(no subject)
Yeah, I know I said #3 was going to be the awesome Feminism is for Everyone, but I took my damn self out to lunch on Friday, and only realized once I was out that I didn't have a current book in the car, since I had taken Things Fall Apart out and not replaced it with anything. But I had my battered uncorrected proof of Bollywood Nights in the door, so, here you go.
Shobaa Dé has been called "India's Jackie Collins", according to Amazon, but I can't source that quote. The comparisons to Ms.Collins make evaluating the realistic quotient of Ms. Dé's work difficult. The proof I have contains a short Q&A with the author in the back of the book that gives her basic credentials: in the course of founding and running India's first fan magazine, Stardust , Ms. Dé got very familiar with the "grime behind the glitter" in Bollywood. The story of Aasha Rani as told in Bollywood Nights is original, but drawn from an amalgam of events and people with whom dedicated followers of the Bollywood scene will be familiar enough to identiy them in their disguises on the page. Considering the absolutely abhorrent characters that pop up with depressing regularity in the course of the story, that's enough to make someone like me insane with curiosity...but I only know Bollywood's "look", as my interest in India hasn't ever caused me to develop a taste for Bollywood gossip.
This book is full of crazy, crazy shit: the comparison to Jackie Collins is apt, although I would add Dynasty to it - some of the scenes made me picture women in saris far too formal for the middle of the day shot in soft focus and yelling at each other histronically. Amazon calls it a "sari-ripper", which makes me uncomfortable, but it does share in many respects the characteristics of the gold-foil-leaf-pressed books my aunt used to read and I used to read when I was at her house and bored, in which rich people have a lot of sex, drink a lot, and treat each other abominably. But those books rarely interest me, and Dés did, enough for me to read it twice.
Probably the thing I find most fascinating is - and I'm working off a knowledge of Indian cultural norms that's more than rudimentary, but hardly academic - how the differences between this book and a similar class of novel in America illustrate the differences between the two cultures. In America, the heroine might be from a rural background, relatively uneducated, or otherwise unsophisticated; in Bollywood Nights, the factor that inspires content-similar dialogue is that Viji, quickly renamed Aasha Rani (the extra A a quirk picked by her manager, as well as numerologically significant) is from Madras, with the comments about South Indians and their whorishness/ugliness/general social undesirability not masked in the least with even a veneer of politeness. The subtleties of ethnic and class prejudice in India were notable moslty because of their constant inclusion; while I don't know precisely why Gujaratis are the subject of scorn from the more cosmopolitan inhabitants of Bombay (possibly just the South Indian thing? Something more subtle?) I kept a lot of note of things that were, or appeared to be, markers for that sort of thing, particularly in reference to the various languages that the characters come out with and switch to at key points in the story.
Social convention allows Amma, the controlling stage mother (who is never given any other name than the appellation for mothers) even more center stage than she might enjoy in a mothers-and-daughters story written in America; I don't recall any in which the daughter pushed into pornographic movies at twelve by her controlling mommy forgives and nurses her dying mother without her ever issuing a word of apology past "it was what I had to do". The exposition by which Aasha Rani forgives both of her parents the various atrocities they've committed against her would probably be considered woefully lacking in an American novel; I assume that as caring for elderly parents is considered part of the duties of children, it's taken more for granted that this is what would happen. While Aasha Rani is certainly scandalous, even having a couple of lesbian affairs - something, again, I never recall seeing in a similar book, although admittedly they may have gotten more modern since I stopped having occasion to read them - other than the frequency of her sexual liasons, she's curiously lacking the other sorts of depravity one might expect to see in a book about a tragic Hollywood star. If the filmi stars are doing drugs with any frequency, we don't hear about it - other than a casual reference or two to marijuana, a tertiary character becoming addicted "to drugs" offscreen, and a reference to one of the underworld types involved in film production backing as being wanted for the sale of cocaine, you see almost none in the book. Aasha Rani makes one reference to drinking bhang at Holi; otherwise, her drug consumption is limited to sleeping pills in an attempt to overdose when Akshay (more about that asshole in a minute) has once again left her flat. She also isn't presented as being an alcoholic. All these little differences vary from the formula I would expect in a trashy Hollywood book; for all that some of the "how we get ahead in this business" casting-couch stuff reminded me of Valley of the Dolls, the dolls weren't in evidence.
Someone other than me is going to have to be the one to give an in-depth assessment of this, because I freely admit I am too ignorant to provide anything but probably-wrongheaded commentary, but in reading this book I did get the sense of seeing an American product - the Hollywood bodice-ripper - recast through a different cultural filter, and the results are sometimes confusing and often startling, particularly in the area of Relations Between the Sexes. Which, oh boy. The sheer fatalism toward the worst kinds of abuse is the most depressing part of this book. While I'd never look to a romance novel of any culture about healthy ideas for relationships and relationship dynamics, even that particularly back-ass field doesn't have women state to each other that if your husband isn't actively burning you alive or having acid thrown on you, that you should be grateful for what you have. Nor - while parts of it are depressingly familiar - have I ever seen women in American romance novels counseling a scorned wife to let the other woman know that she needs to back off in quite this fashion:
"Your husband must have been seduced by that whore in his weak moments - all men have them. All! Or she may have used jaadu-tona. Black magic. Who knows? We shouldn't rule anything out. Women are so cunning these days. Always after other people's husbands. Her mother is the schemer. Maybe she trapped poor Akshay. And those South Indians! They just can't leave our men alone. Their own must be impo, yaar. They look pretty limp. Have a pastry, ji, the samosas are too good. Don't let that bitch boss you. Don't beg and plead with her. These women are like nagins. Snakes. They understand only one language: threats. You tell her you will ruin her career. That she will understand. If even then she argues, tell her that you'll get goondas to cut off her breasts, slash her face or throw acid all over her. Strong-arm tactics. These females respond only to that."
Wow. And Bollywood Nights is full of this sort of thing, including someone who does get a faceful of acid at the hands of an unsavory character's hired goons. Scary.
Speaking of abuse, let's talk about the men in this book. Not a good one among the pack. Rani's Appa? Abandoned her mother, his mistress, after his film studio collapsed following an expensive flop, the topple towards poverty that lead Amma to whore out both her daughters in the most literal of senses to a series of movers and shakers in order to get first Viji and then Sudha into flimi. First stop (after the "blue films" and dirty uncles, that is)? Kishenbai, who ranks as perhaps most decent of the filmi men as he does stick by her later on, but can't really rate as actually decent considering all the, you know, raping the fifteen year old protege. Then Akshay Arora, the married hero actor who continually causes Aasha Rani's ruination in the press when he isn't savagely beating her and controlling every aspect of her life. Akshay, a prize asshole, continues to obsess Aasha Rani, as well as inspiring his wife to acts of relational savagery to punish the whore scheming on her meal ticket. The man Aasha Rani marries, a New Zealander? Hasn't been away from her for five minutes before he's fucking the nanny. In between, there's a whole hoard of scummy men of various levels of scuzziness - both personal and criminal - for Aasha Rani, and not one that treats her with any modicum of decency - yet she thinks on most of them fondly. The amount of fatalism toward entirely unacceptable treatment, with never even a hint of leaving men who beat or rape you - she even says at one point that she didn't know she was allowed to say no, although I can't remember in relation to which particular person - was depressing. Had it just been Aasha Rani espousing it, it would have been bad enough -but the female characters repeat fatalistic statements about the treatment you can expect from men over and over again. The multiple instances of child abuse, ditto: Aasha Rani even remarks to herself toward the end of the book that they don’t call it abuse in India.
Having read Bollywood Nights for a second time, most of what I got out of it - other than “what everybody was wearing and what-all they had to eat, as Jill Connor Browne would put it - was how little I really know about the complexities of modern India when it comes to sex and race. “Race” may not be the correct term here, but “ethnicity” doesn’t seem to fit either; as I’ve already said, the book provides a running commentary on social class in India, although the “caste” term doesn’t come up. The desire to lighten the skin and the various tricks used by both men and women to do so is a running theme, as is the desirability of being able to speak one language without the accent of another. The types of roles available also underscore the sex issues - while Hollywood is also no stranger to pairing young women with aging male stars in romance films, Bollywood appears to take it even farther, and is further complicated by the formulas that are constantly referenced for everything from films to charity shows. Where here a younger actress can play an older character with relatively little difficulty, the roles in Bollywood films, according to the book, break down to “heroine” - reserved for ever-younger women - and “mother” roles, which are the kiss of death and an admission that you’re too old to be desirable. The hissy fit that Aasha Rani throws when she’s offered a mother-in-law role - even after having a child of her own - is not just the tantrum of a diva but a reaction to an insult, an attack on her desirability and commercial appeal. Sadly, she pitches more of a fit about that than she does any of the abuse she undergoes; the insult of being offered an old-lady role registers as more of an offense against the order of things than being beaten senseless by the hero of the picture. Sigh…
There’s not much more of use I can tell you about this book. I enjoyed it, even if it depressed me heartily, and I found it interesting even when it really pissed me off, or confused me. So, take that as you will.
Shobhaa Dé, Bollywood Nights. Reviewed from uncorrected proof; 045122194X
The 50books_poc Reading List post still needs recommendations. I’m trying to add more biographies (and also to locate my copy of Barbara Jordan’s autobiography, because I’d like to read that again); if you have any suggestions, as always, drop them over there. LJ ate my last attempt to update the list with your suggestions, but I’ll try to get on that ASAP. It looks like we’re going to go over 50, but don’t let that stop you as I’m happy to make this the 100books_poc challenge as long as the recs keep coming and I keep moving through the list at this clip. :D Next up is the delayed review of bell hook’s Feminism is for Everyone, I swear.