic sign language usage in the news (unlike what used to happen on DoorDarshan years ago... what happened to that excellent feature?) .... no easy way for those without sight to navigate our roads.... some good has been done, but lets hope we use this newfound presence of lead characters with various disabilities in movies to propel popular discussion and reform.

Thanks for working on this important topic!