Fantasy,
Representation
and Identity.
Desperately Seeking Helen
By Eisha Marjara
06-01-2010/Anna Chen
Outline
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The Author
Influence/Background
Filming Process
Narrative & Style
Characters
Trauma/Symptoms
Journey of Self-Seeking
Gender & Culture Identity
The End/Beginning
Questions
The Author
» Eisha Marjara, a newgeneration IndoCanadian filmmaker
from Montreal.
 Filmography:
 24 Hours (1990)
 The Incredible Shrinking
Woman (1994, 10mins)
 Desperately Seeking Helen
(1998, 80mins, 16mm)
 The Tourist (2005/6)
 Lolita Diaries (2008)
Influence/Background
» Bollywood and Hollywood film.
» Emigration from India to Canada
» Air plane crash- Air India Flight 182 bombing. (1985)
»
Air India Flight 182 was an Air India flight operating on the Montréal-London-DelhiBombay route. On 23 June 1985, the airplane operating on the route was blown up in
midair by a bomb in Irish airspace. The incident represents the largest mass murder in
modern Canadian history. The explosion and downing of the carrier occurred within an
hour of the related Narita Airport Bombing.
…In all, 329 people perished, among them 280 Canadian nationals, mostly of Indian
birth or descent, and 22 Indians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_Flight_182
Filming Process
» Filmmaker Eisha Marjara was born in India and emigrated to Quebec
as a child; in this engrossing 1998 autobiographical film she ponders
her ethnic identity, the power of pop culture, the nature of femininity,
and her mother's failure to balance East against West, all the while
embarking on a wild (and perhaps imaginary) search for Helen, an
Indian film star who played the vamp in hundreds of Bollywood
musicals.
» Marjara mixes photos, home movies, film clips, and footage of her
journey through the teeming Bombay of the mid-90s, digressing from
one topic to the next in a sequence that becomes increasingly resonant
and finally supplying an epiphany of sorts when the pivotal events of
her life are revealed.
-Ted Shen/ Chicago Reader
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/desperately-seeking-helen/Content?oid=899061
» Desperately Seeking Helen enters a world of fantasy and unimaginable
realities, as Marjara navigates cultures and memory to find a sense of
self.
» Desperately Seeking Helen is a compelling account of self-discovery
and a moving reflection on the power of movies. -Susan Chacko
http://www.sawnet.org/cinema/reviews.php?Desperately+Seeking+Helen
» …the film is an impressionistic, humorous reminiscence of director
Marjara's own story. In the film, Helen helps her deal with her
unsettling youth, her anorexic problem and her relationship with her
mother and sister who died in the 1985 Air-India bombing disaster.
-Firdaus Ali
http://www.rediff.com/us/2000/apr/24us1.htm
Narrative & Style
» Autobiographical and experimental documentary with a story written
by the director. (“bollywood-based docu-fiction”).
» Include three parts- her mother, her childhood, her teenage. Three
separate threads make up this film -- the story of Marjara's mother,
who moved reluctantly with her husband to Canada; Marjara's own
childhood and fascination with Hindi movie vamps; and her teenage
anorexia and search for identity. These threads are determinedly
intertwined through the film.
» Collage of family photos, home movies, film clips and footage.
» Narrator’s over-tone voice; different sounds, voices and music
technically overlapped.
Journey of Self-Seeking
» A journey between home and homeland.
» A journey back and forth from India to Canada, from
Bombay to Quebec, and from Quebec to Bombay again.
» A journey from childhood to grownup.
» A journey from a girl to a Tomboy.
» A journey from fantasy to reality.
» A journey from screen representation to self-image
(hairdo-short, long or braid, body-thin or strong, stars on
the screen).
» 40:47 (Between home and homeland)
For my sisters and I, there was no question: Quebec was
home. India was far from our minds. Faint in our memory,
and alive only in pictures.
Characters
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Helen
Mother
Eisha /Child
Eisha /Teenager
Father
» Hema Malini
» Padma Khanna
Helen as A Fantasy
» Heroine on the screen.
» Heroine for Eisha as a
child.
» Vamp character in
Bollywood musical.
» Bad woman for Indian
audience.
»
Helen in Teesri Manzil (1966) and Don (1978)
Who is Helen?
» Helen knew who she was from the very start.
» Who is Helen? A diva of Indian cinema, the world's
biggest dream factory. She has performed in more than 700
films. More than a movie star, she is a glittering figure of
desire and playfulness, the mistress of a thousand
disguises, yet always herself.
»
http://www.sawnet.org/cinema/reviews.php?Desperately+Seeking+Helen
» Helen, the actress of the title, has a fascinating history of her own. She
is half Burmese and half English, and moved with her mother and
sibling to India as a child. She started acting to contribute to the family
income, learned to dance, and made her first breakthrough in Howrah
Bridge in 1958, dancing to Mera Naam Chin Chin Choo. She went on
to two decades of film roles, but was always cast as a Westernized
vamp, the counterpoint to the wholesome Indian heroine.
»
http://www.sawnet.org/cinema/reviews.php?Desperately+Seeking+Helen
» …Helen becomes a passage into Marjara's real world--her
unsettling youth, life-threatening anorexia, and the
devastating 1985 Air India bombing, which took the lives
of her mother and sister. This video revisits the '70s pop
culture of Marjara's youth and enters the fascinating world
of the Bombay movie industry--"Bollywood."
»
http://www.onfnfb.gc.ca/eng/collection/film/?id=33640&v=h&lg=en&exp=$%25257BEisha%25257D
Helen vs. Eisha
» 19:02 (Helen as a screen fantasy.)
So she isn’t real, but the fantasy is. She’s the hero’s fantasy of the perfect
woman. A heroine. Not what Helen was, and not what I wanted to be.
»
26:40 (Film and TV screen’s influence, Helen as a larger than life figure.)
»
I’ve always wanted to be a billboard queen. The size! The bigger, the better.
When I first saw Helen on a movie screen, what impressed me was her size.
She was truly larger than life, a woman with a figure, a shape and energy that
brushed the screen. The voluptuous woman. The star. Yet I’ve lived the fantasy
world within a TV screen, with TV ladies that were made to fit to size.
» I could never walk on the streets. I had to wear a
veil. They used to go berserk when they saw me.
- Helen
Mother as A Heroine
» Heroine in real-life.
» A typical figure as the
traditional Indian women.
» A heart-breaking loss for
Eisha.
» An isolated housewife in a
wintry Quebec town, jobhunting with a resume and
an Indian accent.
Mother vs. Eisha
» 10:22 (Mother as a real-life heroine.)
As a little girl, I always thought my mother was a real-life heroine. Unlike
Helen, the heroine becomes a bride after the end. (b&w) …The movie’s end
begins the real life of the heroine lady, and it lasts forever and ever… (color)
15:17 (Trying to get balance between here and there.)
My mother loved to walk, but she couldn’t get used to the ice. She always
found it hard to balance herself on the ice. After she fell the first time, her
attention was not on walking anymore, but rather on saving herself from the
next fall. Her balance, that’s right. She never got her balance right. That’s
because she had one foot in Canada and one foot in India.
» 54:24 (Mother being herself , getting balance.)
It’s not something that came easily. It was something new. When she wasn’t
working for meals on wheels, she made her rounds from school to school with
a resume and an accent, an Indian lady who taught English in a French school
and spoke both languages differently. …It was great. And we got used to it,
coming home without mom there. She had a paid job. The corning dishes were
left alone. Leftovers were enough. We made our own dessert. When she was
teaching, she was herself. It was her body. It moved differently, like she was
dancing with perfect balance.
Eisha as A Child
» Live in a movie’s world
with heroine Helen.
» Play under the kitchen
table.
» Happy family memoriesBirthday & the beautiful
doll.
» A journey toward a
foreign country- family
migration.
» Live in her Mother’s
World.
» 24:34 (Doll as a symbol of white beauty, girlhood and perfect woman )
(Come on, make a wish.) On my 7th birthday, I got a doll. All girls
have one. It wasn’t a cuddly, stuffed animal, but a beautiful goldenhaired beauty…(Wow!) Who never had to wear a braid. (I wish I had
what she has) I could pretend and play with her, and mom didn’t mind.
And I was still being a good girl. I gave her a secret name. (My secret
Helen!) (b&w)
»
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21:33 (Kitchen table as a play stage.)
A table. A Kitchen table was all it was to everyone else, a place you did your
homework, ate everything on your plate. But to me, it was a stage. A stage for
a special story. It was my secret…my secret place… The story lay underneath
the table, inside my imagination, in a place I could pretend and play. (b&w)
»
15:17 (Learning is playing. Only Helen has fun.)
For my sisters and I, the ice was a playground and the snow, a brand-new toy.
We slid along the snowbanks, made snowmen and tunnels that led to our
fantasy world. Friends were made and French was easy to learn, because
learning was playing. For grown-ups, learning isn’t supposed to be fun. That’s
why it takes them so long. Only Helen had fun. (b&w and color pictures)
Eisha as A Teenager
» Innocence/childhood lost.
» Experience Anorexia.
» Search for self-identity.
» 44:37 (Goodbye, childhood!)
Did I do something wrong? Goodbyes were endings. Did I do
something wrong? Goodbyes were endings and I knew that my final
embrace was to something called childhood. If mom only knew how
homesick I really was, even at home…
» 47:57 (Just want to be like a boy.)
» I didn’t know. No one ever told me. Maybe it was up to me to ask. I
wanted to be so good in basketball, in sports. Show the world I can
handle a ball just like a boy. I can handle a ball just like a boy. I can
handle a ball just like a boy…
(Period comes and innocence was gone.)
» I wasn’t ready. Too young to understand the rules. I thought every
second girl got her period. Mom never told me. And maybe she was
afraid I would ask. But I didn’t. And it just happened.
Trauma/Symptoms
» Love lost- mother and sister died in air crash
» Heroines lost- Mother and Helen.
» Childhood/ Innocence lost- The blood came and
the body changed.
» Air plane bombing, mother and sister died.
» Anorexia(厭食)- Rejecting food.
» Losing weight, losing hair, also rejecting being a
traditional Indian Women’s look.
Hema Malini
» Hema Malini, a famous movie star and heroine.
» Another heroine on the screen.
» 39:30
Hema left the screen when she really married a movie hero. After
many years, She’s returned to the only role that is available to an exheroine. The role of a mother. The mother of a movie hero. Heroines
become mothers after the End.
Padma Khanna
» Another Vamp figure on Bollywood movies.
» A substitute for Helen.
» 63:00
I began to ask myself, who is that woman, the woman behind the
vamp? No, she’s not Helen either, she’s Padma Khanna, an actress
once a vamp, who wasn’t at all what she appeared on that screen.
Father
» Symbolic figure, almost not real.
» Patriarchic symbol, owning his wife and children.
» Leaving the Minolta Camera to Eisha.
Gender & Culture Identity
» My mother told me I was born
on a hot spring day like this.
The second of three daughters, I
was not an easy birth. Everyone
was expecting a boy. Mom said
that it didn’t matter, but I think
it did.
That Girl
»
TV show called That Girl.
»
“What does it take to be a movie star in
India?”
»
“To become a star, you should have an
attractive face and a figure and all that.
But what I feel is for an Indian heroine,
or Indian dancer or whatever it is…you
have to have a good figure. Not a
stick…a thin stick, you know…with
bones coming out and…That’s not the
kind of beauty we Indians appreciate.
…But even now, the public does not
accept a skinny heroine.
Jamie/ the Bionic Lady
» 47:06 (Gender identity.)
»
(Helen? Who’s Helen? No, Jamie!
Who’s Jamie? Jamie, The bionic
lady. Don’t you know anything?
She’s half lady, half robot…She’s
strong and she’s fast. And she can
beat up all the bad guys.) Jamie
was tall, blonde and slender. She
wasn’t a woman like mom or
Helen. She was half lady, half
robot. And like the hero, a winner
in The End.
Charlie’s Angels
» Lady ex-cops turned
detectives, who carried
guns and wore the
right hairspray when
the job got to tough to
handle. They were
tough. The most
glamorous tomboys I
had ever seen.
The End/Beginning
» 72:36 (Journey’s end as another beginning.)
What was I looking for? Oh, yeah, Helen. It shouldn’t be this difficult.
I was close to giving up. And then I wondered, what would I be giving
up? Was I chasing a fantasy? I couldn’t recognize myself, and no one
else could either. And that’s okay when you don’t know who you are.
And there I was in a full close-up. They say the camera doesn’t lie, but
it wasn’t telling me the truth, who was I really? Helen, for me, only
lives on the screen. Off the screen, who was she? She was as ordinary
as a real woman. As real as my mother. Then she wouldn’t be Helen
now, would she? Not my secret Helen.
» I didn’t even look like one of the family, no, certainly, I didn’t look like
my mother.
Questions
» Why does Eisha Marjara take Helen as the
great role model/heroine to dream of?
» How does Helen function in a real-life?
» What is the final settlement on Eisha’s
identity with her mother, Helen, the other
heroines or Jamie?