Page 90 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

“More Sexpression Please!” 75

Figure 3.1 Bangladeshi film actress Shahara touches up her makeup on set.
Beneath, Shahara’s image is shown on the screen behind film director Shahadat
Hossain Liton. He waits in the dubbing theater for a dubbing artist to supply a
voice to Shahara’s image. Photo by Paul James Gomes.

The truth was that if Jenny had walked into the shop at that very
moment, the technician would probably not have recognized her. Although
she never arrived at the film studios unadorned, on her days off, Jenny
would transform. I had met her a couple of times away from the studios
and had always had difficulties recognizing her. When out in town, shop-
ping with her husband, a mobile phone salesman, she would wear plain

shalwar kameezes, made of cheap fabric in earthy colors. Without makeup
and carrying her toddler son on her arm, no one would recognize this
slightly dowdy middle-class woman as the double of the alluring vixen
reaching out from the brightly colored posters all across the city. I had seen
her at very busy shopping malls, blending into the crowd. No one paid her
any attention. Only her gruff voice was recognizable to me, her thick
working-class accent underscoring the Dhakai slang that peppered her
exuberant speech. Otherwise, she was completely invisible to me.