TY - CHAP
T1 - CLOSETED DESIRES AND OPEN SECRETS
T2 - Raincoat and Noukadubi
AU - Allen, Richard
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - What does our knowledge of Riturparno Ghosh as a queer film director contribute to our understanding of his films that are not explicitly gay- or queer-themed works? Raincoat and Noukadubi are both films that intricately anatomise a condition of unrealised desire that is created by the social expectations and constraints of arranged marriage, yet a desire that still exists at a level of ‘open secrecy’, at once acknowledged and disavowed. I argue that both films, Raincoat especially, invoke the metaphor of the ‘closet’ to characterise the mortifying ways in which desire is confined and denied within arranged marriages. By doing so, they evoke, albeit in a manner that is itself closeted or disguised, an analogy between the closet created by compulsory heterosexuality for those who are incipiently homosexual and the rejection of love based on desire created by conditions of, what I shall call, compulsory arrangement. © 2016 Sangeeta Datta, Kaustav Bakshi and Rohit K. Dasgupta.
AB - What does our knowledge of Riturparno Ghosh as a queer film director contribute to our understanding of his films that are not explicitly gay- or queer-themed works? Raincoat and Noukadubi are both films that intricately anatomise a condition of unrealised desire that is created by the social expectations and constraints of arranged marriage, yet a desire that still exists at a level of ‘open secrecy’, at once acknowledged and disavowed. I argue that both films, Raincoat especially, invoke the metaphor of the ‘closet’ to characterise the mortifying ways in which desire is confined and denied within arranged marriages. By doing so, they evoke, albeit in a manner that is itself closeted or disguised, an analogy between the closet created by compulsory heterosexuality for those who are incipiently homosexual and the rejection of love based on desire created by conditions of, what I shall call, compulsory arrangement. © 2016 Sangeeta Datta, Kaustav Bakshi and Rohit K. Dasgupta.
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M3 - RGC 12 - Chapter in an edited book (Author)
SN - 9781138953901
SN - 9780815395522
SN - 9781317356097
SN - 1317356098
T3 - South Asian History and Culture
SP - 153
EP - 169
BT - RITUPARNO GHOSH
A2 - Datta, Sangeeta
A2 - Bakshi, Kaustav
A2 - Dasgupta, Rohit K.
PB - Taylor & Francis
ER -