Femininity, Female Body and Race

1
Femininity, Female Body and Race

• The Edible Woman and Desperately Seeking Helen

2
The Edible Woman Starting Questions

• Why does Marian escape from Peters party? What
  happens at the party? Whats wrong with Peters
  camera shooting?
• Why does she go to Duncan? Why does she reject
  food totally after their night together? Does
  Duncan help her work out a solution?
• What does the cake lady mean?

3
The party

• Different examples of female roles office
  virgins and soap-wives
• Marian envies Clare and defends Clare
• Marian envisions her future
• Marians second escape (a
  reinforcement of her first attempt)

4
Marians fear of losing her body/ identity

• Marian Resists
• her work and life exploitation and hierarchy
• Toad-like office ladies 11
• Ainsleys and Clares choices
• Ash tray on her back chap 23
• Experiences undifferentiated mass of femininity.
  
• Cares a lot about her mirror images
• being a single woman consumer
• Feminine roles (Peters expectations and the Lady
  from below)
• Feels controlled at the supermarket at the
  salon chap 24

• Female Body
• Instrumentalized
• work ? body rapable
• birthing
• Objectified
• images
• Controlled
• Feminine Virtues
• Types Femininity.
• As consumers

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Marians self images body as foods

• 1.Image
• In Peters eyes chap 9 p. 85
• spoon image, 158
• faucet image 239
• (Duncans dislike of public mirrors)
• The dolls chap 25 p. 241
• Her image at the party and Peters clothes. P.
  251

• Food
• Ms skull like cantelope chap 10 p. 86
• Lucys 118 like a bait
• Baby like prunes 142

6
Marian and Duncan

• Duncan refuses to romanticize the whole affair
• Cares more about himself than Marian
• Breaks Marians nurse self-image
• Points out the truth of human relationship as
  mutual consumption.

7
Marians food rejection

• foods which seem to have been alive (Meat ? bones
  skeleton 162-65 eggs ? chicken 173, carrots ?
  roots 193 pudding ? cocoons p. 222 cake ? cells
  227 )
• Foods with unknown ingredients chap 20 p. 192
• Total rejection p. 283 284

8
Cake Lady

• Marians refusal to be assimilated
• Another ritual of cake-eating with Duncan as a
  child.

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Eisha Marjara's Desperately Seeking Helen

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Filming process

• "Helen is the conduit through which I explore my
  story and that of my mother's. When the idea of
  going to Mumbai and filming my search for her
  came about, I learnt more about Helen, and Hindi
  cinema. It was then, I became aware of the fact
  that she was a vamp, and that idea intrigued me a
  great deal. I returned with footage of interviews
  with other vamps--Nadira, Padma Khanna, Navneet
  Nishan--as well with directors and actors who in
  some way were associated with Helen. The story
  really took shape in the editing room much later
  where I shaped the story,'' reveals Marjara.

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Filming process

• "Actress Helen was not interested in being in the
  film, and Marjara respected that. Helen is a
  private person, and doesn't give interviews that
  easily. "Also, I couldn't at the time explain my
  movie to her because it was far too complex for
  her to understand what I was going to do. I
  didn't even know what I was going to do. She
  thought I wanted to make an expose of her life. I
  think it freaked her out,'' confesses Marjara.
  http//www.littleindia.com/India/may2k/helen.htm

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Starting Questions

• Why is the protagonist interested in Helen, the
  vamp? What is her experience in Bombay like?
  How is it related to her experience in the past?
  
• How is she related to her mother? Why did she
  reject foods?

13
The past two kinds of losses

• Theres no turning back.
• At 6 or 7, she wanted to be Helen.
• 1971 Amritsar to Quebec Trois Riviere 99
  percent French speaking people
• 1985 Air India Flight 182 exploded over the
  Atlantic, and no one survived. ? the death of her
  mother and sister.
• Movies (and the days of black and white)? TV
• Her second trip back to India at 12, feeling
  homesick.
• The present Search for something she has lost.
• Symbols watch, bridge, Helen vs. heroine

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Role Models 1

• Helen

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Role Models 2

• Her Mother heroine after marriage

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Role Models

• Helen she has a lot of funs. Vamp
• An outsider, foreign looking
• Out with a lot of men,
• Smart enough to find her own way and there might
  be dangers
• Her size larger than life.
• More than 700 movies, never the same woman but
  always Helen.

• Mother ? a heroine in life for her in her
  childhood.

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Role Model Mothers frustrations

• Life after marriage.
• Learning for growups is not fun.
• Mother Dont be like me.
• Never gets her balance, with one foot in Canada,
  one foot in India
• Being a housewife was being the house.? her
  desire to do what she wanted
• Cannot teach because of her accent

18
Her childhood playmates

• A table
• ? to eat everything on ones plate do homework
  
• underneath also a stage for a special story
  for her pretending and playing. A
  bigger world
• got a doll small waist, blonde, never wears a
  braid. A good girl, not like Helen.
• A TV set lit up her imagination but didnt tell
  the truth. That Girl (her real world)
• Bionic Girl Jamie
• Has to study ?
• multiplication table

19
Role Models (3)

• Bionic Woman,
• Charlies Angels

20
Her teenage rebellion

• Reaches puberty (mentruation)
• Bigger is not better here rejects the Indian in
  the lady.
• ? stays behind the camera.
• The cousins wedding? wanted to get it over with.

• Second return to India.

21
Teenage Rebellion Anorexia

• Now, when she talks about her anorexia, she says
  "I look at it in the light of identity being
  suspended between child and adult, man and woman,
  stopping the process of growing up."
  (http//www.saturdaynight.ca/1999_06/surveyor_port
  rait.asp )

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Her Mothers Death

• Of her mother, she says "The way she died is the
  ultimate metaphor for her inability to strike a
  balance between two cultures, dying between two
  continents, in mid-air, between here and there."
  (http//www.saturdaynight.ca/1999_06/surveyor_port
  rait.asp )

23
Searching for her fantasy

• Vamp Has to have good figure, not slim type ?
  My chances are . . . Slim.

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Her Search at the present time

• Mambai filled with movie posters.
• The taxi driver ? historic place
• Interviews
• chorus girl wants to be a housewife
• A former actress who runs a training school
• A Bollywood holy man.
• Wig maker, Victor
• Padma Kahnan on the screen not his mother.
• Daydreams at night nightmares
• Car chase ? film city
• Train Compartment for ladies ? lady wrestlers

25
Role Model Vamp

• Vamp still a stereotype, an image for male
  consumption
• Once a bad girl forever a bad girl
• To be killed or forsaken.

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Changing her direction in the search

• The real is hard to find ? what was I really
  looking for?
• The woman behind the vamp?
• Off the screen, who was she?
• As real as my mother.
• Then she wouldn't be
• Helen,
• would she.
• Not my secret Helen.

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Ending