Legend into Cinema: Mass Market’s Response towards Re-historicizing Bio Fiction in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmavat
Abstract:
Women in Indian history have much to offer beyond their contribution
as a structured text when it comes to politicize their portrayal on silver screen,
and succeeds to attract mass criticism towards sustaining life. Sanjay Leela
Bhansali’s film Padmavat (2018) discusses the crave of the audience and readers
for the impact that is created out of a woman who is daring and bold, and has
choices that is almost unimaginable for a man or even for the so called man and
masculinity. The silver screen becomes gold, and the audience feel the extreme
courage of a woman and her choice that lead to the happening of an event called
‘Jauhar’(self immolation in fire for saving one’s chastity) as the cultural identity
of the Rajasthani Indian women in the then situation . The cathartic effect that
‘golden fires’ of ‘Jauhar’ created on silver screen swayed the entire nation into a
panoramic sea of thought to criticise and create a desire to politicise such
historical moves to finally create a space for the mass celebration of a culture
that has the power to colour the emotions, reading and understanding the
women in history as a celebrity in their own terms who have found a potent and
fertile market place for public consumption. The protagonist queen Padmavati’s
courage for choices and her recognition in this mode of realistic fiction on screen
opens up for a lot of text and discourses that tie history and culture in
establishing film as a medium of gendered celebrity culture. The present paper
offers a re-reading of Indian film Padmavat as a representation of politics that
presents biographical fiction and film as a demand of the mass market. The
paper will be set on the backdrop of Indian cinema as an overgrowing mass
market in communicating and celebrating “Her” –story speaking volumes on her
identity that affect reader’s and audience’s mind.
Key Words: Adaptation, Bio Fiction, Indian Cinema, Padmavat, “Her”-story, ‘re-
historicization.
Women in Indian history have much to offer beyond their contribution as a
structured text when it comes to politicize their portrayal on silver screen, and
succeed to attract mass criticism towards sustaining life. Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s
film Padmavat (2018) discusses the crave of the audience and readers for the
impact that is created out of a woman who is daring and bold, and has choices
that is almost unimaginable for a man or even for the so called man and
masculinity. The silver screen becomes gold, and the audience feel the extreme
courage of a woman and her choice that lead to the happening of an event called
‘Jauhar’(self immolation in fire for saving one’s chastity) as the cultural identity
of the Rajasthani Indian women in the then situation . The cathartic effect that
‘golden fires’ of ‘Jauhar’ created on silver screen swayed the entire nation into a
panoramic sea of thought to criticise and create a desire to politicise such
historical moves to finally create a space for the mass celebration of a culture
that has the power to colour the emotions, reading and understanding the
women in history as a celebrity in their own terms who have found a potent and
fertile market place for public consumption. The protagonist’s (queen
Padmavati) courage for choices, and her recognition in this mode of realistic
fiction on screen opens up for a lot of text and discourses that tie history and
culture in establishing film as a medium of gendered celebrity culture. It leads to
greater understanding of knowledge as such, and in the forms that offer an
analysis of power discourses that governs mass functioning and their responses
to it. Michel Foucault rightly says:
No body of knowledge can be formed without a system of
communications, records, accumulation and displacement which is in
itself a form of power and which is linked, in its existence and functioning
, to the other forms of power .Conversely , no power can be exercised
without the extraction appropriation , distribution or retention of
knowledge . On this level, there is not knowledge on the one side and
society on the other science and the state, but only the fundamental forms
of knowledge /power. (p. 131)
The present paper offers a re-reading of Indian film Padmavat as a
representation of politics that presents biographical fiction and film as a demand
of the mass market. The paper is set on the backdrop of Indian cinema as an
overgrowing mass market in communicating and celebrating “Her” – story,
speaking volumes on her identity that affects reader’s and audience’s mind.
Sanjay Leela Bansali’s 2018 grand epic film is based on a sixteenth century epic
poem Padmavat by Mohammad Malik Jayasi, a Hindi poet in Bhakti mystic cult .
Padmavat , the cinema text is an absolute treat to the eyes, and food for thought
from the very first shot, and the viewers are assured that they are in for a grand
opulent spectacle that has the power to engage them even beyond the
happenings on the screen. A rendition of a historic legend, the film oscillates
between two polarities between a Muslim ruler on one side and a Rajput king on
the other side embodying the generic struggle of bad versus the good, depicting
quite clearly as what is to follow. Bhansali, it seems, has his moral compass
fixated at a certain position, and he does not shy away from taking strong moral
stances especially at times when the idea of truth is blurred and identities are
distorted. The project, indeed, is a portrayal of extensive research in the tradition
of making such a grand film , a magnum opus, and the efforts are apparently
justified when the viewers notice larger than life scenarios, extraordinary war
scenes, extreme forms of brutality as well as opulence and every emotion getting
enlarged when viewed on a large canvas. The grandeur that this film carries is
capable of bringing history close to the heart and mind of the people targeting
the desired responses, and the plan of expectations hit hard towards reading the
psyche of the people. The film well utilizes varied sources in meeting the
emotional challenges that history- readers and viewers of the film, and people in
society look forward towards sustaining the reality manifested in this form of
art, which, absolutely, is not an ordinary text.
The spell bounding cinematography is well targeted towards desirable
responses from the mass market that comes from every connection that
fabricates the fabric, settings and costumes, the songs and human expression in
the situation aptly spacing them. It drags the emotional responses out of every
rasa equating the infused knowledge of the audience with history, polity, culture
and society of the time, and becomes a profound concoction of all art forms
arraying from textile designs, dance, music, action, painting and much more,
establishing seamless flow of dialogues between this cinematic representation of
text and its audience or mass market. To put in Connor’s terms, “recent years
have seen an explosion of interest in a whole range of cultural texts and practices
which had previously been scorned by, or remained invisible to, academic
criticism (184).” The targeted audience becomes the object of politics of
representing the text in this manner of chosen discourses establishing an
alternate understanding of history, culture and society in a new light re-
historicizing the so-called historic event ‘Jauhar’ as women’s choices and
priorities, and her freedom towards strengthening the Sovereign or the State
rather than an untoward happening. The trick that plays on the spirit of
grandeur is a powerful rendition of history-a neo-historic approach that the film
is attempting to achieve. The mass market undoubtedly evolves with a sense of
pride and honour in order to celebrate women’s choices as born martyrs and
saviours of the land rather than being devastated of her modesty as somebody
else’s property of utility, slave or agent. The reception of the film in this manner
establishes timeless relevance of both history and legends, and reflects as to
how both can be transmuted to the contemporary scenarios with new meanings,
newer insights and in an outlook that cater to the mass desires as new readers of
history, culture and society.
The plot of this directorial venture of Sanjay Leela Bhansali presents an
inner journey of a woman in her different shades that celebrates a radical
feminine, a bold woman and a newly born woman out of the text constituted of
her sophisticated beauty and body parts. Chris Barker, in a critical seam, argues
that “feminism is centrally concerned with sex as an organizing principle of
social life that is thoroughly saturated with power relations subordinating
women to men. As a movement, feminism is concerned to construct political
strategies by which to intervene in social life in pursuit of the interests of
women. However, at this point two crucial questions arise: ‘What is a woman?
‘and “what is in women’s interests? (Making Sense 110).” In this context Collard
and Contrucci (1988) argue that all women are linked by childbearing bodies
and innate ties to the natural earth, and that this supports egalitarian,
nurturance-based values. Likewise Rich (1986) celebrates women’s difference
from men, locating its source in motherhood. This is condemned in its historical
modes of oppression but celebrated for its female power and potentialities. A
more culturally founded arguments for women’s difference comes from Gilligan
(1982) and her study of moral reasoning. She argues that while men are
concerned with an abstract ‘ethics of justice’, women are more centred on a
context specific ‘ethics of care’. (cit. by Chris Barker, Making Sense 110).
In fact, the mass-audience covered this three-hour journey as a bio-
fiction politicizing the representation of many a bold women of extreme courage
and deeds of prestige and honour creating another history. The market
positively responded the reception of many women characters shown in the film
as bigger hits ever reigning supreme in the mind of the audience extending a
warm welcome and big smiles when they find none of these history- women as
shy, docile or simply obedient. Re-historicizing the character of Padmavati, the
female protagonist is indeed a conscious effort by the makers of the film in
weaving the bio-fiction with utmost details towards strong ideals of womanhood
that well targets the desires and will of today’s women who is vocal, protestant
and courageous. The protagonist Padmavati is a princess but a princess not like
the one who is confined to the chambers of a humungous fortress but a one that
hunts, takes charge of her security and ventures out in the open. In order to
project Padmavati as a loving, kind hearted gentle heart, the targeted audience
comes across a scene in the beginning of the film when she shoots a Rajput ruler
rather than a deer, and she is seen tending to the injured with herbs and potions.
The film, therefore, politicizes each and every affair associated with the
character of Padmavati in associating with the sensibilities of the audience to
make her a progressive woman of her choices and desires to live up to the
expectations of the audience. It, uniquely, defines an understanding of a bio-
fiction that is shaped out of a conscious effort that narrates the ideals of
womanhood roles that are never confined to one ideology or a prescribed role.
The female protagonist, here, in all her multifaceted personality is a sight to
behold. Adding to the success of mass market’s responses in establishing the film
as a landmark contribution in re-historicizing the character of Padmavati are the
powerful dialogues from her that provoke the audience on the idea of the male
gaze. The film takes an astute stand as to how bloated male chauvinistic attitude
has been and how most of such times; the blame conveniently falls on the woman
rather than the offender. The movie here takes a decisive step to pitch it to the
viewers how this very ideology is flawed.
The heat of the golden fires on the silver screen was a heartfelt
glorification of the extreme courage and an unusual sight that gained wide
controversies across its release that elevated the cathartic sense of
understanding and interpretation of the episode of ‘Jauhar’ in Indian history.
Presented and projected on a tone of a bio-fiction the history episode received
well targeted emotional and revolutionary reception all across the nation, and
proved to be well claimed promotional strategies positioning the Indian
Cinema’s popularity towards branding historical characters that critically
constructed peoples’ notion and understanding of society and culture,
broadening the prospects of researches in humanities in general and literature,
culture and social sciences in particular. So the most controversial element of the
film became its very climax that marvellously aroused much criticism and even
outrage. It seems to be a well planned plot that dragged the mass audience
response to the fact that the idea of self-immolation, described as Jauhar in the
movie is a take to hint at subtle misogyny and a lack of women’s freedom and
voice. However, the opposite is equally true. The film in its story and subject
matter, and the tale that it is, a re-working, is set in history gone by where the
idea of ‘Jauhar’ was not only extremely prevalent but also widely celebrated.
Bhansali is not attempting to completely erase a major chunk of history by
eliminating the episode of mass immolation rather takes a contemporary stance
on it where he celebrates the entire incident. He pulls the event from the
shadows of insult, grief and terror, and celebrates in a twenty-minute-long
climax. The sheer beauty, magnificence and the strength of the final scene where
as many as sixteen thousand women are seen walking into fire is seen as a
celebration of an idea of womanhood that refuses to succumb to the pressures of
the enemy army. Instead they take charge of their own lives, pull themselves out
from occupying the confines of a household and step out to asset how the choice
of their lives belongs to their own self rather than to any other individual. The
climax portrays woman of all age groups, from all spaces of the society and from
various professions joining to bathe themselves in fire. We have, here, a
celebration of sisterhood, an element that speaks volumes, and sends strong
messages when placed in the contemporary situations. The film portrays women
in the strong light of occupying spaces of being a Goddess, where power is placed
in their own hands. A similar presentation of a woman’s spree may be observed
in Mahasweta Devi’s Dopdi who grabs power from the brutal officers, and steps
out in the public, breaking conventions of their confinements to spaces of kitchen
or as mere dolls of beauty. Queen Padmavati is intelligent, witty and proficient in
the art of warfare with a strong sense of justice. When the King of Mewar, Raja
Ratan Singh is captured and put into the dungeon by the opponent, it is her
shrewdness, strong sense of justice and rational mindset that rescues him. Since
then she is ‘pedestalized’, and seen as a role model for several women urging to
be at par with the men folk. As the movie progresses, her stature is elevated from
being a strong woman to a Goddess. The idea of self-immolation, keeping aside
the criticism it has received was undoubtedly stemming from a strong sense of
character, uncompromised identity and unshaken will power. Till the very end,
she refuses to let the enemy take charge of her or her region. It is an act of
courage that goes against logic and rationality to gather all their strength and
win a war even at the cost of extreme suffering and pain. With her, she paves way
for another sixteen thousand women who committed ‘Jauhar’ following her. The
movie, thereby, depicts the blurring of identities, of public and private, and raises
a strong message as how gendered identifies are socially constructed. Judith
Butler’s idea of how sex is a biological difference and gender a social construct
resonates far and wide when we see the strong Rajput women doing a deed of an
extreme courage and valour in honouring the flag of the State, epitomising a ‘her-
story’ (history) forever. Though set in history, it re-historicizes human emotions
and human tendencies through a realistic representation of politics targeting
mass market’s response as a huge success in interpreting and understanding the
society and culture establishing a dialogue back in the fourteenth century. Larger
than life characters –their psyche, the way they talk, the dress, makeup, costume
and just everything related in a much-exaggerated hyperbolic state- an elevated
state and so is the spirit to live up to the expectations of the audience, who are
inspired and wait for something unprecedented they are looking for or unknown
to them or in the least certainly not cheated of their emotions and sense of
association with the past. The film manages to resonate with the audience’s mind
because of the very emotions and attitudes to life it depicts. There’s horror, fear,
joy, celebration all fused in one, reflecting how human life since centuries has
always lived in through the shades of grey, and how basic human tendencies and
emotions transcend time and space. Patricia Waugh explains regarding I. A.
Richards’ idea that:
the reading of literature brought the different impulses of our nature into
harmonious relation with one another , and the second was EMW
Tillyard’s view that literature ought to be studied in connection with the
historical background .Leavis disagreed with Richards , because he
emphasised how a work ordered our responses when it could equally be
said to challenging them , and he disagreed with Tillyard, because he
seemed to reduce the work to a mere illustration of the period in which it
is written... . As an embodiment of the finest expression of the language ,
and an example of what can be achieved with it, literature sets a standard
of thought which should make politicians and the media wary of
expecting an educated public to accept their clichés, slogan , and sound
bites.( Patricia Waugh 136).
It establishes contemporary relevance of reading, re-reading , understanding
and interpreting history, culture, politics, society for a better cause of
philanthropic researches and studies though a looking glass of new prospects
that emerges out of an intricate bond between literary studies and films.
This Indian film is a take on an all those that talk of an inclusive society, a
society, where the Honourable Supreme Court comes up with a landmark
judgement on Article 377 foregrounding human values. The film Padmavat
receives an impressive response from the mass market, that observes it to be a
huge attempt into the idea of homosexuality through the character of Malik Kafur
masterfully played by Jim Sarbh. Malik Kafur, the slave, the confidant and the
army lead of Allaudin Khilji is playing a role that the Indian Cinema has never
seen before. Praised by both critics and popular audience alike, Malik Kafur
grabs the attention of the audience right from the very first appearance. Unlike
many other characters that are oscillating between the ideas of right and wrong,
Malik Kafur has his moral compass set right, and that is the fairness of every act
especially when he employs deceit to kill Raja Ratan Singh in the final battle
between Allaudin Khilji and the latter. Malik Kafur has a yearning for love,
recognition and identification of his self, an idea that many like him experience.
The film takes a masterful stance in stating how the idea of homosexuality is as
old as time, as natural as the rising of the sun and celebrates this rather than out
casting it with sarcasm or an irony. Malik Kafur is a character that will stay with
the viewers for a long time and probably usher Indian Cinema into a more
mature understanding of homosexuality. It certainly becomes the root cause of
the popularity of Indian Cinema far and wide across the globe.
Re-telling history from the dark or grey side of human behavioural stands
is a superb craftsmanship of Sanjay Leela Bhansali when he comes alive with the
character of Allauddin Khilji with a marvellous master stroke in exploring the
dark or grey and deep psyche of an evil that he is, capable of arousing fear and
terror in the heart and mind of his viewers or readers. As part of representation
of politics he is brutal, unabashed in his evil tendencies and also logically shrewd.
His character, many a times, evokes horror, fear and disgust with his scarred
face, knotted hair and kohl rimmed eyes in the audience. The film re-historicizes
Allauddin Khilji as a Chief- legendary villainous character that the Indian Cinema
ever witnessed. It has certainly added to the popularity of Indian Cinema
establishing such unique readings as automatic literary by-product. The evolving
Character of Padmavati through the territorial venture of Allauddin Khilji offers
numerous reading of the cinematic-text Padmavat that deconstructs the reading
of history as meta-narrative, and open vast vistas of welcoming mini-narratives,
and strengthens the research prospects in humanities and its implications out of
reading history with small “h” and not with capital “H”. It gives ways to the
thought processes that transcends limited boundaries of traditional research and
teaching pedagogies. Critical take and bearings have questioned the makers of
this cinematic text into an intentional effort to dehumanize a Muslim ruler as
opposed to the fair, godly and the morally righteous Rajput king. However one
may always argue that Bansali perhaps is attempting an exploration of the dark
tendencies that lay inherent in all humans. He is not providing stark boundaries
of good and bad, righteousness versus the morally corrupt but how every
individual life has some shades of grey. This crucial input by the filmmaker
marks the contemporary relevance of the film where there are no clear
indications of right versus the wrong rather blurring the boundaries between the
two giving a free space to mass audience response toward critical evaluation and
sustenance of life.
Padmavat by Sanjay Leela Bhansali epitomizes visual culture, and
presents an exemplary text that witnessed sudden mass market response
widening the horizons of social setups and systems, and proved to be a strong
educationally toned text that has much to offer to academia as well. Newspapers
and Bulletins communicated to the mass market that right before the release of
the film, the production saw a huge national unrest from various organizations,
groups and sects that went ahead from physically assaulting the director,
vandalizing the team to even announcing a bounty and a death threat to the
director and the female protagonist, played by Deepika Padukone. This outrage
stems from their assumption of a possible distortion of history that eventually
leads to insult and humiliation of their sect and their Goddess Padmini. However,
it has been argued that the outrage was simply an outcome of the people’s lack of
knowledge of features of a bio-fiction or a visual art form. One may always argue
such blames as an attack on the freedom of expression especially for a tale, an
art-form, which has been time and again, categorically stated to be fictional.
Appropriately, an understanding in this context comes from Lyotard’s view that
“the good news and bad news are entwined together in complex ways … . If, on
the one hand , the tendency of the dismantled grand narratives is to produce an
inert saturation , in which a system of relations aims to keep reproducing itself,
then, … it is this very saturation which may produce the surges of innovation
required to jolt the system out of its inertia.(cit. in Steven Connor, 33)
Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmavat, therefore, is an attempt at re-
imagination, re-telling, re-historicizing and of course a revisualization of a
possible event in history that showcases the world of a few legendary character
in a miniature associating the human sensibilities with the virtues and vices
present in the contemporary society with the flair and fanfare that marvelously
tricked upon the audience with the fuels of empathetic fires that variedly
establishes responses in canonizing the particular art form and its genre as a
stimulant in furthering the studies related to it and for academia to begin with
researches while implementing literary theory and criticism. The records show
that the film enjoyed reasonably huge success after its release on Jan 25, 2018;
however, it was banned in many states of the nation itself. As readers of popular
newspapers and television watchers it can be stated that when the epic movie
was finally released after a national outrage on January 25 th, 2018, it was still
banned in Rajasthan and a few other states joined the league. Opinions from
institutional bodies and people in power came to a wide conclusion as to how the
pride of Rajasthan was deeply hurt, with a blot on history and its unnecessary
meddling. Popular opinions also thought that the Queen was not given her due
credit or perhaps still her image of martyrdom and sacrifice was meddled with.
However, the film in itself never declared itself to be an accurate historic account
rather it stated that it is a re-imagination, and a ‘re-historicization’ of the past
events. In the words of Steven Connor,
the representations of the social – strike to mass the fact of an emptiness, the masses’ refusal to be the social in the ways required of them by
opinion polls referenda and revolutionary movements. It is not that the
masses are a storehouse of subversive potential rather that they form a
sort of brute resistance, an unselfconscious but nevertheless clumsily
authentic … . He further quotes from Silent Majorities the masses function
as a gigantic hole which inexorably inflects, bends and distorts all energy
… an implosive sphere … in which all dimensions curve back on
themselves and ‘involve’ to the point of annihilation leaving in their stead
only a sphere of potential engulfment.(p59)
The outrage, therefore, poses an important question as to how much of liberty an
artist can have in today’s contemporary scenario while dealing with the subjects
that are infused in historic relevance without thwarting the sentiments of its
mass audience or its readers.
It would be appropriate to talk about the maker of the film and his
intention that met fallacious interpretation of historical event by a yet to
understand society of people whom he targets, and also seeks to urge such
cinematic texts as another art form that allows to peep into the past with a
possible new meaning or in the least a new beginning towards meaning making
process of evaluating humanitarian values. In an interview with Anupama
Chopra, director producer Sanjay Leela Bansali admits that the film despite
varied criticism enjoyed immense popularity in the West. He said he produced a
completely different kind of cinema, that is a re-imagination of the Indian history
in all its opulence and glory rather than making something as a slice of life. The
idea stated by Bhansali seems valid. The film indeed manages to recreate a
history event and traced the genealogy of how and what events occurred in the
fourteen-century providing a context to our contemporary understanding of the
Rajputs and the Khiljis. But given that all art is political, even if it is dressed up
art, and art pieces of stature and popularity of the one that the movie holds, one
can raise questions as to what is the purpose of art. Contemporary studies reveal
how all art is political by nature serving the Aristotelian didactic purpose of both
entertainment and education. This thought leaves the viewers with the question
as to what statements is this art piece making; Is it only a mass entertainer as the
gross numbers show it to be or a film that speaks volumes about women’s
strength, choices and resilience in the past? Is it all about magnificence, opulence
and beautiful sights or has a contemporize relevance to make.
This cinematic text, for sure, presents a new reading with unusual insights
of a so called popular genre as bio-fiction furthering the research implications of
postmodern tools and techniques as continuous questioning process in the
politics of representation of such art forms as close interpretation in the
production of a socio-cultural and historical discourses available as teaching and
research pedagogies in the production of an automatic literary by-product. To
conclude with the views of Henry Sayre, we can state that,
“an aesthetics of
presence seeks to transcend history, to escape temporality. An aesthetics of
absence subjects art to the wiles of history, embraces time ... . Aesthetics of
presence defines art as that which transcends the quotidian; aesthetics of
absence accepts the quotidian’s impingement upon art. For the one, art is
absolute; for the other, it is contingent (p.174).”
Works Cited and Consulted