Rituparno
Ghosh
by
The Critical Tourist
When
you are all but convinced that art these days does little more
than serve self-promotion and the market, someone comes along to
show that all is not lost, that art can still make a difference.
It happens rarely, but when it does, you have to salute that
artist. Rituparno Ghosh,
the first openly
gay and transsexual Bengali filmmaker and actor, died in his
sleep last Wednesday night (May 30) at his residence in Kolkata.
He was 52. It is for film experts to evaluate the quality of his
remarkable output of around twenty films over a little more than
two decades; all I do here is touch on what seem to me the
crucial aspects of his legacy.
The Bengali film arena was simply barren through the last two
decades of the twentieth century, until RituparnoGhosh’s
emergence in the early 1990s. By the turn of the century, he had
ushered the Bengali film audience –at least the serious kind--
back to the movie theaters. The diversity of Ghosh’s subjects is
striking. His bold treatment of taboos, such as social
marginalization of a molested woman (Dahan, 1997);
repressed romance between two cousins in an extended family (Utsab,
2000); and domination of women in a patriarchy obsessed with
male heirs (Antarmahal, 2005), opened new doors for
Kolkata’s younger filmmakers. Unafraid to shake up the false
prudery of Bengali culture, Ghosh became the brightest successor
to his senior colleague and mentor, Aparna Sen. Yet at the same
time, he also passionately offered his tributes to Rabindranath
Tagore (Chokher Bali, 2003; Noukadubi, 2010), the
one-man canon of Bengali high culture. A third strand in his
work is his meticulous dissection of the auteur’s
seemingly impervious public image to expose the underlying
vulnerabilities and insecurities (Unishe April, 1994;
The Last Lear, 2007; Abohoman, 2010). One can
certainly discern other, overlapping thre ads
in Ghosh’s work, but the ones outlined here are enough to
demonstrate the complexity
of his creative
endeavor.
Ghosh used both his art and his celebrity to challenge society’s
normative notions about alterity,yet homophobia per se does not
play a central role in his films because he never believed in
mere propaganda films. In the last three productions –two of
them directed by others-- in which he played gay and transgender
roles (Memories in March and ArektiPremerGalpo,
2011; Chitrangada, 2013), critique of homophobia is
oblique at best, underscoring instead the self-expression of
sexuality. They blur the gap between life and art in a way that
is unprecedented in Bengali film history.Rather than subverting
normativity from the margin, he confronted it from within the
center, and his probity about his own sexuality stubbornly
resisted any attempt to stereotype him. When society came at him
with all its ignorance and vulgarity, he educated society with
all his patience and grace. With the depth of his erudition, the
diversity of his intellectual inquiry, the wide range of his
creative interests, and no less, his humility, he compelled the
dominant culture to accept him as one of its own. Finally, he
empowered the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities
of India in a much more meaningful way than any generic activist
ever. Thus, what he leaves behind is, without a question, a
legacy of integrity, courage, and creativity—or more precisely,
of
courageous creativity. And in this regard,
RituparnoGhosh is a pioneer indeed.
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