Flames of Fire: Expressions and Denial of Female Sexuality

Abstract

The film “Fire” by Deepa Mehta, primarily described as a film on female sexuality, bagged as many as 14 international awards and simultaneously raised violent controversies in India. The film was caught in the crossfire between Hindu fundamentalists and lesbians—and an array of actors in between. The media presented the audience and the readers with a range of responses that often did not provide a neat picture with defined frames. While fundamentalists’ outrage condemned the film as anti-Indian and an assault on Indian culture, human rights groups, a section of the women’s movement, artists, and the film industry as well as members of civil society saw it as an issue of freedom of speech and expression. However, among all those protesting, the voice of a small number of lesbian women was particularly outstanding. These women made two significant claims: first, that the film was an explicit statement about lesbianism and second, that lesbians are Indian.

The dominant culture defines the notions of sex and sexuality, of desire and desirability, senses and sensuality. Other cultural configurations will not only be subordinate to this dominant order, they enter into struggle with it, seek to modify, negotiate, resist or even overthrow its reign, its hegemony.

—Brah 1996