Good Ol' Fashioned Heteronormative Family Fun

 

Let me preface this by saying I had a fantastic time watching Kuch Kuch Hota Hai this week. I think, though, that while Karan Johar's Bollywood musical is chock-full of catchy melodies, bright colors, and 90s nostalgia, its underlying messages about gender and what constitutes a happy family (and therefore a happy ending) are worth examining a little more critically.

For starters, Anjali Sharma's story arc is troubling in that it reinforces the cliche notion that women must look and act traditionally feminine in order for them to find a man. Teenage Anjali wears her hair short, dresses in sporty clothes, and loves playing basketball. She seems very true to herself and comfortable presenting the way she does, yet as an adult, we find her with hair well past her shoulders and wearing more feminine attire. By that point, too, she has not one but two male love interests. Regardless of whether or not Rahul harbored feelings for Anjali when they were young, he pursued and eventually married the prim girly-girl, Tina. 

Not long into the film, however, Tina dies, leaving Rahul to raise their daughter who's named Anjali after their childhood friend who had since moved away. This is something he is actually quite capable of, with a little help from his mother. Their multi-generational household presents a viable alternative to the traditional heterosexual nuclear family. In fact, the homoerotic tension between Tina and Anjali Sharma throughout the flashback sequence covertly proposes yet another possibility. Ultimately, neither of those make the cut, and Rahul and Anjali marry in a typical Hollywood happy ending.

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, as enjoyable as it is, is a prime example of popular cinema used as a vehicle to promote socially conservative ideals surrounding marriage, gender, and family. As consumers of those sorts of films, we're fed these messages over and over to the point where most of us internalize them and accept them as the truth. Obviously today there are mainstream films that push back against these traditional ideologies, but this is an interesting international example of how cinema can be wildly entertaining yet still advocate for conventional social norms when we look beneath the surface.

The Outsiders

 

The 1974 film Ali: Fear Eats the Soul directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder centers around the then controversial relationship that unfolds between Emmi, a middle-aged German woman with grown children, and Ali, a younger immigrant worker from Morocco. Still today, Ali is unsettling largely because of the stares the two protagonists receive from just about everyone they encounter. What was even more troubling to me, though, was Ali's seemingly permanent outsider status throughout the film marked by white Germans repeatedly "othering" him.

In perhaps the most direct attack against Ali, the shopkeeper of a local store refuses to help him find what he was looking for by feigning incomprehension at Ali's German pronunciation. The shopkeeper's act, however, is a thin veil for his racism, and it's particularly disgusting because it is a scene that's not uncommon today in our country. Their interaction highlights both Ali's attempt to integrate himself into German society as well as white Germans' unwillingness to let him in. 

Even Emmi in one instant reminds viewers of Ali's outsider status when she tells him she doesn't know how to make couscous and that he needs to learn to live as Germans do if he wants to continue living in that country. Although he doesn't verbalize it, he is clearly hurt by her comment and leaves her apartment to go see the owner of the pub he frequents. This is another hard-hitting scene because of all people, Emmi should be on his side, especially since she now knows what it's like to be seen as the "other".

By the end of the film, the doctor reaffirms once and for all that Ali is an outsider. He remarks that the medical condition that caused Ali's collapse in the pub was typical for immigrant workers and that there was not much he could do to help in the long run because he knew Ali would be back soon. Mayne argues that "the roots of that 'accident' are clearly the material conditions of Ali's existence," which not only encompass his job but also the stress stemming from his perpetual treatment as someone different from those around him (70).

The ending reveals Fassbinder's bleak outlook on the possibility for change in this respect, a perspective that's also clear in his 1978 picture In a Year of 13 Moons. Just like Ali, the director's later film concludes with the protagonist, this time a transgender woman, still unaccepted by the society she lives in. The woman, Elvira, searches for love throughout the narrative much like Ali does, yet she's unable to find it due to other characters' perceptions of fundamental parts of her identity. When we examine the two films together, we see Fassbinder's portrayal of a postwar Germany that's in some ways just as intolerant of diversity as it was during the Nazi regime.

Keepin' It Neorealistic

 

Almost all cinema strives to a certain degree to convey a narrative in a manner that convinces viewers that what we're seeing on screen is real in order to facilitate our identification with its characters as well as our mental investment in the film in general. What sets the Italian Neorealism movement apart, however, is the lengths its adherents went to in creating hyperreal films. Theorist and critic Andé Bazin said of Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves in particular, "It is in the end the perfect aesthetic illusion of reality: no more cinema" (Lawton 16). Today I'll unpack some of the ways in which this film uses narrative and mise-en-scène to paint a realistic picture of post World War II Rome, and I'll also touch on how non-diegetic sound in the form of music doesn't take away from the realism but actually bolsters it for us as viewers.

At the heart of Bicycle Thieves lies a story about a father and his son. The director crafts this narrative using non-actors to play its protagonists, Antonio and Bruno. We believe Antonio's struggle precisely because the actor is not some movie star. Instead, he truly looks like a man who's been through a lot. Antonio's quest to find his stolen bicycle so he can keep his job is also quite relatable, but it also highlights the plight of those living in extreme poverty in a very true-to-life way. Even from the start it's clear just how poor the Ricci family is once Antonio's wife sells her dowry sheets. The film goes on to show the intraclass conflict between Antonio and the equally if not more impoverished man he believes stole his bicycle, all taking place in the actual streets of Rome rather than a studio set. Ultimately, this conflict is caused by the power structures that keep the rich at the top while everyone else battles it out for the scraps.

Bicycle Thieves, despite its heavy dose of realism, also has certain cinematic aspects that, if we pay close attention to them, firmly remind us that we're still watching a film. Lawton points out two explicit references to cinema within the film itself: firstly, the Rita Hayworth poster Antonio hangs up on his first day at work before his bicycle is stolen and later when another character mentions that "movies bore him" (18). We've also got an orchestral score throughout which cues us to feel specific emotions during key parts of the story. This is a technique closely associated with Hollywood, yet in Bicycle Thieves it's quite effective. To revisit the final scene, the frantic music playing as Antonio tries to peddle away on the bike he stole out of desperation followed by the somber strings accompanying shots of him fighting back tears in front of his son both tell us exactly how we're supposed to feel. 

I think, though, that De Sica chose to include the score because was acutely aware that he was making a film, albeit one that aimed to capture the real in an accurate way. His awareness of the medium allowed him to play to its particular strengths, one of those being the power of non-diegetic sound. If anything, the music heightens our sense of the story's realism in terms of the character's emotions. Antonio's anguish as Bruno takes his hand becomes even more real to us once it's set to a melancholic string melody. Bicycle Thieves tells a moving tale which borrows a great deal from the real but at the same time lets cinematic elements like an orchestral score intensify the experience for the viewer.

Nostalgia and the Silver Screen

 

French New Wave director François Truffaut sharply criticized "French 'quality' film, defined as well-shot and well-acted with scintillating dialogue, but far removed from authentic personal experience" (McCreary 65). The 400 Blows, Truffaut's autobiographical film from 1959, is characteristic of that new cinematic movement in many respects, but today I'll shine the spotlight on its use of location shooting in black and white to create an aesthetic that evokes nostalgia and thus helps fulfill the director's desire to convey an authentic and personal story.

The narrative centers around a young boy named Antoine and his coming of age in Paris during the 1950s.  It deals heavily with childhood (and childhood in contrast with adulthood), and the fact that the film was shot in black and white invites us as viewers to connect with the setting and the main character as if we, too, had experienced that specific place in that specific time. Especially from a twenty-first century perspective, seeing the streets of Paris in grayscale as opposed to full color accentuated the feeling that I could have grown up there, as if I were looking back on past experiences that I never actually lived through. The result of my nostalgic attitude towards the setting was a heightened sympathy for Antoine as he navigated his troubles with his parents, teachers, and the other adults he encountered through the course of the picture. The 400 Blows may have been based on Truffaut's own boyhood, yet the way he presents the film aesthetically using black and white causes viewers to identify with the main character's struggle or at least reflect on their own childhood and the kids they likely knew who were similar to Antoine. 

Before I end, I'd like to briefly contrast the black and white aesthetic of The 400 Blows with that of Raging Bull. Like the former, the latter film is also firmly rooted in a particular place, in this case the Bronx. In contrast to Truffaut's version of Paris, though, Scorsese's Raging Bull does not paint a particularly flattering portrait of the New York neighborhood or its inhabitants, and this cynical take is evident in the lack of wide shots romanticizing the location. Instead, the effect of black and white is that it keeps us focused on the action, whether we're watching Jake argue with his wife without the distraction of color or if we're in the boxing ring along with him as the black shadows in the background keep our eyes trained on him and his opponent. Regardless, both films tell personal stories that bring us into the worlds of their characters through a black and white aesthetic.