ASPECT OF FRAMED NARRATIVE IN IDENTITY CREATION
Abstract
The objective of this essay is to bring into picture the importance of framed narrative in identity creation. It is trying to state that, it is not the framed narrative which creates the identity of a person, it is the perception of the listener. The framed narrative is a way of narration in which the author decides that how the story is to be interpreted. Some of the audience will relate to the characters in the story and appreciate the story while some will critique the story. Especially in the case of Indian cinemas. This writing talks about the affect of Indian cinemas on the audience quoting the examples of documentaries like " The world before her" and "Slumdog Millionaire" which are framed narratives.
Keywords: Framed narrative, perception of listener, Indian cinemas.
Introduction
Framed narrative is a story telling technique which has stories within a main story. We can see framed narrative in ever form be it a novel, poem, play, film, opera or music. First the main narrative is presented which proceeds with the stage setting of the second narrative or other short stories leading the listener from one story to the other within it. The frame narrative establishes a context for the embedded narrative, and, more specifically, call attention to the situation of how the story is told. This narration allows the narrator to create the context for how the narration is to be interpreted by the audience. In other word it creates a situation and lets the inner stories to be told. It unites the stories which first seemed unrelated.
Framed narratives also puts forward multiple perspectives within a single narration which helps the audience to understand the characters well and know their motivations, thoughts and feelings, it creates a certain theme. Framed narratives can easily carry the audience from what is important to what is not. It has a psychological, social and political effect on the audience, it can change the point of view for the audience, offering multiple perspectives to one text, allowing the audience to interpret more than one meaning. This may also give a new view to a story, than what the audience understood previously.
With the help of framed narratives the narrator can easily dramatize the audience and increase the opportunities of persuasion especially in case of religion. For example the famous epic like Mahabharata and tales of Jataka have a great influence on identity. Talking about the Indian cinema, it is also a good framed narrative in which the author puts forward his thoughts in front of the audience, he can easily manipulate the story and show what he wants to show to people. Sometimes it gives multiple perspectives to the story and sometimes it is left open ended. In this way the audience gets more information about the characters and situations which gives them the cues to interpret the story well. Though some agree with what is being told or shown in the story while some critique it.
Quoting Examples
01. The World Before Her
The documentary named "The world before her" is a tale of two women and two Indias. In one, Ruhi Singh is a small-town girl competing in Bombay to win the Miss India pageant — a ticket to stardom in a country wild about beauty contests. In the other India, Prachi Trivedi is the young, militant leader of a fundamentalist Hindu camp for girls, where she preaches violent resistance to Western culture, Christianity and Islam. Moving between these divergent realities, the film creates a lively, provocative portrait of the world's largest democracy at a critical transitional moment — and of two women who hope to shape its future.
The story is narrated by these two women to the film maker and the stories are carried forward with other girls telling their version of story who are the participants of the beauty contests in case of Ruhi Singh, even her parents or the girls seeking training in the VHP in case of Prachi Trivedi's narration and her parent's version of story too.
Plot Summary
The World Before Her cuts between the lives of young urban middle-class aspirants being trained to compete for the 2011 Femina Miss India crown and girls from rural, predominantly lower caste and working class backgrounds, undergoing training by Hindutva ideologues in a Durga Vahini camp near Aurangabad. Ruhi Jain, a Miss India contestant from Jaipur dreams of making it big in the international world of glamour, and Prachi Trivedi -- an intriguing, feisty woman who admits to her trans-gendered inclinations -- yearns for a successful career as a leader within the Sangh. There are other intermittent characters too, girls belonging to both camps, and their parents. At some point one realizes that the independence that Ruhi and Prachi are chasing is ephemeral, and merely feeds into a strongly patriarchal system that believes women’s bodies and minds need disciplining to serve global capitalism and the Hindu nation. The girls seem to know it too, but accept it as part of the trade-off.
Prachi Trivedi- ready to kill for her religion
As the story proceeds the audience get to know more and more about the characters being involved in the story and their point of view regarding their aspirations as well as for the other side. We can see Prachi saying “I am a Hindu and I’ll proudly say I’m a Hindu” and “I don’t like those girlish-type girls.” What perspective Prachi's father and mother have towards their culture and the westernization. While in case of Ruhi we see how her parents are supporting her and waiting for her dream to come true, we get to know about the Miss India 2009 Puja Chopra and her point of view about this fame and beauty business, we also come across her mother's thoughts and sufferings in bringing up her daughter.
Ruhi Singh- dying to be Miss India
What is striking is that both Ruhi and Prachi hang their personal ambitions on the hook of patriotism, couching their desire for success and fame under the garb of ‘symbolizing Indianans’, modern or otherwise. The dangerous seduction of nationalism as an ideology is remarkable given that the material realities of national belonging involve tedious production of documentary evidence, public shows of allegiance, and coercion to conformity. A constant, and often violent, manufacturing of consensus is essential for nations to exist and women and technology have been crucial to this enterprise. The aggressive instructions at the Durga Vahini camp commanding young girls to be ‘good Hindu women’, learn the shlokas and martial arts, to hate Muslims and Christians, and ultimately marry a Hindu man to bear him sons, as well as the nipping, botoxing, and stitching into shape of bodies seeking out a unitary idea of global beauty in the Miss India camp, both invoke regimes of terror that harbour little tolerance for dissidence.
Moving between the transformative action at both camps and the characters' private lives, The World Before Her creates a lively, provocative portrait of the world's largest democracy at a critical transitional moment. These young women may represent opposing extremes but in their hearts they share a common dream: to help shape the future of India as she meets the world before her.
So, the story is framed in such a way that the audience travels through the lives of two extremely opposite personalities showcasing the truth of their lives. Some of the audience agrees with what is being shown, they support the spirit of girls of VHP while others call it as a terrorist training activity. Some agrees with what Prachi says and her father says about this beauty business while others critique it, how can a man sitting shirtless can comment on the body show practice in the beauty contests. Some people agree with what Ankita Shorey a participant of the Miss India contest and the second runner up comments on brain and beauty saying that beauty queens are dumb, while some of the audience is completely against the thought. In this way the framed narrative is giving multiple perspectives to the audience.
02. Slumdog Millionaire
In case of the Oscar winning movie Slumdog Millionaire there is a single narrator Jamal Malik who is telling the audience about his past life, highlighting the important incidences which he recalls while playing a game in the present.
Plot Summary
Jamal tells the interrogators at the station the story of his life and how he wound up on the game show. Jamal Malik, an 18-year old Mumbai slum kid, get right through to the last question on ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ and the chance to win 20 million rupees.
But straight after the show breaks for the night, he is arrested on suspicion of cheating. The show’s quizmaster Prem Kumar, himself a product of the slums, is unwilling to share the limelight with the young upstart. A night of mistreatment and torture fails to elicit a confession, so in the morning the Inspector of Police changes tack and asks Jamal to explain how he knew the answers.
Question by question, Jamal relates the story of his life.
Growing up in the Juhu slum of Bombay, he is seven when he sees his mother killed in a religious riot. He and his older brother Salim, now orphans, are forced to live by their wits on the streets, with Latika, an orphaned girl Jamal comes to care for, and as they grow older to love.
Seemingly rescued by an orphanage, the children are put to work as beggars. But they are forced to escape when Salim sees Maman blind young Arvind and learns that he plans to blind Jamal so he can earn more. The boys manage to jump on a train but Salim deliberately leaves Latika behind.
The boys live on the trains for the next six years, until they fall off near the Taj Mahal. There Jamal works as an unofficial tour guide, while Salim steals shoes, car tyres and anything else available. But Jamal has not forgotten Latika and he and a reluctant Salim return to Bombay – now Mumbai – in search of her.
With the help of the blind Arvind, whom Jamal sees singing in a subway, they find Latika, who is being trained to be a dancer and prostitute. Before the three of them can get away, Maman and his henchmen arrive. Salim shoots Maman and they flee to an empty hotel. But Salim offers his services to the gangster Javed, and then claims Latika as his prize, threatening to shoot Jamal too.
Five years later Jamal is working as a chai-wallah (tea boy) in a mobile phone call centre. He uses a computer to find Salim’s phone number. Salim is delighted to see his brother again, but Jamal is shocked to learn that Salim is working for Javed, and even more shocked to find that Latika is with Javed too. She is clearly unhappy but is too frightened of Javed to leave him. When she does try to join Jamal, she is followed and forcibly taken back by Salim and Javed’s other thugs. Finding Javed’s house empty, Jamal is in despair. He decides to go on the TV game show in the hope that Latika will be watching it.
Listening to Jamal’s story, the Inspector comes to believe that this ‘slumdog’ is telling the truth. Finally convinced, the Inspector releases him to go back onto the show, to face the final question.
The story of Jamal’s dream run on the show and his subsequent arrest has turned him overnight into a media sensation. When Salim and Latika see Jamal on the news, Salim gives Latika his car keys so she can escape Javed. While Latika drives across the city towards the studio, he locks himself in the bathroom with money and his gun.
As Jamal returns to the studio for the final question, Latika is caught up in Mumbai’s gridlocked traffic. With the whole of India watching, Jamal asks to phone a friend. The only number he knows is that of his brother’s mobile phone, on the seat in the vehicle Latika has abandoned. She reaches it in time, but does not know the answer. Jamal guesses the correct answer anyway – it is ‘destiny’ – and then goes to wait for her at the station. Meanwhile Salim has ensured they will be safe by shooting Javed before being killed in his turn. The young couple reunites for the third time, and they walk into their future.
So, inspite of having an interesting narrative style and plot the movie did not do much good in India because although it is showing the truth there is a sense of injured national pride. But the idea that even if you're not educated, like the hero of the film, you can be successful by dint of your common sense and hard work." This message of hope could have worked for many among India's lower middle-class aspiring for a better life. Thus this justifies the fact that it is upto the audience, what they perceive from the content given to them.
Conclusion
Concluding the essay I would like to say that framed narratives do create an impact on identity creation but by giving the audience multiple perspectives it does not create the identity actually. The author has all the string in his hands and he pulls them according to his will, but inspite of showing the audience what he wants he can never satisfy the them as the audience has its own perspective, it always raises a question. Framed narratives has the power to shape an control the audience response but not to a greater extent. it goes well with the epics whose goal is to persuade the audience for the validity of religious ideals but not in case of Indian cinemas which tries to manipulate the story and show their version of truth which may or may not be like by the audience.
References
- Framed Narrative and the Dramatized Audience in a Tamil Buddhist Epic - by Paula Richman, Colby College, Waterville, Maine
- Slumdog Millionaire Plot Summary
- World before her
- http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-the-sick-world-before-her
- The Narrative Constitution of Identity: A Relational and Network Approach Author(s): Margaret R. Somers