ARTIST REFERENCE: juice

Juice short film review Shefali Shah anchors Neeraj Ghaywans story about patriarchy in Indian homes

‘Juice’ an independently produced Hindi language film by Neeraj Ghaywan, explores gender roles in India through a dinner party hosted by housewife Manju. There is a clear divide between the men and women from the start as the husbands enjoy themselves chatting and eating whilst Manju serves them, and the rest of the wives stay in the hot kitchen cooking and cleaning, becoming domestic caregivers in lieu of guests. While gorging themselves on chicken, the men gossip (a traditional feminine activity) about the ineptitude of a female superior at work treating one of them men as a subordinate and making him send unnecessary emails. The men show little knowledge on the topic they are discussing but that does not stop them from blathering on, another man asking, “do you have a problem with the email or the female?” illustrating male entitlement and a general distain for women who are viewed to be inferior and better suited to domestic roles like their wives in the kitchen. Gender roles in India are seen to be defined in childhood as a young girl playing video games is told “Food is ready come and serve your brothers” Manju looks on disgusted by this example of systemic sexism, like much of this short film she prefers to communicate with actions and facial expressions rather than words which makes her look of antipathy much more meaningful and crucial in driving the narrative as audiences begin to see her resentment towards the patriciate that demands girls to become slaves to men before even maturing into young women. This theme of children is repeated later when a wife suggests that having children is the key to marriage “If there no excitement in a marriage just get a baby” reinforcing the idea that a child, especially one that is female, is merely a versatile tool. This links with another line “But which book of law states this that either you can raise kids or pursue a career?” as Manju questions why the hegemony has created a dominant ideology that women cannot balance life in both the workplace and the home. After burning her finger whilst cooking and being subjected to an onslaught of verbal abuse as the men become increasingly impatient in their wait for additional food, Manju takes a stand by pouring a glass of juice, dragging a chair into the living room, and sitting, sipping her drink and relaxing with the cool breeze of the fan. She then engages in a pseudo staring contest with her husband who loses when he awkwardly looks away, allowing Manju to assert her dominance over the situation and empower the rest of the wives who have gathered to watch this spectacle. As Manju goes the grab the juice the whole atmosphere changes, with a non-diegetic crescendo of dramatic music increasing tension and the diegetic quieting of background noise as the house guests are shocked into silence upon witnessing Manju’s defiance. The prop of electric fans adds drastically to the mise-en-scene and as a narrative device, effectively showing the gender segregation and discrimination between the men and women. Despite arduously working in the incommodious and uncomfortable kitchen, the women are left with a broken fan that does nothing to alleviate the wife’s malaise, whilst the men who lounge around doing nothing have the amenity of the large working fan that allows them to relax. The contrast of this scene shows a paradoxical subversion of expectations as, by western standards, women sit and gossip and men do physical handiwork such as the attempted repairing of the faulty fan. Manju disrupts this convention when she moves her chair in front of the good fan to give herself a break from the harsh conditions she has been subjected to, displaying the power of female rage which she uses to dismantle the patriarchy in the microcosm of her home as seen in the quote “In anger, I have lived more fully, freely, intensely, sensitively, and politically. If ever there was a time not to silence yourself, to channel your anger into healthy places and choices, this is it” ‘Juice’ displays perfectly bell hook’s theory of intersectionality, in an age of 3rd wave feminism many people in the west believe that women are now equal to men and that feminists have achieved all that they set out for however hooks acknowledged that women of colour are excluded from this narrative and face adversity from both the feminist movement and the hegemony especially outside of the western world in countries such as India where women are still discriminated against and treated as inferiors, saying “As long as women are using class or race power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realised”3 

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