Movie Review: Queen through the prism of Gender Dynamics.

Queen is a story of a young girl Rani, who finds her independence after going through struggles, when her UK based fiancé refuses to marry her and to overcome the shock, she decides to go alone on her honeymoon to Europe. The movie depicts very subtle gender biases and the gender dynamics that exist in our society.

Plot:

Rani is from a very conservative family in Delhi. Two days before her marriage, her fiancé (Vijay) meets with her in a cafe and tells her that he no longer wants to marry her, claiming he has changed because of living in the UK, and she would not match his lifestyle anymore.
Shocked by this and the impact it would have on her and her family Rani shuts herself in her room for two days.
However, encouraged and supported by her family, she decides to take control of her life and plans to go alone on her pre-booked honeymoon to Paris and Amsterdam.

During her Europe trip, she meets and befriends different kinds of people and in the process learns a lot about life and herself. In Paris, she meets an independent girl of Indian origin, Vijaylakshmi, who makes her feel confident about herself and helps her find courage. In Amsterdam she meets 3 men from different nationalities, with whom she shares a room.

With Oleksander, one of her room mates, she seemed to connect at a deeper level. Conversations with him makes her reflect on her life back home. She relives the memories of her fiancé patronizing her and forbidding her from doing things. These conversations and reflections and questions helps her discovers her own self.

She meets an Italian restaurateur, about whom she feels free to express her femininity and to some extent her sexuality, without getting caught in the morals of her back home reality.

Once by mistake, she accidentally sends a picture of hers in a modern outfit (what she considers as revealing) to her fiancé. Seeing the picture, the mind of her fiancé changes and he comes searching for her to Europe and wants her to get back to his life. Rani, however has moved on. She refuses to go back and prefers to live an independent life of her own.

 

Gender Dynamics:

Unaware of dependence / Never questioning the status quo:

While Rani may have found independence and also happiness in this independence, what is interesting is that she was unaware of her state of dependence and dis-empowerment in her life till she discovers herself. Her worldview was limited to getting impressed (pataov) by the guy, getting married, wanting the ceremony to go well, excitement about the 1^st night, what to do in honeymoonetc.

She seeks her fiancé’s and parental approval for most decisions of her life and she would never question this dynamics.This is one big issue in women in India; that they themselves are not fully aware of their own dis-empowerment and dependence and they would never question this social system.It is interesting that mostly the family does not have ill intentions for the girl. They think that they are doing good to the girl. They are unaware that in the name of safety, security, morality and tradition, they are actually disabling and disempowering the girl and making her incapable of managing her own life. As a result, there is always the need of a male support and approval that the women needs, be it in the form of father, brother or husband.
This in-turn limits the relationships she is able to have with men, beyond these pre-defined relationships.

More so, many girls simply introject the expectations unquestioningly and hence actually do look forward to such a life of dependence, since that is what they have been conditioned to think, as the route to happiness. In a way, they somehow enjoy this disguised slavery.

Only when Rani goes to Europe, she is able to discover the person she always was, but could never be. And she might have continued to never be, if her fiancé would not have left her.

This happened, since this was probably the 1st time Rani experienced life, without the burden of expectations that her family / social setup had on her. Finding herself free to do what she wanted to, emerged the possibility of finding herself.

 

Freedom to be:

Once after the party at a night club in Paris, Rani and her Indian origin friend Vijaylakshmi are in a taxi going back to their hotel and Vijaylakshmi burps. Rani is quite amused, how someone, esp. a girl can burp so unabashedly in open. She says “we are not allowed to do so”.

While in the movie, they had fun talking about it, what touched me the most was the innocence with which Rani speaks about what all the girls are not supposed to do India. I really felt sad at the moment.

It depicts how girls in India do not have freedom to be themselves; to just be. And how they have to comply and stifle themselves in order to follow the biased societal norms.

Freedom to decide:

In one scene, Rani asks her father that she would like to do a Job.
Rani’s father is seen getting nervous with her question. He tells her that she needs to ask Vijay (her fiancé) and let him decide.  Next she is seen having this conversation with Vijay. Obviously Vijay gets uncomfortable and tries to dissuade her from doing so. He tells her, what is the need for her to work, when he is earning; does she not have trust in him! Hence no need for her to work.
Rani agrees without too much of resistance.

This scene is contrasted in Rani’s conversation with Oleksander, when she tells him that she wants to do things that she would like to. Oleksander ask her, why does she not? Who is stopping her?
This makes Rani reflect about her freedom in life, to decide for herself.

An interesting dynamics of decision making in our society is shown, where girls don’t necessarily have the freedom to make decisions for themselves and how they seem to be subservient and dependent  on the men in their lives to decide for them and how they happily seem to accept this as their fate.

Support and Encouragement:

In one scene, Rani and her friends were out partying and all three of her friends are drunk by the time they leave. And then there is a cop, who asks all of them to leave immediately. Suddenly Rani finds herself on the driving wheel of the car, with the other friends not in a state to drive. Suddenly she is left with no option but to drive. She safely drives the friends back to the hotel.

This scene is contrasted with another scene, where Rani is seen learning to drive while her fiancé is sitting next to her. The fiancé is shown obviously getting irritated with Rani’s driving and is seen as discouraging her.

Even while the girls might be wanting to get freedom in some aspects of their life, do the men in their lives really encourage them to achieve it. Or are men busy discouraging and dousing any desire of independence and self-reliance that might be there.

Acceptance of Femininity sans morality:

When Rani lands in Amsterdam, she is shocked to learn that her friend vijaylaxmi has booked her in a hostel, where she would need to share the room with three unknown men. She is too scared of the thought; first she decides to leave the hostel, however not finding an alternate option, she sleeps in the lobby of the hostel.
She finds the idea of a young girl to share the room with three men completely shocking and going by the culture she comes from, completely immoral.

From getting to terms with eventually sharing the room with three men, Rani explores another aspect of her personality; that of her own femininity and romance. She is shown as having a crush on an Italian Restaurateur with whom she works in a cooking festival. She consummates this crush with nothing more than a kiss, her first one ever! She is able to do so without getting trapped in morality.

 

Reflection:
A very funny reflective moment for Rani happens when she is narrating a story to vijaylaxmi.
She tells vijaylaxmi how she has become like Gupta Uncle. “Gupta uncle has got Cancer. He never drank alcohol in his life; he never smoked; still he got cancer; wouldn’t it have been better if he had done so”.
She seems to be repenting on her state, that she did all that was supposed to be done by a “nice girl” in her family (and not do things she was not supposed to do) and still she got dumped. Might as well have done all that was not allowed to be done.

Male chauvinism:

Towards the end, Vijay comes to Europe, searching for her to bring her back to his life. However The attitude demonstrated is that of, “I can come back when I want and repossess you”; the guilt is minimal; He is very un-apologetic and wants her to come back immediately with him back to India.
And not wanting to know how she is feeling; what she must have gone through post the break-up; and what does it mean to be on a honeymoon, alone.

He behaves as if all this does not matter and now that he wants her back in his life she should just come back, as if nothing had happened.
Far from being apologetic, he is on the contrary seen as questioning Rani is a very deplorable manner as to how could she share a room with three men. He even scares her by asking “What if his mom comes to know, what she will think of her”. He also patronizes her by telling her, that she does not know how these foreigners are, what all they could do to her. Eventually the conversation gets worse and he tries to physically grab her and command her to come with him.

This was the low point (high point of male chauvinism) that was depicted in the movie, where the guy feels like he owns the girl. He is completely possessive of her and all that matters is how he thinks and feels and there is no space or sensitivity towards how the girl would be feeling.

Such a malecentric attitude of our society, where what the man wants and desires is of prime importance and the woman is just an object, which the man has to possess, when he desires to, for me is the root of all the gender bias that exists in our society.

Let Go:

The let go from the past finally happens on the last day, when Rani and her friends leave the hostel room. We get to realize that in the entire trip, Rani was carrying her wedding card in her purse.

When the friends leave the hostel room, tourists, as a custom, drop a piece of themselves in the room.
Rani, as a part of herself, pins-up her wedding card on the wall of the room.

This was very symbolic, of her moving away from her past life of dependence.

From Dependence to Independence

The character of Rani moves from a state of dependence to independence, (with a small stint of counter-dependence) (and of course not yet moving into the space of interdependence).
In the beginning, Rani is shown as completely dependent on her family for anything she does. Even when she has to go out, her Kid brother is there all the time. Anywhere she needs to go, her parents send her brother with him; including her first date with Vijay.

This phenomenon, which exists mostly everywhere in our society, reeks of huge amounts of gender bias; that a girl cannot manage herself alone; she needs a man’s presence to take care of her; even if the man is a small kid brother.

 After Vijay dumps Rani just before the wedding, Rani goes into a complete shock. She locks herself in the room and does not listen to her mother or father. She does reverse of what they say. These were her brief moments of counter-dependency.

When Rani goes to Paris, her friend vijaylaxmi helps her develop self-confidence which makes Rani get comfortable to be alone. Initially she had been contemplating of going back to India from Paris, since she was too scared to manage herself, she later get confidence to got to Amsterdam and continue her journey.

However this encounter with vijaylaxmi and Paris does not make her independent yet. At the railway station, to catch the train to Amsterdam, she is seen persuading vijaylaxmi to join her. She is seen very upset by the prospects of leaving vijaylaxmi behind.

While explicitly it comes across as an emotional loss of leaving a friend behind, it still demonstrates her dependence only that the dependence has shifted from her family to the new found friend.

Only after more experiences in Amsterdam, which include participating in a cooking competition along with the Italian cook; confronting Vijay and not going back with him to India and instead joining her friends in the rock show; does independence seep in and she starts to assert herself.
In her last evening in Amsterdam, while dancing in the rock show along with her three friend, her friends take her leave as they need to go someplace else.

In the next scene, Rani is not seen as gloomy, missing her friends. Instead she, after completing the farewell formalities, is back in the rock show and very happy and confident dancing alone.

According to me, this completed her cycle from dependence to Independence.

This independence gets demonstrated further, when back in India, she visits Vijay’s home. She chooses to leave him and returns the engagement ring. But now she is not stricken with remorse; she even goes as far as thanking him and having Gratitude for him, for giving her the opportunity to discover herself.
Had he not dumped her, she may never have found herself !

Ameet Mattoo
Aug 2014

Published in ISABS Newsletter "Here and Now" - Aug 2014
http://www.isabs.org/newsletter/aug2014/Here_n_Now_vol27__Aug2014.html   Page 8.