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| Sunday, 23 February 2003 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Anoma Janadari - flying high Jayanthi Liyanage talks to the star of Ashoka Handagama's controversial film "Flying with One Wing" Anoma Janadari's first appeal to us was not to drown her in that illusory romanticism the media loves to dress film artistes in. "That will undo all that we have attempted with Flying with One Wing," she remonstrated.
Anoma's entry to performing arts was in Percy Perera's drama, "Nara Lovin Ekek Aapi." Somewhere within this slip of a lass, there is huge talent simmering to burst out, Perera had predicted. "That observation haunted me daily to spur me on," says Anoma. Seeing Henry Jayasena's Hunuwataye Kathawa was her next turning point. "The degree of disturbance you feel at seeing a creation is equal to the social insights you receive from it," says Anoma, referring to the impact the drama made on her. After her role in Douglas Siriwardena's "Hitler" in 1985, she harboured the goal of acting in a truly realistic creation, going to any lengths to achieve an authentic performance. "That dream has come alive today and I would not hesitate to accept any future roles from Handagama or any other director, that grafts me with society." Q. How did you identify with your character in "Flying with One Wing"? A. This is the true story of the woman I have seen from my young days. From the submissive experiences of my own mother, I saw how society constructed the male to be different from the female. When I got this role, I was glad to have an opportunity to express my own protest at the femaleness enforced on me. Q. What kind of femaleness was enforced on you? A. A traditional, fragile, submissive and "well-behaved" femaleness. I couldn't bear the injustice of it. Q. How did you protest? A. Parents always try to create a "pure" female. Whenever they tried to make a "female" out of me, I always did "male" and assertive things. Q. Did you meet your character in real life before you constructed your character? A. No. It is based on a newspaper story which describes a woman who worked in a garage disguised as a man, married another woman and is arrested because of her impersonation. This film uses this theme to reveal the reality of woman in our society. She has to live as a man because she can't survive as a woman in a society where she is always the "second sex" and the male, the "first sex." The conflicts surrounding my character show that there is something tragically wrong in the manner a society institutionalises the gendered "female" in a social, economical and sexual context. Q. Are you saying that we should go beyond the gender compartments of male and female? A. Absolutely. Even our media tries to create an extraordinary world for the female by introducing to her different kinds of cooking, fashions and facials. You never see it informing her of a constructive book or a film and the woman who is imprisoned within "femaleness" thinks that's where she belongs. My insight is that this tragedy is common to both men and women and that we should go beyond categorisation as male or female and consider us commonly as human beings. The tragedy comes from our society being a very primitive society where people do not have real "culture" or moral discipline. Q. Doesn't morality merely denote the perceptions of people who practise it? A. Yes. Today's morality is a big fraud. The female is ordained to be moral and not the male. This is moral bigotry. Q. Do you see your transgendered role as reflective of the lot of all womenkind? A. When I was young, I realised that society regarded me differently from how it regarded my brother. As rebellion rose in me for the way I was treated, I wanted to emulate him, as then society would treat me more justly. All females in my society harbour an unfulfilled dream - that is, to be a male. Q. By trying to be a male, do you really define your struggle for self-determination? A. Most certainly, Yes. Because the male is the liberated being in society. Q. Does your role mete out justice to its character? A. A film maker is not there to mete out justice. He is there to reconstruct for society what he has absorbed from it. The comprehension we derive from seeing it, is what reconstructs society. Q. Some women seem to feel that the film has a large element of mysogyny. Your comments? A. Don't try to read a film, scene by scene. Take it as society. Instead of trying to decipher a film closeted within our narrow barricades, look at it in wider perspective so that thesesham definitions enclosing us will peel off and we will become more enlightened and disciplined people. Somewhere in this film, there is an element of all of us. Q. "Ena Matte Muni dakimi, Mamath pirimi bava labami" (Will meet the Lord in future when I too will become a man). How does this verse relate to the film? A. Ashoka borrowed it from "Pattini Halle" (The Lament of Goddess Pattini) as he believes that before Victorian capitalism invaded our country we had a sexually liberated environment in which a bare-bodied woman could walk from Dondra Head to Pedro Point without a hair of her body being harmed. The Victorians have long since been liberated but our heads are still full of the relics they left behind and that is why we cannot grow as a society. Q. Can you comment on the totally nude scenes at the close of the movie? A. When the other characters performed nude around me, I did not see such an enigma in their sexuality. In them, I only saw the society around me. The only thing I did was to reconstruct my character with the characters which grew with it. Wouldn't it be hypocrisy to create a controversy over nudity in this film, in a country which awards raving reviews for nudity in sex films? Q. What are you trying to tell society with nudity? A. It is always the female who is bared. When society bares my femaleness, by playing the role of a male, I bare their maleness. I don't think I can be more explicit than this. Q. What kind of a response did you get from international audiences? A. I could only take part in Torino International Film Festival in Italy. (The film won at this festival the best feature film award and the special jury prize for Anoma's interpretative power.) I couldn't even imagine when our audiences would mature to be as discerning as the Italian audiences in having a constructive dialogue with an art creation, linking it to society. This film could well be a rehearsal. Ours is a very retrogressive society. What is nudity when even what we accept as "culture" has turned out to be a falsehood? Can our women safely travel in bus or go on the road in the night or our young girls be left alone with their own male cousins? In that context, why should we define criteria for a sham culture? Q. A review of the film notes "clothes" which cover-up and expose, as the major ploy the film chooses to explore its theme. Your comments? A. Society defines and constructs the male and the female by clothes. My disguise is also through clothes. Clothes should not be the deciding factor. If the Victorian traditions did not clothe us, we would still be a liberated people. Once worn, clothes also attire us with moral hypocrisy and it is this moral bigotry which tries to cover-up a woman with clothing. Q. Which not only covers-up her body, but also her aspirations as an individual? A. Most certainly, yes. |
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Her request seems quite pertinent considering that her husband, Ashoka
Handagama's first cinematic direction is also the local first, to attempt
a mass conversation on the issue of the polarisation of gender. Or
"the pink and blue dogma", using the dilemma of a transgender
person whom a "gender-phobic" society deems an outlaw for her
"gender transgression" to construct her own identity.
