Page 105 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

90 Lotte Hoek

I have provided two answers to this question. First, the collective claims
on the female body to manage its public availability through notions of
propriety structure how certain parts of the female body can become avail-
able to the filmmaking process. Imagining themselves in an intricate and
intimate relationship to the public “out there,” female artists in the
Bangladesh film industry appear in different forms that are more and less
available to this mass audience. Second, I have suggested that film produc-
ers make use of the available technology to produce a phantasmatic female
on screen that is imagined to appeal to the audience of Bangladeshi action
films. This female character can be produced only out of voices and bodies
of different women.
I have thus explained the reliance on female dubbing artists in the con-
temporary Bangladesh film industry as the double effect of moral dis-
courses about female propriety. On the one hand these injunctions make
the exposure of certain parts of their bodies possible for cinema artists of
different class backgrounds. On the other hand, however, the same injunc-
tions constitute what is considered transgressive and thus titillating, both
by film producers and audiences. The peculiarly fragmentary nature of
cinema, relying on technologies of fragmentation and recombination, is
uniquely positioned to exploit this double-edged sword of notions of
morality surrounding women in Bangladesh cinema.

Notes

I am grateful to Birgit Meyer and all other members of our research group, as well
as to those who attended the conferences within this project for their comments
and suggestions. Eveline Buchheim and Irfan Ahmad have made incisive criticism
and offered valuable help. The research on which this chapter is based was made
possible by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
1. All names and film titles have been given pseudonyms to protect the identity of
those involved in the production of the controversial “romantic action” movies.
2. The FDC is the national film studio that dominates filmmaking in Bangladesh.
It is a public enterprise under the Ministry of Information and is governed by
state-appointed directors. The compound in the middle of the city contains all
equipment for filmmaking, from floors and makeup rooms, to a lab and sound
studios. Production companies rent this equipment from the FDC, as well as
basic staff, such as light men or sound technicians, who are permanently
employed by the FDC. Creative labor, from editors to dubbing artists, work
freelance. All popular film production in Bangladesh takes place within the
FDC structure.