Review: 'Shakuntala Devi' Juxtaposes Female Celebrity and Motherhood - The Wire
Review: 'Shakuntala Devi' Juxtaposes Female Celebrity and Motherhood - The Wire |
- Review: 'Shakuntala Devi' Juxtaposes Female Celebrity and Motherhood - The Wire
- Terry Bonchaka's Sister, Shantana Says Most Ghanaian Female Celebrities Are PROSTITUTES - GH Gossip
- Challenge accepted: Turkish feminists spell out real meaning of hashtag - The Guardian
| Review: 'Shakuntala Devi' Juxtaposes Female Celebrity and Motherhood - The Wire Posted: 31 Jul 2020 01:30 AM PDT Around the two-third mark of the biopic Shakuntala Devi, a small scene – without any dialogues or grand gestures, lasting not more than a few seconds – encapsulates the entire film. It's not even a conventional scene, for it's a song: a daughter yearning for her mother. ("You're like a puzzle, I've always tried to solve/Just be my mom for once and for all?") The movie depicts Shakuntala (Vidya Balan) as a sharp mind, travelling around the world doing shows, performing the most complex calculations in a few seconds. Restless and hyper-ambitious, she charms the world but loses her family. She hardly meets her husband, Paritosh (Jisshu Sengupta), an IAS officer, and lugs her daughter, Anupama (Sanya Malhotra), everywhere, forbidding her to attend school or talk to her father. She realises her mistake only when a 16-year-old Anupama threatens to leave her. So, Shakuntala tries to be a 'normal' mother. The mother-daughter spend lazy Sundays in the park, cycle and cook together, take long walks. That 'small scene' comes towards the end of the song. Standing near a window, Shakuntala wistfully flips the pages of the "Black Book", containing decades-old newspaper clippings praising her genius. Even though she enjoys spending time with her daughter, it is the woman in the book she misses the most: a mathmagician, a slayer of numbers, the "human computer" – or just Shakuntala. It's a powerful implication, especially in a culture that celebrates motherhood squashing all other kinds of identity. Those few seconds are crucial to Shakuntala Devi, because they underline the protagonist's eternal struggle: choosing between who she is, and who she should be. Who was Shakuntala Devi? But before understanding who Shakuntala is, the film takes us to her past, showing who she was. A harried mother was once a wounded child. A young girl who could make the numbers dance. Her father (Prakash Belawadi), a lion tamer and a magician in circus, found a performer in her. He'd take Shakuntala around, making her do shows all day. This came at the cost of her childhood: she couldn't attend school, make friends, or have fun. Her mother had no say in any of it. Shakuntala's only friend, her sister, died because the family couldn't afford medical help. It is all in there: resentment for parents, importance of money, reliance on self. Also Read: Vidya Balan: 'When You Play a Woman Setting Herself Free, it Sets You Free a Little More' This segment, detailing Shakuntala's dissatisfactions and motivations, is theoretically the film's most poignant part, and yet the weakest. That is so because it lacks an immersive quality. Filmmaker Anu Menon chooses to tell us about the crabby father or the submissive mother, limiting our involvement. There's a marked dissonance between the visuals and dialogues. Shakuntala's complaints, often relayed to her mother, aren't backed by enough scenes that show why this family is uniquely unhappy. Even when Shakuntala grows up, these problems persist. Screenwriters Menon and Nayanika Mahtani overtly rely on vignettes to give the film a light and breezy feel. Many initial scenes look like part of a part; it feels we're often planted right in the middle of a sequence and whisked out before the climax. As a result, for quite some time, we're never 'inside' the film nor do we know enough about the characters to root for, or disapprove of, them. This distinct lack of rhythm – a sense of disjointedness and randomness – taints the film. It's most evident in scenes depicting Shakuntala's early life: her moving to London, struggling, becoming famous.  Vidya Balan as Shakuntala in Shakunta Devi (2020). Photo: Saloni Shah The other questions – "how did she do it?" or Shakuntala's relationship with numbers – are also just given lip service. Shakuntala Devi had a great chance to explore the mind of a numerical fiend. After all, what was she thinking when she cracked the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds? Like a magician doesn't reveal her tricks, she left us with no answers, but the film doesn't even try. Instead, whenever Shakuntala confronts a tough problem, the numbers do an animated dance – and that's it. Literal grievances Shakuntala Devi is further suffocated by literal grievances. Her mother tells her that "what goes around comes around": that one day her daughter will resent her the same way she resents her mother. Unhappy families are bound by an inescapable circularity – children repeat the mistakes of their parents – and Shakuntala does the same, too, but that motif needed more nuance and finesse. Elsewhere too, the film's thesis is repeated – and repeated – till the audience gets it. Besides, an important subplot, Shakuntala writing a book on homosexuality, is reduced to an inconsequential footnote, as it is primarily seen through the viewpoint of a bitter daughter. (The movie claims that Shakuntala's main motivation – of her husband being a homosexual – was a lie.) Balan, given the limited material, does a fine job. We rarely see female geniuses on screen, and the actress lights up the role with her inimitable style: hesitation circling around humour, ambition crashing into callousness, perfection becoming self-destructive. Balan is both the film's hero and villain — a mathematical problem herself, Shakuntala almost always eludes our understanding of her. Biopics are not known for such intense inward peering, but Balan's acting makes that possible. The film's most impressive performer, however, is Malhotra, Balan's on-screen daughter. Shakuntala Devi stirs alive whenever she enters the frame. Fiery, distressed, firm, she gives the film an emotional anchor it so badly needs. Her role also provides a sense of wholeness and finality, of a journey becoming a destination, as Shakuntala Devi becomes a much better film in the second half.  Sanya Malhotra in 'Shakuntala Devi'. Photo: Screengrab/Amazon Prime A much braver movie than it lets on Even amid constant slip-ups, exuding a sense of detachment with its own material, Shakuntala Devi gives enough evidence that this middling film hides a good drama. It's a much braver movie than it lets on. By juxtaposing female celebrity and motherhood, it asks some pertinent, discomfiting questions about success – and how its very notion is gendered. It's a theme that both liberates and locks the movie. For Shakuntala Devi to probe parenthood – a preoccupation lacking in biopics centred on men – it both wrestles and accepts the societal preconditioning: that, yes, she is preternaturally gifted but also a good mother. A great line by Paritosh underpins the pangs of those falling for anxious, restless souls: "To love Shakuntala is to let her be." The film gently derides the perception of being "normal", and how that pursuit is futile. But time and again, it comes back to its main curiosity: the desperation of people balancing parenthood and stratospheric fame. Math can sometimes be as cruel as life: the multiplication of a negative and a positive number (no matter how big) is always negative. Shakuntala knew all the mathematical tricks, but for her daughter, she remained chalk on the blackboard.  |
| Posted: 30 Jul 2020 11:46 PM PDT  ADVERTISEMENT Sister of late Ghanaian musician, Terry Bonchaka, Ranaya Pappoe who is widely known in showbiz as Shatana has made a weird claim that mist Ghanaian female celebrities are prostitutes.According to her, about 99 per cent of Ghanaian female celebrities are into prostitution adding that they don't stand at the roadside and that is the main reason why most people don't see them as such. She made this comment in a recent interview with Prince Tsegah a.k.a Da Don on Asempa FM where she said; "I can tell you for a fact that about 99 per cent of the celebrities who have rebranded themselves as slay queens are into prostitution. I live at East Legon and trust me, I have seen most of these female celebs doing big-time prostitution over there. I'm not here to mention names but they know I know them because I see them all the time. It's so sad that society has rather targeted some people who only ventured into the art to make ends meet. ADVERTISEMENT I'm not defending nor supporting the art of prostitution but I'm against how society chastises these prostitutes we see on our street every day and rather hail the slay queen celebs who are the real kingpins of the game. I never knew matters concerning prostitutes will become paramount to my heart until the coronavirus and its lockdown set in, I had a strong conviction to save some of them because I realized they were more exposed to the contraction of the deadly disease hence I embarked on a mission to save most them by providing them with relief items and education. Some of them has genuinely changed but the others told me point blank that they can never change and that is why I'm soliciting for your support to help turn the lives of these prostitutes." Source: www.ghgossip.com  |
| Challenge accepted: Turkish feminists spell out real meaning of hashtag - The Guardian Posted: 31 Jul 2020 07:23 AM PDT Feminists in Turkey have called on the rest of the world not to forget the original context of Instagram's #challengeaccepted trend, which was supposed to draw attention to skyrocketing rates of gender-based violence in the country before it was co-opted by western celebrities. Femicide, violence against women and so-called "honour" killings are deeply rooted issues in Turkey. Last week, the country was rocked by the brutal killing of Pınar Gültekin, a 27-year-old student, who was allegedly killed by an ex-boyfriend. Campaigners are also deeply worried about fresh efforts by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's ruling party to repeal a Council of Europe treaty known as the Istanbul convention, groundbreaking legislation from 2011 that protects victims of domestic and gender-based violence and effectively prosecutes offenders. Marches in four Turkish cities last week mourning Gültekin's death and calling on Turkish politicians to uphold the Istanbul convention were accompanied by hundreds of thousands of social media posts: one initiative involved posting photos on Instagram in black and white to emphasise how pictures of murdered women end up in black and white in the pages of newspapers. The black and white challenge appears to have started in 2016 to raise awareness of cancer, but the repurposed idea along with appeals for women to tag others who inspire or support them and hashtags such as #challengeaccepted and #İstanbulSözleşmesiYaşatır, or "Enforce the Istanbul Convention", quickly took off in Turkey. As the hashtags were translated and shared in other languages and western celebrities such as Jennifer Aniston, Eva Longoria and even Ivanka Trump picked up on the trend, the original context appears to have been lost on most users, morphing into a lighthearted - if directionless - display of female solidarity.
"The black and white photo challenge and #challengeaccepted movement did not start in Turkey, but Turkish women sparked the latest round of pictures because we are worried about withdrawing from the Istanbul convention. Every day, after the death of one of our sisters, we share black and white photographs and keep their memory alive," said Fidan Ataselim, the general secretary of the campaign group We Will Stop Femicide. "The Istanbul convention keeps Turkish women alive. We call on women from all over the world to spread this message and stand side by side with us against inequality." Chef Nigella Lawson's original #challengeaccepted post was followed up with an apology after activists pointed out the original meaning of the campaign. "I have only just found out that this challenge was originally meant to draw attention to the growing number of murders of women in Turkey, and am mortified didn't know [sic] when I posted. It seems inappropriate now, and hardly fitting for the serious and terrible issue of femicide. I apologise," she wrote. Comedian Miranda Hart also issued a mea culpa for posting a photograph without realising where the campaign had come from. "I am one of many women who didn't research the #challengeaccepted #blackandwhitechallenge thoroughly. Although I am always grateful for a chance to support and uphold the women who uphold me, this 'challenge' is about raising awareness of the atrocious Femicide in Turkey." Gültekin is one of 120 women who have been killed in Turkey so far this year, mostly by partners and relatives. A total of 474 women were killed in 2019, the highest rate in a decade in which the numbers have increased year on year. The figures for 2020, affected by coronavirus lockdowns, are expected to be even higher. Despite the fact Turkey has the highest femicide rate among 34 OECD countries, conservative elements in Turkey's political sphere have repeatedly petitioned for the country to withdraw from the Istanbul convention on the grounds that it encourages divorce and 'immoral lifestyles'. On Tuesday, Meral Akşener, the leader of the opposition İYİ Parti (Good party) called on Erdoğan to uphold the legislation, saying that the government's failure to properly implement the law since it was ratified in 2014 was contributing to the rising levels of gender-based violence.  |
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