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Journalism of Courage
The controversy generated by the film, Fire, focused everybody8217;s attention on the relations two women have, and by cinematic implication can have, with each other. Throughout the film the two heroines are fore-fronted while in the background lurk two men. Though not exactly shadowy figures, these men have no particular role to play except as prototypes of patriarchy. In fact, the film seems to assume that if they hadn8217;t been such unsatisfactory men the women would never have 8220;found8221; each other. The subtext of the film suggests that the love portrayed between the women is not a 8220;modern8221; phenomena at all and if we8217;d looked a little harder we might have found our grandmothers in bed together.
All of which perversely got me thinking about the men. I began to wonder if the harsh outlines of the male figures in the film were familiar images for men. With all this attention on the women, what did men have to say, not just about the women but about the men? Did any man in the audience say to himself,hell no, that8217;s not me up there. That8217;s just some8230; other guy. I know that women reflect and react against images of themselves in different media. There8217;s huge literature that has decoded female images from Barbie dolls to virgin goddesses to try and find the roots and the reasons to feminine stereotypes. Do men do this? Do they analyze images of themselves and wonder where it all came from and why?
Over the last few years, however, cinema has confronted this brutish muscular masculinity and created a challenge and a counter image. On the surface at any rate, there is a new masculinity on offer that posits itself literally and metaphorically on stereotypical 8220;feminine8221; traits.I look at the upsurge of popular films like Mrs Doubtfire or Chachi 420 as a kind of exploding of the muscular masculinity myth. Circumstances force both heroes to adopt an outright feminine role. In choosing to become women who successfully take care of their children the heroes concurrently create a role for themselves in the home 8212; a space from which they, as men, have both erased themselves and been excluded.
But there is a real problem with the Doubtfire/Chachi representations. In both, the heroes disguise themselves andbecome women. They have to be identical, in every respect, with the popular exemplar of the feminine image, that of 8220;mother8221; as the soft, cozy, unambiguously broad-in-the-beam maternal figures. Forget the perfect abs 8212; both Chachi and Doubtfire have distinctly droopy ones. In effect, the films jointly suggest that our heroes cannot adopt a mothering role and remain men at the same time. So Mrs Doubtfire and chikni-chikni Chachi enter the popular imagination under false pretenses. They don8217;t really challenge the divisions of female and male roles between those who get to go out into the world and those who need to remain within the home. The division of ghaire and baire as female and male space remain emphatically disconnected especially when positioned against the 8220;other8221; male characters of the films who are powerful, successful and entirely undomesticated men.
Nevertheless, the Mrs Doubtfire story which forms the basis for Chachi 420 didn8217;temerge from a vacuum. It had a long history and it8217;s nascent outlines can be traced to a post-8217;60s counter culture. Along with free love, women8217;s liberation and challenging the Vietnam war, this counter-culture encouraged a small group of men to begin a process of hands-on parenting. Studies conducted of families where men assumed part of the responsibility for child care all reported the enthusiasm that men felt about the closer, richer relations they were able to enjoy with their children. Predictably, men who mothered faced the dilemmas that had earlier confronted their wives. They felt deprived of social and state support structures while friendships with other men became non-reciprocal because there was nothing to share. Parenting was still not acceptable male8217; work.
Despite the downside dilemmas, parenting in the sixties and seventies became the leitmotif through which the male figures began a process of reconfiguration. For the first time perhaps, the concept of what it meant to be a man was notilluminated against feminine counterparts. It found another mirror to reflect upon itself. The child.
Even earlier to Mrs Doubtfire and Chachi 420, there was another film that was exploring and expressing the possibility of man-the-mother. Kramer vs Kramer, where the hero wasn8217;t macho, muscular or violent. He was just a father. What was interesting though was that he needed to establish his claim and his right to be a father. He had to fight to be a father. He couldn8217;t assume it. He didn8217;t need to establish his biological claim because it wasn8217;t paternity that was the issue 8212; it was parenting.
Unfortunately, the subterfuge adopted by the Doubtfire/Chachi characters suggests that active fatherhood is still an aberration. For all their claims, the heroes cannot be nurturing men without veiling their masculinity. 8220;Mothering8221; is not something they can assume without totally altering and denying their masculinity.
Behind the disguise, however, lies a second denial: of amasculinity-rooted in power and muscular manliness. I think these otherwise lighthearted films are questioning the dominant attributes that define masculinity and in the process create the claim that nurturing does not belong to women alone. These veiled men are ciphers of a concept that suggests two things simultaneously. One, that care and nurture is not a single gendered activity. And, second, that it8217;s not only women who have to fight to change the male-female divisions of space, work and role. Men need to engage with their own redefinitions as well.
The writer teaches sociology at the Delhi School of Economics
