caste & child wedding master & servant children’s games (bride-bride, dolls) new: racial tension in Funny Boy &

partition in Earth

Intro & Group Discussion

Basic Info. Questions about

› Race relations › Women and Children’s Roles› Symbols› Narrative Pattern & Filmic Techniques

Work Cited Next Week

Partition & Independence: British Imperialism in Color (40:00 - ; 44:00 - )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhKYg641K3c

Hindus-- 83 %Muslims (伊斯蘭教) -- 11 % (majority in Lahore).ChristiansSikhs (錫克教), India's armed forcesBuddhistsJains（耆納教）-- Parsee, descendants of Zoroastrian Persian immigrants, among the richest groups in IndiaJews -- in the Southern State of Kelara

August 14, 1947: birth of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan

August 15, 1947: birth of India

1. The British had followed a divide-and-rule policy in India.

2. An ideological divide between the Muslims and the Hindus of India.E.g.1. 蒙兀兒王朝時Mughal回教徒當權﹐但英統治之下﹐印度教徒較親英﹐回教徒則反英﹐因此社會地位較低．2. 印度教徒反食牛肉；回教徒主要吃牛肉．3. 回教徒生活由可蘭經規律．

Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs migrations and uprooting (6 million Muslims to Pakistan+ 5 million Hindus and Sikhs to India)

Division of the provinces of Punjab and Bengal

Riots and violence: e.g. "ghost trains“

Ruined economies and lands; no established, experienced system of government; slums in big cities

Separation of Pakistan and Bangladesh in 1971.

Wars between India and Pakistan; deadlocked over Kashmir.

Director: Deepa MehtaAdapted from Bapsi Sidhwa's

semi-autobiographical novel Cracking India (the film a simplified version; see Sidhwa’s account)

Setting: Lahore (shot in Dehli)

Born in India in 1949, based in Toronto since 1973

Her feature films 1. Sam & Me; Indian trilogy: Fire (1996)—lesbian plotEarth (1998)—the partition of

IndiaHollywood/Bollywood – 2002

Repubic of Love 2003Water (2005)—lives of Indian

child widows in the 1930s. (Her set destroyed in Varanasi, and her life threatened.)

Midnight’s Children - 2013

conflicts film-chap 11 Lahore (where the story took place):

› Muslim as the majority; › Hindus owned most of its businesses; Sikh --lands› When it becomes evident that Lahore will be

part of Pakistan, most of the Hindus and Sikhs pick up and leave.

› Lahore – a border city, flooded with refugees› The only alternative [besides death and

departure]: conversion; e.g. Hari convert to Islam, and Pappoo’s family to Christianity (chap 12, chap 20) (ref. Raisinghani 162)

"Leave India to God. If that is too much, then leave her to anarchy." --“My Appeal to the

British” Gandhi, May 1942 "At the stroke of the midnight hour, while the

world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom...A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance..."

— India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru

00:53:14,305 We now play for you Prime Minister Nehru's speech given earlier today in New Delhi on the auspicious occasion of lndia's independence.

00:52:09,073… there are reports of bloodshedin Gurdaspur City.That means the Muslims thereare being butchered.The real bloodshed will start now.

Among Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. e.g. fighting, killings, raping “the fallen

women” and ghost train.

Is it correct? It’s not about Muslims and Hindus, but something inside us.

Images of lion let out of a cage

A site of contestation › the refugee scene –the boy’s mother › the life and fate of Shenta

In the novel, the raped women› gathered in a house, and, in case of attack,

burned themselves; › survived with a strong sense of guilt (e.g.

Shenta in a brothel) (ref. Raisinghani 164)

In Lahore –› “the city’s youth have sent thousands of brightly

colored kites into the sky during the festival, held on a weekend in February or March.”

› Vicious competition with strings made of wire or coated with crushed glass, which killed a lot of people.

› Banned in 2006 because of the number of people dying of sharpened strings (source)

› Cancelled last year because of the suicide attacks.

Ref. kite flying in Kabul in 2001, after being banned in 1996. (source)

Shenta Dil Navaz --Ice

Candy Man Hassan, the Masseur ... Yousaf ... Hariya ... Sher Singh

Bunty Sethna & Rustom Sethna

Lenny Sethna Papoo Cousin Adi

Mr. Rogers –chief of police station Mr. Singh

1. Race Relations: Friend to Foe; 2. Lenny’s parents and the British (The

Rogers)3. The roles of children and women. 4. main symbols (earth, lion, garden,

broken plate & doll) 5. Filmic techniques (contrast and main

colors)

Character Names: Dil Navaz -- the Ice Candy Man, Shanta -- the Ayah; Hassan -- the Masseur,the Sethna family –as ParseesSingh –the Sikh.

1. Compare the characters of Hassan and DilNavaz. Discuss Dil Navaz’s changes in the film.

2. Discuss the changes of the friends’ relations in the following scenes: a. two park scenes, b. the diner scene c. the eve of independence

Why is Dil Navaz nicknamed Ice- Candy man?2. In the movie, there is big conflict between different religion groups. Also, as time passes, the close relationship between the friends disappears.

Are the Parsis (Parsees) all strongly influencedby British culture? (Or it’s just Lenny and her family)

"We're like the sugar in the milk, sweet and invisible." Are Parsees really invisible? What makes them invisible? If not, what makes them visible?

(Charlotte) Why do Lenny's parents have a gun in their house? At the end of the film, why do they not use it?

Are the bloodshed and violence during the time of partition England's fault?

(Harris) How does the death of the public execution influence Lenny? And what is the symbolic meaning of Lenny tearing the doll?

(Kyle) At the very beginning of the film, Lenny intentionally drops a plate to the ground, breaking it into pieces. Why do you think the director starts the story with this scene

Why does Lenny always mention about the lion of the zoo? The role of her polio?

•Lenny•Cousin

Adi

•Lenny•Papoo

•Lenny•Refugee

boy

Discuss the roles of the narrator Lennyand her Parsi family.

Ice candy man

Shenta

Hassan

What are the dominant colors in the park scene or, later, at the riot?

Can you find out some patterns in this film? Anything special in cinematography? The theme of betrayal:

In the movie, there are people who have converted to other religion in order to protect themselves. Is this isan act of betraying the god they originally worshiped? 2. What do you think about Ice-candy man's using Baby-Lenny's trust to "revenge" Ayah for not marrying him?

chap 2 –cracking jokes to resolve conflicts, but the jokes themselves are offensive.

chap 6 -- bum licker or invisible

Stereotype – militant in-between Hindus & Muslims

Dil Navaz: 1. “Ice Candy”; Good

at poetry and performances,

2. Tendency to violence,

3. “Lion in everybody’s heart.”

Hassan 1. Quiet and gentle, 2. Wants racial

harmony3. Rescues Singh4. Willing to convert

to Hinduism for Shenta

The other responses:

Butcher and Navaz, leading the mob

Escape – Mr. Signh convert to Islam –

Hari the gardener Convert to

Christianity -- Moti helpless in front of

the mob -- Imam Din the cook, mother

1. Papoo, the child bride (untouchable) saved by marrying a Christian dwarf;

2. The Muslim refugee child (chap 15), not knowing what cake is.

3. Lenny – innocent & frail Spoiled and handicapped, but with an unhappy

birthday Innocent, raising hurtful questions unintentionally traumatized by violence & fragmentation,

symptoms revealed thru’ breaking plate and doll, nightmare

Trusty Lenny’s betrayal of Ayahat the end of the film:

misled/betrayed by Navaz

Narrative frame: Lenny 58 (1997) Lenny 8 (1947)

A child’s perspective—a witness of the trauma of partition in the individual dramas of love and rivalries the breaking up of the nation/friendship, the violence, and the distortion of human nature

Q: Why does the director choose to tell the story from Lenny’s perspective?

innocence + Parsee’s neutrality

Center of friends dating

Getting marriedabducted

Images and symbols: › the statues, the park › Lion › Ice candy, hair-growth oil › telephoning Allah, › fire

Color – orange, red vs. darkness and fire the characters’ gazes (at Shenta)

A lively park to a desolate one; two balcony scenes

Friends to Foes: changes of the different meetings in the park and at night

Parsees and sympathetic Muslims (Hassan and the cook): powerless

Poetry, love & heroism, to Violence, and then to betrayal of trust

Beauty and Marriage destroyed

› Symbols: broken plate, torn doll; › Partition // the breakup of the group of

friends› Ironies: kite flying riots; the

changes in Shenta’s fate; happiness in the park and the desolate park.

Raisinghani, Neelam. “Wounded India in Deepa Mehta's 1947-Earth.” Films, Literature and Culture: Deepa Mehta's Elements Trilogy. Ed. Jasbir Jain. Rawat, 2007: 156-67.

“Back out in the open, Afghan kites fill Kabul's sky with colour ” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/back-out-in-the-open-afghan-kites-fill-kabuls-sky-with-colour-618690.html

Children’s Games

Social Hiearchy & Revolution

Area: 65,610 km2

1.82 of Taiwan images

UNSD statistical division for Asia based on statistic convenience rather than implying any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories:

North Asia Central Asia Western Asia (Middle East) South Asia East Asia Southeast Asia (source)

image source

UNSD statistical division for Asia based on statistic convenience rather than implying any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories:

North Asia Central Asia Western Asia (Middle East) South Asia East Asia Southeast Asia (source)

AzerbaijanTurkey

IranIraq

• Friends in a garden

• Child Bride • loss,

betrayal and sense of fragmentation

Gender & Race

Earth

•Bride-Bride game, marriage, widowhood, sex Childbirth & children on the beach

Class & Gender

Gainda

--Bollywood Film & Dance--Work, Drug dealing, robbery, prostitution-- Betrayal and Survival

Poverty & Gender

Salaam Bombay

Mica mining &Child labor

Introduction: the author, the book and Sri Lanka

“Pigs Can’t Fly” › I. Childhood Games and Social System› II. Battle for Power and Gender Boundaries› III. Ending

Born: Colombo, Sri Lanka, 1963› Father Tamil, mother Sinhalese › Immigrated to Canada, 1984. -- his

family forced into exile after the 1983 racial riot against the Tamil in Colombo.

Education: York University, Toronto. Funny Boy: A Novel in Six Stories --read

by the Sri Lankan President and prompted a national debate on the need to repeal the antisodomy law in the country (Salgado 100)

Funny Boy – set against the increasing violence between a between Sinhalese and Tamil in Sri Lank, culminating in the civil war which lasted for almost a decade(1983-1991). The protagonist, "Arjie" Chelvaratnam, is the

second-son of a privileged middle-class Tamil family in Colombo.

Connected stories of how Arjie is continually isolated from his family and then exiled from his society because of his gender orientation and the society’s racialtensions and despite attempts at breaking boundaries and rebellion.

› "Pigs Can't Fly”-- Arjie's early childhood and his gravitation towards the imaginative games his female cousins play as opposed to his male cousins' beloved game of cricket.

› "Radha Aunty" --Arjie's Aunt Radha, and her doomed affair with a Sinhalese man.

› "See No Evil, Hear No Evil“-- his mother's extra-marital affair with a childhood sweetheart.

› "Small Choices" --chronicles one of Arjie's first crushes a puppy love obsession with a young man employed by his Father

› “The Best School of All” – Arjie’s experience of the conflicts between colonial education and Sinhalese nativism, between his need to conform and his love for Shehan.

› "Riot Journal" -- first hand accounts of anti-Tamil violence. (Black July)

Sinhalese（僧伽羅人）migrated from Northern India to Sri Lanka since 5th-6th century BCE, while Tamil (坦米爾人) came from Southern India around since 2th BCE.

Sinhalese -- Buddhism Tamil -- Hinduism, more sent to Sri Lanka by the

British government and supported by the latter. Since its independence as Ceylon, the

Sinhalese (80% majority) put forth “Sinhala Only Law” in support of their political power, which causes discontent among the Tamil people (20%).

1. 3:00 – Tamil imported to Sri Lanka by the British

2. Sinhalese rise to power after Independence

3. Civil War: 4:00 the burning of the library 5:19 1983 retalion of Tamils

4. History updated: 1983-2006 -- civil war (4 peace talks, 100,000

people dead)2004 – striken by South Asian tsunami –about 35,000

dead 2009 -- LTTE defeated

簡報者

簡報註解

Laura:   "The sky is so high and pigs can't fly" (19): what might be Arjie's thoughts on this remark when he was fighting with HerFatness and said, "Tell and catch my long fat tail" (34); also at the end when he came to certain realization? Any changes made?

1-1) Spend-

the-day, rules in

Children’s World,

Bride-Bride

1-2) Her Fatness’

s Intrusionw/ dolls

1-3) Her Fatness’s Objections as a groom

2-1) Aunt

Kanthi’sintrusion

2-2)Amm

a’srejectio

n & arrange

ment

3-1) Arjie on cricket field &

his return

3-2) The Fight to

win attention & over

sari

4) Running

Away

AmmaFather

JanakiAunt Kanthi

ArjieHer Fatness Diggy

Maruges Meena, SanjaySonali

Ammachi/Appachi

Territory & Leadership: How are the boys' game and girls' game

divided up and located? Describe the other parts of Grandma’s house (p. 3)*

What are the rules of the boys' cricket game and the girls' Bride-Bride? Do these rules make sense? Do these groups' structure reflect that of adults, or not?

Who are the “leaders” of the children’s games and social games?

What does the title mean?

Her Fatness vs. Arjie› How does Her Fatness fight for attention &

power? › What gender roles do Arjie and Her Fatness take

respectively in their power struggle? HOW about Sonali, Diggy & Meena (Kyle)?

Cricket vs. Bride-Bride: › How does Arjie cross gender boundaries? Who

else does so, too? Is he always rebellious? (Franny)

› What roles do the adults (parents, Aunt Kanthi, grandma, Janaki) play?

› Meaning of sari? (Harris) What does the ending mean?

Funny --either humorous or strange (17); disgust

But Meena also crosses gender boundaries in playing the cricket game.

The other girls do, too, in the bride-bride game.

Arjie’s view of being a bride (5) and jewel and sari (15)

the story is about the ideological system (the sky), and the power struggles within it.

Avoid Mamachi (2) and Janaki The dark corridor (2) Territoriality and leadership (3) Girls’ territory potential for free play of

fantasy (4)

Arjie as the leader because of “the force of his imagination”(p. 4)

His imagination– allows him to "leave the constraints of [his] self and ascend into another, more brilliant, more beautiful self" (5).

Still conditioned by the goddesses of the Sinhalese and Tamil cinema (breaking the racial boundary).

A world for girls – the groom the most useless (p. 6)

Competition -- with winning as the goal; trading players

› less powerful ones: e.g. Sanjay› girlie-boy: Arjie

the batting order – p. 26 › Numbers marked in the sand for the players

to step on; › The older and better ones play first

Her Fatness – in need of attention › An outsider pp. 6-› Kanthi Aunt – her anger (pp. 7-8)

Wins attention › by lying about not having a friend (7) › by showing off the dolls (p. 8) –which is less

powerful than the bride-bride game; › by playing a loud groom (9) › by appealing to traditional gender

boundaries (11) “A girl must be the bride.”

Insisting on the rule to be the first one to play so that he becomes offensive and can run away

the sari in the bag as a weapon Agrees to play the groom, and then

attracts the other girls’ attention. Sari gone – so is his power.

Amachi and her cane p. 38 The seaside and the tall building as a

mirage p. 38 Exiled

Salgado, minoli. Writing Sri Lanka: Literature, Resistance & the Politics of Place. NY: Routledge, 2007.1. BBC: Sri Lanka+Tamil Tigers: Evolution of the Ethnic War (1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1UnhPq8Pio(2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArqcfDhHg9o

Persepolis: film and graphic fiction (excerpt) – Iran