Griselda Pollock quotes in her book Vision and Difference, “Foucault introduced the notion of discursive formation to deal with the systematic interconnections between an array of related statements which define a field of knowledge, its possibilities and its occlusions. Thus on the agenda for analysis is not just the history of art, i.e. the art of the past, but also art history, the discursive formation which invented that entity to study it” . While art history of a given region may pay attention to proliferation of popular icons the nuances of its implications with the cultural history of the region may suffer from the limits imposed by constituting the objects of study. My paper will try to explore the blurred boundary separating the study of popular icons and the cultural history in which they are embedded. I take the cultural concept of “Karpu (chastity)” in Tamilnadu and how a range of iconic representations contribute to the web of significations around it.
Karpu and Tamil cultural history
My concern with the concept of Karpu is not that it just contains or restricts sexual freedom of women. I consider the concept rather emphasizes the sexuality of women and simultaneously induces deep rooted anxieties about it. As is well known it is tied to the notion of honor not just of a woman but also that of her family, community and so on. In fact the very body of the woman is a site of multiple significations. As Pollock says “Woman as a sign signifies social order; if the sign is misused it can threaten disorder. The category woman is of profound importance to the order of the society. It is therefore to be understood as having to be produced ceaselessly across a range of social practices and institutions and the meaning for it are constantly being negotiated in those signifying systems of culture, for instant film or painting”. All bodily functions, attires and embellishments signify her location in social hierarchy. Mainly caste and class constitute the matrix of the hierarchy with caste assuming overarching importance in cultural politics in Tamilnadu. As arenas of public culture developed in colonial Tamilnadu Brahmins set the notions of ideal woman. In various registers and discourses the Brahmin/high caste women were juxtaposed with working women. While the former were ensconced within the house the working women necessarily needed to be seen in public. A range of attributes that derive from the segregation were considered to index moral behavior. I will not go in to the details of such discourses which have already been documented and analyzed. One only needs to recollect the debates around child marriage, enforced widowhood and the purification of art forms like Bharatanatyam in which several of these aspects have already found expression. In order to counter such hierarchised images of feminity the non-brahmin movement adopted a two pronged strategy. On the one hand they ridiculed and decried the unbridled sexuality of brahminic gods and goddesses in Puranas and mythologies. They claimed that such were the practices of the Aryan Brahmins. On the other hand they developed the concept of Karpu as a quintessential virtue of Tamil women. Hence for both Brahmins and non-brahmins chastity became the master concept which guided the way in which women represented themselves in real life and were represented in the art forms. Westernization, often coded by the use of lipstick, cutting off the long hair and western attires are represented as the corruption of the ideal of womanhood by both national/Brahmin discourses and Tamil-identity-forming non-Brahmin discourses. As we shall see, in Tamil Nadu Saree marks the quintessential Tamil/Indian feminity.
It can be seen the pattern of this regional cultural history finding echoes in the debates about erotic female figures in temples in art history. Tapati Guha Takurta has shown how strategies were developed at different points of time to negotiate the erotica in temple art . The sexuality of female body continues to be a site of multiple contestations. The link such of the still existing temple sculptures in Tamil Nadu to the anxiety ridden concept of chastity is the public depiction of sexualized body. Often covered up in Tamil discourses as sublime art or as coded spirituality they do nevertheless get sited as traditional sanction for depiction of explicit sexuality in contemporary discourses and artistic representations. Needless to say arguments on both sides often are self-serving in so far as they either seek to exploit female body as object of pleasure or transcend it by techniques of sublimation. Keeping such contestations in mind I will now discuss a few icons and representative schema that are linked to the notion of chastity. All these icons have many valences and significations. However what interests me is to see how they also reinforce the master concept of chastity.
Circulation of Icons
My first instance is the installation of Kannagi statue in Marina beach. Kannagi and the classical Tamil text Silapathigaram are central to Tamil revivalism. While her connection to chastity is well known her agency and valor are also significant qualities that would endear her to women. Anyone who finished high school in Tamil Nadu is likely to have memorized her famous declamation in the court of Pandya king. Kannagi not only challenged the sovereign but burnt the whole city as an act of moral retribution. However her power basically drew from her being chaste. Recently, her statue was suddenly removed by the state government for not so convincing a reason that it hindered the traffic. Protests and controversies erupted. There were stories circulating that the statue was removed because astrologers advised the chief minister Jayalalitha that it is inauspicious for her to see the statue when she passes that way. People opposed to the move articulated proposals to install one thousand Kannagi statues all over Tamilnadu in protest. We may have to wait for continued resignifications of Kannagi.
The second icon I would like to discuss is that of Avvaiyar. One or more poets of ancient Sangam literature have used the name. However popular iconography portrayed her as a tottering old woman. The mythological account behind the figure is important for understanding that. Avvai is believed to have sought a boon from God in her youth to bestow old age on her to avoid the consequences of female sex. Thus her old age is an active denial of sexuality. The story gained widest popular acceptance with the Gemini film Avvaiyar in 1954. Interestingly the film was perceived to be a counter to the DMK film Parasakthi released couple of years earlier. Nevertheless the old woman Avviayar is part of the public sculptures that stand in the beach road, a point Srivatsan appears to miss in his homogenizing account of Dravidian movements public sculptures. Avvai iconography is further re-inscribed by Tamil primers since the thirteenth Tamil vowel “Avv” doesn’t have many words that can be illustrated as well. All this resulted in a controversy recently. When poet Inquilab and theatre activist Mangai staged a play on Avvai depicting her as a youthful woman part of a wandering musical group, drinking toddy and falling in love, the play was met with much resistance.
As Avvaiyar was a poet of certain stature, with one of the texts ascribed to the name being a composition of moral precepts, here I am reminded of Kathleen Jones words “What we construe as being in authority, and acting authoritatively, has depended upon representations of authoritativeness that privilege masculinity – male bodies and masculinised knowledge and practices. The menstruating body, the body-with-a-womb, the birthing fecund body, the lactating body, the menopausal body, the more docile and more specular or to be looked at body – it is difficult to imagine such bodies being in authority” . As much as this quote can explain the need to desexualize Avvai to offer her canonical status, Preminda Jacob has used this to explain the contemporary iconography of Jayalalitha . Let us now consider the instance of Jayalalitha’s deification.
Preminda Jacob rightly notes the transformation of Jayalalitha’s image from that of the glamorous actress to a political leader then on to the contemporary iconography of her as a de-sexualised deified figure of authority. However I would like to add two modifications to her analysis. Instead of seeing this process of transformation as something that had been completed in a linear fashion it will be more helpful to see her contemporary image as in dialogue with her past image as an object of desire. As Preminda notes her films are still in circulation. Her political opponents often point to her past as disreputable both in terms of a glamorous film persona as well as her alleged links with stars other than MGR. To some extent her past as a film actress is still a liability. In the extent of her characterization as Amma a mother figure, her desexualised contemporary iconisation and deification is also a response to the circulation of her past images. It is important to note this to understand sexual difference in popular representations. While MGR or any other male actor can seamlessly connect his heroic film image to that of his real life persona in the case of women, acting-as-a-profession is widely construed as compromising with regard to the demands of chastity. It remains a common practice to speak derogatorily of film actresses as much of the recent controversies are shown. The second modification I would propose to Preminda’s analysis is the need to take in to account the intra-textual transformation of the image of the heroine in most Tamil films. While such transformations may not redress the problem of ultimate inferiorisation of female stars, it nevertheless intones assimilation of threatening female sexuality into the cultural order. Let me explain the dynamics of such an intra-textual transformation.
Realizing the ideal woman in cinema
Initially in most films the heroin will be introduced as an object of gaze. Her falling in love with the hero and the unavoidable song and dance numbers would emphasis her sexuality. As the film approaches its narrative closure the heroine will have a serious movement in which she will have to signify cultural order, domestication and her preparedness to assume gendered location. Frequently such a transformation will be signified by her appearing in saree. In films where native heroes confront westernized heroines it will also mark her transition to native culture. I would like to mention here the discussion of nativity films by Sundar Kali in this regard. Let me now show you the clippings from the film “Singaravelan” made in 1992. The film can be classed as a comedy with the touch of self-parody in it. The hero is a rich peasant who is sent to Madras to seek out and marry the daughter of the long estranged maternal uncle. He locates the rich westernized urban heroine and begins to aggressively tease her and ultimately wins her heart and accomplishes the task. In the clippings I show you will find the hero declaring the heroine unfit for marriage since she doesn’t know how to wear saree adorn herself with kumkum and flowers or even feel shy. The insulted heroine is haunted by his words in solitude. We then see her transforming herself with the said markers. Her foster mother is delightfully surprised to find her wearing saree and even being able to feel shy.
As you know the onscreen transformation of Kushboo hasn’t helped her much in the real life. She touched a raw nerve in the identity making of Tamil Cultural Politics by bringing the sacred concept of chastity in question. I will not go in to the details of the issue once as they have been widely discussed. I would just like to add that Kushboo had a grand distinction of being deified without entering in to politics. After the controversy her fans who build a shrine for her have announced that they have closed the temple and are no longer fans of Kushboo. The issues appear to be part of the dense cloud of cultural politics that has enveloped Tamilnadu. Both popular media, state machinery and various establishments have resorted to the acts of moral policing and cultural norm setting in various instances. The ban on western attires and cell phones in educational institutions, the policing of dance halls in star hotels and the violation of privacy by media entering in to the public parks appear to be setting over-arching surveillance and fresh anxieties about female sexualities.
The futures of the prevailing icons and iconographies-in-the-making will have to negotiate the twin strategies for deployment and control of female sexuality.
- Paper presented at The national seminar-2006, Department of Art History, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda.
