Transcript Document 7340602

Femininity, Female Body and
Race
The Edible Woman and
Desperately Seeking Helen
The Edible Woman –
Starting Questions
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Why does Marian escape from Peter’s party?
What happens at the party? What’s wrong with
Peter’s camera shooting?
Why does she go to Duncan? Why does she
reject food totally after their night together?
Does Duncan help her work out a solution?
What does the cake lady mean?
The party
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Different examples of female roles: office
virgins and soap-wives;
Marian envies Clare and defends Clare;
Marian envisions her future
Marian’s second escape (a
reinforcement of her first attempt)
Marian’s fear of losing her body/
identity
Marian Resists
1.
Female Body:
1.
Instrumentalized;
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2.
Objectified;
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3.
work;  body rapable
birthing;
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2.
images
Controlled
Feminine Virtues;
Types & Femininity.
As consumers
her work and life– exploitation
and hierarchy;
Experiences undifferentiated
mass of femininity.
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3.
Toad-like office ladies 11
Ainsley’s and Clare’s choices
Ash tray on her back chap 23;
Cares a lot about her mirror images
being a single woman &
consumer
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Feminine roles (Peter’s expectations
and the Lady from below)
Feels controlled at the supermarket;
at the salon; chap 24
Marian’s self images & body as
foods
1.Image
 In Peter’s eyes: chap 9 p.
85;
 spoon image, 158;
 faucet image 239
(Duncan’s dislike of public
mirrors)
 The dolls chap 25 p. 241
 Her image at the party;
and Peter’s clothes. P.
251
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Food
M’s skull like
cantelope chap 10 p.
86;
Lucy’s 118 like a bait;
Baby like prunes 142
Marian and Duncan
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Duncan: refuses to romanticize the whole
affair;
Cares more about himself than Marian;
Breaks Marian’s “nurse” self-image;
Points out the truth of human relationship
as mutual consumption.
Marian’s food rejection
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foods which seem to have been alive
(Meat  bones & skeleton 162-65; eggs
 chicken 173, carrots  roots 193;
pudding  cocoons p. 222; cake  cells
227 )
Foods with unknown ingredients chap 20
p. 192;
Total rejection: p. 283; 284
Cake Lady
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Marian’s refusal to be assimilated;
Another ritual of cake-eating with Duncan
as a child.
Eisha Marjara's Desperately
Seeking Helen
Filming process
"Helen is the conduit through which I explore my story
and that of my mother's. When the idea of going to
Mumbai and filming my search for her came about, I
learnt more about Helen, and Hindi cinema. It was
then, I became aware of the fact that she was a
vamp, and that idea intrigued me a great deal. I
returned with footage of interviews with other vamps-Nadira, Padma Khanna, Navneet Nishan--as well with
directors and actors who in some way were
associated with Helen. The story really took shape in
the editing room much later where I shaped the
story,'' reveals Marjara.
Filming process
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"Actress Helen was not interested in being in the
film, and Marjara respected that. Helen is a
private person, and doesn't give interviews that
easily. "Also, I couldn't at the time explain my
movie to her because it was far too complex for
her to understand what I was going to do. I
didn't even know what I was going to do. She
thought I wanted to make an expose of her life.
I think it freaked her out,'' confesses Marjara.
http://www.littleindia.com/India/may2k/helen.htm
Starting Questions
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Why is the protagonist interested in Helen,
the vamp? What is her experience in
Bombay like? How is it related to her
experience in the past?
How is she related to her mother? Why
did she reject foods?
The past: two kinds of losses
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There’s no turning back.
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At 6 or 7, she wanted to be Helen.
1971 Amritsar to Quebec; Trois Riviere; 99 percent
French speaking people
1985: Air India Flight 182 exploded over the Atlantic,
and no one survived.  the death of her mother and
sister.
Movies (and the days of black and white) TV
Her second trip back to India at 12, feeling homesick.
The present: Search for something she has lost.
Symbols: watch, bridge, Helen vs. heroine
Role Models – 1
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Helen
Role Models – 2
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Her Mother – heroine after marriage
Role Models
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Helen: she has a lot of
funs. Vamp:
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An outsider, foreign
looking;
Out with a lot of men,
Smart enough to find her
own way and there might
be dangers
Her size: larger than life.
More than 700 movies,
never the same woman
but always Helen.
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Mother  a heroine
in life for her in her
childhood.
Role Model –Mother’s frustrations
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Life after marriage.
Learning for growups is not fun.
Mother: “Don’t be like me.”
Never gets her balance, with one foot in Canada,
one foot in India;
“Being a housewife was being the house.” her
desire to do what she wanted
Cannot teach because of her accent;
Her childhood playmates
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A table
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 to eat everything on one’s plate; do homework;
underneath: also a stage for a special story; for her
pretending and playing.
A bigger world
got a doll –small waist, blonde, never wears a braid.
A good girl, not like Helen.
A TV set –lit up her imagination but didn’t tell the
truth. “That Girl” (her real world);
Bionic Girl “Jamie”
 Has to study 
multiplication table;
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Role Models (3)
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Bionic Woman,
Charlie’s Angels
Her teenage rebellion
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Reaches puberty;
(mentruation)
Bigger is not better
here; rejects the
Indian in the lady.
 stays behind the
camera.
The cousin’s
wedding wanted to
get it over with.
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Second return to
India.
Teenage Rebellion: Anorexia
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Now, when she talks about her anorexia,
she says: "I look at it in the light of identity:
being suspended between child and adult,
man and woman, stopping the process of
growing up."
(http://www.saturdaynight.ca/1999_06/surv
eyor_portrait.asp )
Her Mother’s Death
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Of her mother, she says: "The way she
died is the ultimate metaphor for her
inability to strike a balance between two
cultures, dying between two continents, in
mid-air, between here and there."
(http://www.saturdaynight.ca/1999_06/surv
eyor_portrait.asp )
Searching for her fantasy
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Vamp: Has to have good figure, not slim
type  “My chances are . . . Slim.”
Her Search at the present time
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Mambai filled with movie posters.
The taxi driver  historic place
Interviews:
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chorus girl: wants to be a housewife
A former actress who runs a training school;
A Bollywood holy man.
Wig maker, Victor
Padma Kahnan – on the screen not his mother.
Daydreams at night; nightmares
Car chase  film city;
Train Compartment for ladies  lady wrestlers
Role Model –Vamp
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Vamp: still a stereotype, an image for male
consumption
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Once a bad girl forever a bad girl;
To be killed or forsaken.
Changing her direction in the
search
The real is hard to find  what was I really looking for?
The woman behind the vamp?
Off the screen, who was she?
As real as my mother.
Then she wouldn't be
Helen,
would she.
Not my secret Helen.
Ending