Date: Sat, 16 Dec 1995 23:28:52 -0500 (EST)
From: ksumner-AT-bosshog.arts.uwo.ca
Subject: Re: female combatants: Bandit Queen story


 was he right to take that license and still call it a
>true story?  and continue to cal it a true story even after the real life
>heroine of his movie denies most of it?  i think that even if all of it
>was true (his version, that is), she still has the right to privacy, and
>a right to deny any aspect of her life she wants to.  it isn't his
>perogative to fiddle with the "facts", whatever they may be, and even
>less his right to throw the fact that phoolan is now married to a thakur
>herself as a way of undermining her reaction.  she may be a public
>figure, she may even be a living myth, but her life is not public
>property for people to mangle and represent as they see fit, no matter
>how noble the cause and how un-bollywood or un-hollywood the
>representation.

I don't mean to piss anybody off here, and I have no desire to protect or
defend the makers of _Bandit Queen_ (which I have just, at last, seen)...
But: What is a movie (or novel, or poem) if not a version of the truth?
Are we to demand that poetry stick to the facts, or that movies somehow (it
will never happen, it's a fictive medium) tell the "truth"?  I can't think
of any filmic or written biography that everyone agrees is the truth -
they're always "mangled" and they're often more about the teller than the
so-called subject. Phoolan Devi *is* a public figure.  She's a mythic
figure, and myths circulate, and they get made into poems and stories and
books and songs and films.  Questions for me are: how is this version made,
for whom, and what are its politics?

I just can't base a reading of a film entirely on its truth-value.  There
is a wonderful film about Richard Nixon by Robert Altman called _Secret
Honour_ which is basically a 90 minute monologue by Nixon.  It's completely
wild and certainly takes liberty with the facts.  But what are the facts?
Should we confirm with Nixon?  What's *not* interesting about the film is
what is really really true and what is not.  What's interesting is what
material Altman uses and what he does with it.  It's an interpretation,
like all art.

So _The Bandit Queen_ is not all true -- but *what* is it?  How do people
read the film as it stands?  After measuring its truth-value (20%, 50%,
80%) what do we do with it?  It still needs to be read.

I understand the difficulties with reading this film.  I know that Phoolan
Devi is not Richard Nixon, and I know that issues of gender and caste/class
need to be addressed.  If the filmmaker has committed epistemic acts of
violence against Phoolan Devi, if he has violated ethical or legal codes,
if he has abused his authority or Phoolan Devi's trust (I have to take
people's words for that, I just don't know) then he ought to be called on
those acts and be held responsible for them.  That's an important aspect of
criticism.  I'm not arguing that we ought to treat the film like some
autonomous piece of art divorced from economics and ideology, but I am
interested in what people think the ideology of the film *is*.  I'm also
interested in the line of questioning about audience, which could be
extended into a discussion of spectatorship.  How is the viewer implicated
in the events of the film? What are the politics of our look(s)?

By the way, this is what it says at the beginning of the film:

This is a true story.

---------

"Animals, drums, low castes and women are worthy of being beaten."  Quote
>from the "Manu Smriti," a book of Hindu religious scriptures.

---------

The events in this film are based on the dictated prison diaries of Phoolan
Devi -- Goddess of Flowers -- The Bandit Queen.

An interesting opening.  The first and third statements are not identical
(truth becomes based on).  The second suggests a kind of feminist politics
and a critique of dominant ideology, which would be worth tracing
throughout the film (is it sustained?).  The third opens things way up.
Not only is this a film text of a text (written) of a text (oral) - which
certainly questions its relation to "truth" (whether that was the
filmmaker's intent or not) -  it's about shifting and multiple identities.
Who is the real Phoolan Devi?

Any comments?

Karen