“Silent” and “marginalised” women characters playing the role of wives in the Tibetan family can be found in Pema Tseden’s Old Dog and Sonthar Gyal’s The River. The films both depict everyday Tibetan family life and Tibetan women’s situation in sex-gendered systems in Tibetan male-dominant society and in the family power structure. In terms of Old Dog, in Figure 29 D, E, F and H it can be easily seen that the film space frames the woman character (the wife) at the right edge, marginalised by the male characters. After the Tibetan mastiff has been sold by the old Tibetan herder’s son in the film space, Pema Tseden devotes a lengthy sequence to narrating the infertility of the couple (the son and his wife) to symbolise the castration of Tibetan culture in contemporary society. As can be seen in Figure 29 A and B, although these are two close-up shots of the wife in traditional Tibetan dress, from the front and the back, Pema Tseden has still made a stylistic choice of two quiet cinematic shots in which the wife is silent. She is waiting calmly and silently for her husband to take her to hospital for physical examination. To compare and contrast A and B, the wall of the house is a boundary which frames a contrast of brightness: the light in the front from the outside and the dark in the back from the inside. It would be meaningful to link this to the conception of a spatialised division of labour in the Tibetan social space that associates Tibetan women with affairs “inside” the household and Tibetan men with prestigious ritual and political affairs “outside” the household. In other words, the wife’s affairs should be “inside” the household. It can be seen in the Figure 29B that although there is a road and a motorcycle in front of her, she still needs to wait for and rely on the husband to take her “outside” the “household”. The boundary of the house wall creates a notion of “inside” and “outside” in spatial and metaphorical considerations. In other words, it can be concluded that “inside” associates
169 women with darkness, passivity, and inferiority, while at the same time, “outside” associates men with brightness, activity, and superiority.
A B C D E F
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G H Figure 29. The woman character represented as a wife in Old Dog
This contrast continues into Figure 29C, where it can be seen that the film space uses another wall to frame the different settings of the wife and the husband, each taking up nearly half the screen, making them look like contrast images of each other. More specifically, it can be seen from the analysis of visual aesthetics that on the left of the screen Pema Tseden creates a very bright environment through daytime sunshine, featuring a long shot of the wife squatting which leaves her character unidentified, and positions the wife symbolically absent from the play of “image” and “look”. On the right-hand side, the camera does not change but there is a medium shot immersed in darkness. This is the focus of visual narrative on the screen, responding to the dynamics of the (man’s) conversation between the son and the father. Through comparing and contrasting the shots in Figure 29C, it can be discovered that the wife represents a traditional Tibetan woman image bearing hardship quietly and uncomplainingly, and she is actually marginalised and symbolically absent from the Tibetan androcentric discourse in the film space.
In Figure 29G, we can see the old Tibetan herder ask his daughter-in-law about the result of her physical examination for pregnancy, but she just keeps silent with her head down. This sequence is framed with a medium shot through the window of the door that is the entrance to the back room. This stylistic approach compresses visual space to the upper half of the screen, showing repressed emotion and an oppressed environment. In the same way, in Figure 29D, when her husband asks about the result of her physical examination, the wife again keeps silent with her head down. She is like a child who has done something wrong, being placed on the right edge of the screen. Through a reflection in the glass of the restaurant door, we
171 can see a fuzzy image of her sister telling the result to her husband. Equally, it can be seen that in E and F, two sequences of watching TV, the wife always sits at the right visual edge, which in E is framed by a border of the window of the door, and in F is framed by a wall of the house. In both shots she is marginalised by androcentric characters (her husband and father-in-law) and is submerged in the dark, represented as an unidentified image. In this way, through Pema Tseden’s series of powerful sequences, the film Old Dog articulates a silent, marginalised, and symbolically absent Tibetan woman image (the wife).
The image of the Tibetan woman in the role of wife in The River is quite similar to its counterpart in Pema Tseden’s Old Dog. Through its stylistic choices, this film also narrates a social reflection of the Tibetan family power structure in relation to the status of Tibetan women. In this case, it can be found that the woman character in The River is silent, symbolically absent and marginalised from the androcentric narrative of oppression in the relationship between the father and the grandfather. At the same time, this also references the social construction of traditional Tibetan patriarchal society, referring to the literatures used in the discussion of the Tibetan social space, in which there is a conception of a spatialised division of labour in the Tibetan family power structure that associates women with affairs “inside” the household and men with affairs “outside” the household. The woman character is presented in the film space as “inside” the household in two different locations: the house (Figure 30) and the tent in the summer pastures (Figure 31). In other words, through these two places, the film spatially positions the woman character as inside the household and associated with passivity and inferior status, in contrast to the work of her male counterpart.
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E F Figure 30. The woman character as wife in the house
More specifically, it can be seen from Figure 30 A to F that the wife never occurs in the film space beyond the “inside” of the house where she is being a household labourer, a good wife and a clean housekeeper, having to work hard quietly and without complaining. The first occurrence of the woman character is in the sequences of A and B, where she is squatting to cook for other family members. Here it can be seen that the woman is “inside” the household, with the view being of her back and her hands for cooking, leaving the woman character unidentified. Importantly, the fence in Figure 30A may symbolise the boundary framing the spatialised division labour of “inside” the household for her, while the little girl is calling her from “outside”. As I mentioned in Chapter Five, her husband (the young girl’s father) has been suffering from alcoholism and he fell off his motorbike after heavy drinking. Therefore, in C and D we see the husband lying in bed having sustained serious injuries. The wife is sitting on the edge of the bed with her head down silently crying over his injury, leaving her image unidentified. In C she is also placed at the right edge, marginalised by the male
173 character (her husband), being symbolically absent (unidentified status) from the play of “image” and “look” for both the male character and the audience.
In Figure 30E, Sonthar Gyal makes a contrast between the woman character (the wife) and the man (the husband) which can be seen as a reflection of the spatialised division of labour in Tibetan family power structure. Here there is a long shot to the wife as she is walking with, helping and taking care of an old lady. Without any change of camera, the film space also includes a medium shot to the man character, in which he is fixing his motorbike. It can be understood that the motorbike may symbolise the ability and power of going “outside” the household, but that this ability is actually held in the husband’s hands and the woman needs to rely on the husband to take her “outside” the household. This contrast also speaks to the notion of “inside” and “outside” in spatial and metaphorical considerations, in which the woman is associated with a passive, inside-household, and inferior status while the man is associated with an active, outside-household, and superior status.
Later, the wife complains to the husband, asking why they are moving to the summer pastures very early in the year when she is pregnant again. Unfortunately the husband then loses his temper with his wife. It can be seen that in Figure 30F, squeezing the visual focus on the screen by the edge of the wall creates repressed emotion and an oppressed environment in which the wife is keeping silent, sitting on the edge of the bed with a view of her profile and of the right side of her body, leaving her with a silent and unidentified status.
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Figure 31. The woman character as wife in the tent of the summer pastures
After they move to the summer pastures, the tent in the summer pastures actually constructs a sense of household for this nuclear family. In this case, the image of the woman character is still associated with a good wife, hard-working household labourer and clean housekeeper inside of the tent (household) and less positioned outside the tent (household/domestic space). As can be seen from Figure 31 A, B, C and D, the woman character is a quiet and traditional Tibetan woman and always occurs in the film space doing housework such as cooking and serving food for other family members, and child rearing. Especially, two sequences are provided by Sonthar Gyal to depict contrasting images of the family power structure between the woman and the man (see Figure 31 B and D). In B, the woman is keeping silent in the face of the husband losing his temper with her after he, because his mind was wandering, dropped the cup of buttered tea that was offered by his wife. This sequence places the visual focus on the man’s face, and gives an unidentified image to the woman character by blurring the lens. Similarily, in Figure 31D the husband is unfortunately once again losing his temper with his wife, only because the water overflowed on the stove after he lost his dzi. The wife comes quickly to manage it, but the visual focus is actually on the husband, the kettle and the hands of the wife, which leaves the woman character with an unidentified status once again. In other words, in The River, the woman character has been represented in the role of wife as “inside” the household and associated with a passive and inferior status. She is silent, marginalised, and symbolically absent from the “outside” household (active and superior status) and androcentric narrative (the relationship between his husband and his father-in-law in the film narrative). At the same time, the contrast between the image of the man character and the woman character also echoes the discussion in Chapter Five of the “negative” Tibetan
175 manhood which is linked to the “negative” influences of modernity on the Tibetan younger generation, leaving Tibetan ethnicity and culture at the centre of crisis in the modern context.