Mother India and Fire- Heather Goslin

            Kahn’s and Mayo’s Mother India is a wild representation of the Indian woman from the earlier 1900s. Even though I do not know hardly anything about Indian women from this time, I can tell that the movie was an over exaggeration of their roles. We see a woman working so hard to provide for her family, willing to do almost anything, but she is also naïve in a way. She is being ripped off by the moneylender and believes one giant turnip can turn her family around (which it does). The film itself was strange, from the singing to the acting to the mother killing her son to protect her community. The piece by Sinha helped me understand this over exaggeration. Mayo studied and knew a lot about public controversy and wanted to show it to prove a point.

            Mehta’s film Fire was much more interesting and, obviously, much more current. We got to see present day issues take place in modern day India. We learn a lot about some of India’s traditions, through marriage, women’s roles as a wife, and family. In marriage, the women in the film seem so trapped and turn to each other for comfort because their husbands are either preoccupied with someone else or are flat out uninterested. This comfort turns into something more, lesbianism, which is something very controversial in India. It was crazy to see the actual reactions of some Indians to the film. This film came out in the 90s shortly after Philadelphia came out in the US. Now, I do not know first hand the reactions Americans had to the film Philadelphia, which I am sure had some negative feedback, but probably not nearly as insane as India towards Fire. We as a community are more accepting of homosexuality whereas in India, it is something that everyone has a blind eye about.

            In Mother India and Fire we see very different lives of women living in India. In Mother India we see a woman who open to fighting for what is right for her and her family, but still lives under the watch of a male (the moneylender). In Fire we see women who are very traditional in public and around family, but sneak around to do what is right for them. The films are kind of opposites but relay very current controversies in India.