Vikas Bahl’s “Queen” was released last year to intense critical acclaim from the media in India. The plot is that Rani, a soon-to-be-bride, is shocked when her fiance cancels their wedding at the last minute. Since the flight tickets for their honeymoon were already bought, she decides to travel to Paris and Amsterdam by herself. Through leaving India for the first time, Rani is portrayed to grow as a character and return to India a more confident woman in control of her life. Despite being released last spring, within the last two months it’s taken in a slew of awards at the 2015 Screen Awards, in addition to the 60th Filmfare Awards, both of which awarded the film for Best Director and Best Film. Critics devoted particular attention for its supposed sincerity and simplicity, in addition to its focus on being “intensely local [while] gloriously global." The recent acclaim for this film cannot be understated.
Praise that emphasizes poignant messages of globalization, not afforded to many Bollywood films, separates “Queen” from its peers in that it is commonly perceived and respected as a transcending work that celebrates discovering the self through interacting with and embracing other cultures. Unfortunately, a close examination of the film’s politics and implicit messages reveal a different story: “Queen” is a film that pretends to celebrate global culture but still reassures its audiences that Indian culture is superior. Foreign cultures should be enjoyed not for any inherent value they possess but rather for their amusing contrasts to Indian culture. In other words, the film attempts to straddle a thin line between a message of branching out and trying new things foreign to Indian culture, yet comfortably reassuring its audience that such activities cannot undermine the superiority of the way they’ve been doing things all along.
“Queen” achieves this through an overly naive main character, a trait which the film confirms by asking its audiences to simultaneously laugh with and at her. Having grown up in a “restrictive” and apparently conservative halwai New Delhi household (that oddly caters to her every whim and has no objections to her traveling alone as unmarried woman to begin with), Rani is shocked to find that things like prostitution, drinking, and casual sex in the world exist and becomes more open to them. This process of loosening her conservative morals is not controversial or challenging. The problem is that Rani does not become open to or learn from other culture. This is not a loose interpretation - the character proudly states word-for-word that “India is best at everything” on multiple occasions, especially in comparison with other culture’s cuisines, music, and architecture. Rather, Rani becomes open to safe guilty pleasures that are by this point quite well accepted in the Indian middle class, the film’s primary intended audience. Rani therefore becomes open to nothing new to the audience’s tastes, and this character transition is possible only by making the character unrealistically naive to begin with.
From the beginning of the film, which opens with a standard Punjabi wedding dance song intended to give the audience familiar messages and images associated with positive emotion, India is portrayed as an overly saturated, colorful land of friendship and family, where stylized editing and wide angle shots is used to portray a young and attractive way of life. Contrast this with the scenes in Paris and Amsterdam, which have the film’s color palette considerably toned down and shot in more unflattering and cramped angles. Foreign lands are shown to be full of danger from both law enforcement and crime, have unrealistically disgusting food, and contain strange customs that require getting used to as opposed to truly understanding or accepting on a deeper level. What makes this particularly egregious is that this portrayal of foreign cultures is coupled with the message that touring through them is a fun and desirable activity so long as nothing from it is taken to the heart. When Rani eats at an Italian restaurant and requests more lemon and salt for her dish to make it taste more familiar, the sleazy Italian chef berates her for her Indianness, claiming that “you Indians” like to “ruin” the taste of dishes that aren’t Indian in nature. The chef later returns to inexplicably invite Rani to a cooking competition, where her pani puri forces him to admit that, indeed, “Indians cook best.” Everything about this character, from his over-produced accent to his simultaneous propensity to flirt and berate Rani, plays into unflattering Italian stereotypes, and the film makes it a point for him to acknowledge the defeat of the culture he represents.
The film is full of offensive characters like this, and the its message of the triumph of Indian culture is deeply embodied within the assortment of friends that Rani makes through her journey. The pattern of a representative of another culture growing to embrace Indian culture at the expense of their own is reinforced through Vijaylakshmi, a promiscuously dressed Indo-French maid, who, at Rani’s insistence, is last shown to the audience in traditional Indian garb with a promise to tone down her way of life. Moving down the assortment of the next batch of friends, the only real character trait that Oleksander from Russia has is his enjoyment of painting and even greater enjoyment of beer. The only time he references anything of substance, that his paintings represent a protest against violence, goes unquestioned and unengaged by Rani who displays no interest in it. Also worth noting is that the film treats Rani’s deliberate refusal to pronounce his name correctly (even though she gets flustered when others mispronounce or can’t understand Hindi words) as a light joke by the script - Rani deliberately makes fun of Oleksander’s foreignness and he clearly establishes his discomfort with it, which is supposed to play into the joke but comes off as an unsettling instance of mild xenophobia. The French Tim doesn’t really do much besides play guitar in the background.
The Japanese Taka, played by Anglo-Chinese actor Jeffrey Ho, is unquestionably the most racist and offensive portrayal of all. The film had already stereotyped Japanese people once before when a massive flock of Japanese tourists rush to all snap pictures of Rani vomiting after being forced to endure the horrors of French food, but Taka as a character is more offensive and insincere in the film’s attempt to give him depth while also denying him any seriousness as a character. The character’s brand of comic relief comes through his jumping around the screen like a cartoon monkey (a historically negative stereotype of Japanese people dating before WWII), and he’s the only character in the film to speak in garbled, incomplete sentences in English littered with what is supposed to Japanese. Unfortunately, Jeffrey Ho’s lack of Japanese skills and poor pronunciation make even that dialogue unrecognizable to a native Japanese speaker. Later the film reveals that Taka’s parents were killed in a tsunami, and his traveling in Amsterdam is some attempt to cope with the loss of his family, but this is still not explored in any depth. Was Taka’s family perhaps among the many that were completely swept away by the tsunami of the triple nuclear disaster of March 11th, 2011 (3.11)? Or maybe they affected by the nuclear accidents near Fukushima? Or was it 3.11 at all? We’ll never know; the film doesn’t care enough about engaging with its characters to stop and divulge such information, and treats the audience as if they don’t really care themselves beyond happily allowing themselves to become emotional at the general story of a child losing their parents.
The key point is this: despite Rani’s positive interactions with a large assortment of friends from various cultures, not once does she actually learn anything from them about their cultures, as all she does is transfer her own culture outwards. The one time the film gives her a chance to do so she never asks Oleksander about the violence he may have seen growing up; the most she gets out of Tim is learning that her French toast isn’t actually French. It’s all superficial. The film simply does not celebrate diversity of culture; it instead celebrates having diverse and fun experiences in foreign lands, and then returning to India to be able to talk about it.
This is a crucial difference and caters to the postcolonial Indian mindset. Bollywood films are historically no stranger to the exploitation and exoticization of foreign land for item pieces, or even using them as settings for entire films as the industry became more sensitive to the middle class Indian expat community in the 1990s. Typically, the message is the same: India is simply superior to other cultures, and characters away from India almost universally long to return to it or feel alienated by their foreign surroundings. This is not to say that experiencing other cultures is not valued - it certainly is and having foreign experience is often considered a social plus. But the postcolonial insecurity - that India needs to prove itself as a serious contender in the world both politically and culturally and that many psychological remnants remain from India’s British colonization - can compel Indians to simultaneously mentally value and undervalue their own culture. Nationalistic pride is loudly stated, and films like “Queen” reinforce this paradox of the virtues and drawbacks of the local/global: the us and them. To be an effective film, the plot of “Queen” must act as if its audience suffers from collective cultural narcissism combined with a retaliatory hostility to the intoxicating threat of foreign cultures. These assumptions are, unfortunately, nothing new to either the Indian film industry or to Indian sociopolitical analysts.
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The Showa Period of Japan (1926 - 1989) encapsulates a large and tumultuous portion of its history in the 20th century, during which Japan rose as an imperial power, conquered parts of East Asia, suffered a major defeat, and was rebuilt as a pseudo-colonial transitioning into a post-colonial state. The politics of memory surrounding the Showa period has played a major role in Japan's relationships with other countries, where tensions continue to rise over historical issues such as the Rape of Nanking and the forced sexual slavery of Korean women. Throughout Japan's postwar history, conservative leadership has slowly pushed a kind of "healthy nationalism" in order to strengthen defense and economic policy, especially in times of perceived external threat. This brand of nationalism aims to emphasize the cultural and historical accomplishments of the Japanese nation and state, and often has come hand-in-hand with statements and actions that have been accused of being historically revisionist and needlessly provocative. Unfortunately, in recent years tensions over these historical issues have had counterproductive repercussions in regional and security issues.
While the general population has often pushed against both Right and Left political agendas in favor of focusing on more grounded issues, the influence of nationalism has been present throughout the postwar period, and has manifested, in some ways, in the form of censorship, whether through the self or through the larger institutions of media or government. Up until the Showa emperor’s death in 1989 (and still lasting to some extent to contemporary times), it was taboo to criticize the emperor or even the Showa experience itself, as to do so would risk social estrangement and, in extreme cases, expose oneself to physical danger from a variety of nationalistic Japanese right wing groups. Openly defying this taboo, well-known director Hara Kazuo released in 1987 the documentary The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On, featuring its protagonist Okuzaki Kenzo (1920 – 2005) engaging in irreverently blasphemous talk about the emperor along with a wide variety of extreme and often violent activities, all aimed at scathing criticism of the Showa era. Hara already had a reputation for extremism with his previous films and as a result had been perceived as both a sadist and a masochist. In part due to this but also due to the film's subject matter, all major distributors refused to carry his latest film, relegating it to arthouse cinemas. Audiences at the time were shocked at Okuzaki’s restless proclamation of the emperor’s war responsibility. Ironically, perhaps, even notoriously violent right wing groups were rather receptive to the film themselves (according to Hara, anyway).
The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On is a documentary that has little in common with a photogenic film designed for mass market consumption. Hara Kazuo’s gritty and unrefined camera and lighting techniques (or lack thereof), combined with a notable absence of music and stock footage, creates an uninviting and unattractive Japan. Hara, often playing the role of cameraman, follows Okuzaki across the country in what becomes an investigation into the mysterious deaths of two of Okuzaki’s former war friends in New Guinea after Japan's surrender in August 1945. Okuzaki's quest is focused on discovering the "objective" truths behind their deaths as well as delivering his anti-war and anti-emperor message to the world. We see Okuzaki track down the living survivors of people possibly involved in the incident, many of whom he once knew on the battleground, and each character he meets is ripe for suspicion of his friends' deaths. In what becomes one of his defining character traits, Okuzaki delights in physically assaulting them when they are uncooperative – all the while shouting Japanese pleasantries. As the "plot" unfolds and the viewer eventually learns of the soldiers' deaths through cannibalism by their former commanders, we reach a climax in a twenty minute long verbal and ultimately physical confrontation between Okuzaki and an elderly former superior officer who has just recovered from extensive surgery. Here, the cinéma vérité style becomes fully apparent, with Okuzaki's victim screaming for help at the camera and Hara doing nothing.
Okuzaki fully believes in the unequivocal war guilt of the emperor and is utterly disgusted at modern Japanese social order's propensity to ignore the topic. He rides around in a truck equipped with loudspeakers to spread his message, and his supporters are few and far between. That Okuzaki apparently carried on his activities until his death without any major repercussions (aside from prison stints for various crimes) is astonishing, since many journalists of the time “were still under the spell of the 'chrysanthemum taboo,' so-called after the imperial crest, that crystallized in the 1960s through several episodes of right wing attack on writers and publishers deemed guilty of transgressing imperial honor," to quote Norma Fields. As a result, it is difficult to measure what people's opinions were as a whole, but newspaper polls conducted within a week of the emperor's death showed that over a quarter of Japanese people (willing to speak up and participate) believed in the emperor's war guilt but would not say so in public discourse.
The emperor also died just two years after the film was released, and his funeral dominated all forms of media and had far-reaching repercussions on the ordinary flow of Japanese society: television channels were flooded with live broadcasts of the funeral, weddings and festivals were canceled, and guns could not be fired. By all public and mainstream accounts, the emperor's death and subsequent funeral were the absolute top priority for all Japanese citizens, and the entire nation was uniformly one in their reverent mourning. What was the reality, however, may have been quite different: for example, looking at market statistics on the day of the funeral, one can discover that people had actually sold out major video store retailers! It seems there was much more diversity in thought, or apathy in thought, than was immediately obvious. While Okuzaki believed himself to be alone in his fight because of the media he surrounded himself with, I believe if he had been less extreme in his actions and more approachable he would have found a significantly larger number of people to agree with him than he probably would have ever conceived.
There appear to be few situations in which this diversity of thought is more apparent than in the case study of Motoshima Hitoshi, the mayor of Nagasaki at the time. In 1986, having hinted in a public statement that the emperor bares at least a fraction of war responsibility, what he would later call “the mere expression of common sense,” he became the target of immense outcry from both the media and especially militant right wing groups, who called for Motoshima’s death as a necessary “divine retribution.” Motoshima was quarantined in private headquarters for over a year after he made that statement, and as soon as the Japanese government began to think that this necessity for extended protection had worn out and he was let go, he became the target of an assassination attempt and was shot in the chest. As a result he continued to be quarantined for a much longer period of time, and during all of this he received over 7,300 letters of private civilian support for his statements. Inspired by Motoshima’s bravery, citizens created the “Nagasaki Citizens’ Committee to Seek Free Speech” and began engaging in active political discourse, particularly in the act of drafting a petition for “free speech” that received nearly 14,000 signatures from around the country, which increased to 370,000 signatures within a week. In this case, it seems people were really rallying around breaking free of the threats and atmosphere that created their self-censorship, ironically censoring the name of their movement.
Self-censorship has returned again following the recent ISIS Japanese hostage crisis. The Japan Times has just reported a wave of self-censorship from a variety of entertainers and television networks. Pop singers in performances changed their lyrics referencing knives and blood or just sang different songs than planned altogether. A comical anime intended for young audiences, which features a band of students' continuous attempts to assassinate their evil smiling octopus teacher, was simplify not aired at all. This is similar to the self-censorship that also occurred after the 3.11 triple disaster, and it doesn't resemble the clear-cut story of self-censorship told in and through Hara's film (though modern self-censorship in reaction to sensitive political matters is still strong, and 3.11 censorship would certainly fall under that category as well). Of course, The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On is a packaged film product deliberately edited to create a sense of narrative, no matter how raw it may appear to be, and this analysis only looks at a sliver of society at that point in time. True social and political factors are far more difficult to discern. Either way, though, Hara's opinion is clear: films, and other forms of expressions, should be about "self-liberation in reaction to an overly conservative society." Whether this is or should be the case would make for an interesting discussion, especially when considering this less clearly delineated brand of self-censorship.
