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Run your finger over the obsession switch. The immaculate,
virgin surface is smooth as silk. It is also flame retarding and stabilized
against ultraviolet rays. Probe a little to arouse your designer sense …… Obsession is more than willing to satisfy you (provided your wife doesn't
catch you eyeing at the pretty lady!) |
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(India Today, Mar 31, 1996). |
Or consider the one about a pair of shoes (thanks to Prerna
Bhardwaj for bringing this to my notice): |
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People dream of dating super models You can have a pair
for keeps |
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(Outlook, Oct 23, 2000) |
Das (1999) has effectively shown that such advertisements
conceive of women as consisting of detachable and saleable parts, each part
being sold as a sex commodity. The meaning of such ads is not in their words
and syntax; it is not even fully available in terms of socio-historically
neutral communicative practices. Why should anyone name an electricity switch
'Obsession' or compare a pair of shoes with 'keeps'? How do we interpret
lexical choices such as 'immaculate' 'virgin', 'flame-retarding', 'probe'
etc.? Consider the phrasal switch between 'pair of shoes' and 'pair for
keeps'. Constant fragmentation of the female body is constantly accompanied
by double entendre. The world of switches instantly takes us into a world
of extra marital sex - you cheat your wife, get aroused, probe and be satisfied.
The world of shoes is linked to dreams about supermodels and prostitution.
What is it in men that forces them to think of women only as prostitutes
again and again in history? This is how gender discrimination is perpetuated
as an accepted cultural category. |
Similarly, consider the following conversation. It will remind
you of a morning in a typical lower middle class/ middle class home in India.
It is a conversation between husband and wife. Wife is, of course, up much
before husband is: |
Husband |
: |
sa:t baj gaye |
`It is seven O'clock in the morning' |
Wife |
: |
abhi: la:ti: hu:n |
`I will bring it right away' |
Husband |
: |
akhba:r a: gaya: hoga: |
`The newspaper must already have been delivered.' |
Wife |
: |
abhi: la:i: |
`I will bring it right away.' |
Husband |
: |
chashma: rakha: tha: yaha:n |
`I kept my reading glasses somewhere here.' |
Wife |
: |
abhi: deti: hu:n |
`I will bring it right away.' |
No simple rules of discourse analysis will help you deconstruct
this dialogue. It linguistically codifies into a frozen routine centuries
of discrimination against women. No orders are being given here, but commands
are constantly being carried out. When the husband says 'it must be seven',
what he is really saying is: it is past seven 'o' clock, don't you realize
it is time for my morning tea, better hurry up and bring me a cup of tea.
It is not just that the general structure of our discourse with women (if
) of this kind. The words we use about them and the way we look at their
language are equally inhuman. There is a long tradition in our societies
of insulting the language of women. The list of people who are an active
party to this linguistic oppression includes not just ordinary masses, but
also some of the most distinguished linguists from every period of history.
As Deshpande (1993:24) tells us, one learnt standard Vedic Sanskrit to avoid
speaking like women in Vedic rituals and ceremonies. Similarly, our analysis
of silence in conversational analysis is very telling. In hierarchical societies
such as ours, silence, particularly that of women, is regarded as a sign
of being cultured, whereas it is a communicative event encapsulating centuries
of oppression. I am told that the Mussahars of Bihar, who are forced to
mostly eat rats and live on the periphery of the village, talk very little
either among themselves or in the presence of others. They are expected
to keep silent. |
It is not the case that during periods of social convulsions
and transformations, intellectuals, including artists, scientists and philosophers,
get alienated and withdraw into their ivory towers to resurface during periods
of relative calm and prosperity. In fact, arts and science have remained
closely tied to social upheavals, both in their conceptualisation and execution
and aftermath. The dual revolution, the industrial and the French, had its
literary and scientific correlates. The 1798 Preface to Lyrical Ballads
by Wordsworth and Coleridge and the poems therein, were directly inspired
by the French Revolution and none of the Romantics including Goethe, Schiller,
Byron, Shelley or Keats was untouched by the French Revolution. To Quote
Hobsbawm (1996:256): |
That artists were in this period directly inspired by and
involved in public affairs is not in doubt. Mozart wrote a propagandist
opera for the highly political Freemasonry (The Magic Flute in 1970), Beethoven
dedicated the Evoica to Napoleon as the heir of the French Revolution, Goethe
was at least a working Statesman and civil servant. Dickens wrote novels
to attack social abuses; Dostoeivsky was to be sentenced to death in 1849
for revolutionary activities. Wagner and Goya went into political exile,
Pushkin was punished for being involved with the Decembrists, and Balzac's
entire 'Human Comedy' is a monument of social awareness. Never has it been
less true to describe creative artists as uncommitted. |
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