What makes a man or woman on campus? Reviewing the stakes of desirability, agency, and power in the movies Sye (2004) and Happy Days (2007)

-Vennela

The word ‘Campus’ today means ‘the grounds and buildings of a university or college. It has interesting etymological antecedents and associations with the words camp, champion and campaign. These associations are not neutral. They signal the inherent meaning connections of ‘campus’ to a battlefield. Campus, among other things, is a field where identities are actively made, remade and made-over. Presently there is sudden interest in the question, what a campus is?  It is because the meaning of campus changed with time, and the way we perceive a man and a woman have also changed. Campus has become a place where the dynamic of power between the students and the administration and between students of different genders has become problematic. Today the attitudes and behaviours that germinate in a campus go beyond it.
Many popular Telugu films right from the 1950s to the present day have made campus a recurring backdrop for political intrigues, epic love sagas, heart-warming bonds of friendship, and search for social equality. This article will analyse the gender dynamic that many movie-campuses depict, and how far they are usable in real life. The specific focus would be the politics of gender that two popular Telugu films show Sye (2004) and Happy Days (2007).
Sye means ‘Yes’. Sye is the story is of a campus divided into two rival groups – ‘Wings’ and ‘Claws’. The tale turns on a crisis when Bikshu Yadav, a gangster, chooses to occupy the campus illegally. How the protagonist Pridhvi from ‘Wings’ and Shashank from ‘Claws’ put their rivalry aside to defeat Bikshu Yadav in a game of Rugby and defend their campus forms the main story line. The female lead is Indu, a transfer student who joins the same college as Pridhvi. Their courtship lends the film a lighter vein amidst the serious episodes of conflict between the students and the gangster.
The film opens with the narrators telling the viewers that campus is a battlefield for both the ‘Wings’ and ‘Claws’ and that “it is an open secret”. Having established that the campus is not just for academic activity but also to settle personal scores, the story opens to show the female-lead Indu. She tells her friend how her father is scared of co-education colleges because she might fall in love with someone. A girl studying in a co-education campus might have to face the policing of the parents too. Indu’s fear of her father forces her into making a choice between accepting unwanted advances from Pridhvi and confronting her father. She choose to withold information rather than communicate with her paranoic father.
The movie depicts how Indu unwittingly becomes a prime figure in the age old feud between ‘Wings’ and ‘Claws’. In a titilating scene which involves a bus-chase and a lot of swearing, the film shows Indu being dragged into an empty classroom even as she cries, begs the students of ‘Wings’ to leave her. Even as the ‘Claws’ group tries in vain to defend their claim over their potential female member, Indu is administered with what is populary known as the tramp stamp – a permanent tattoo on the lower back. Apart from being painful, a permanent tattoo is a degrading punishment when enforced. Ironically the tattoo is not referred to in the film again. Even as Indu is sobbing after getting a tattoo, Pridhvi taunts Shashank – “Don’t shout at us now. Your goods are adulterated. We are brave men. That is why we could put a mark on her”. The act of using a woman’s body to exibit traits like physical prowess or bravery is an appalling product of this and more scenes to come.
In the movie Pridhvi, repeatedly comes off as a naughty, ingenious man, Indu is depicted as a slow-witted, sex-less, childlike figure. The stereotype of a female-lead who is sexually evocative but sexless, desirable but innocent, womanly but childlike is reinforced in this film. The forceful romantic blend presents the viewers with troublesome suggestions regarding the ideal girlfriendhood. Any woman or girl who is as desirable as Indu must be willing enough to look past a degrading, violent form of abuse or two to attain romantic involvement. Campus becomes a place of manufacturing passivity towards abuse in any form. Men should perform the act of acquiring a woman to show what it is to be a powerful man on campus; and the women must be strong to brace an insult or two if they choose to have romantic attachment.
The courtship enters troubled waters when Indu falls in love with Pridhvi. The leader of Indu’s group, Shashank orders Indu to like someone within the home group and says that he cannot approve of her dating a boy from rival ‘Wings’. This well-trodden trope of women as boundary markers in films is not new. But when this trope is brought into the social space of a campus, it interferes and dictates the notion of what is desirable, powerful and enviable on campus – possessing a woman. To have or to be able to have a girl is portrayed as an enviable, resourceful quality.Not only does this turn of gender dynamic make the female identity a mere mediator in the making of the ideal malehood, but also it dictates what it is to be a man, a hero.

Happy Days (2007) directed by Shekar Kammula presents the viewers with a different campus. It is the story of a group of friends who study at an engineering college. The story depicts how campus life begins and unfolds over the period of four years. Happy Days shows the familiar themes of ragging by seniors and the academic parlance of an engineering campus. The story takes the audience through freshers’ parties, examination pressures, sacrifices, anger and betrayals between the group of friends. The formation of an individual on an engineering college campus over four years is the theme of Happy Days.

Happy Days show us a campus that brings together subtle forms of gender stereotypes. There are three girls in the main roles with Madhu as the female lead, Appu (boyish with short cropped hair, who dresses up in trousers and shirts) and Shravs (an attractive senior depicted as sexy and hot for dressing up  fashionably) as her friends. Madhu and Chandu, the hero, come together at the end. Appu and Rajesh discover their love at the end of the movie. Shravs is courted by her junior Tyson, but she already has a boyfriend from the senior student group. She dissuades Tyson throughout the whole movie. The story revolves around how they find love and friendship, how they learn to handle the more complex aspects of a relationship.
The first day Appu comes to the college she is ragged by the seniors for dressing up like a boy. She is made to write an imposition – “I wont wear pant and shirt”. Even if ragging can be written off as harmless fun, the film alerts us to the extant rules of female dressing. What should a female wear? Appu’s seniors suggest a saree. What happens when a woman wears pant and shirt? She ends up looking like a boy. Madhu, the female-protagonist is also ragged on her first day like the rest of her friends. She is asked to wear a half-saree. The requests/orders which tell women what/how to wear have an inherent connection to what she should look like to an unknown audience. Here the unknown audience is not just men. It is the sum total of women, men and a mass of societal stereotypes. At a later point in the film, Appu becomes jealous that Rajesh is dating another girl. In order to look more desirable, she tries to take her spectacles off and apply lipstick. Halfway, she breaks down crying. The underlying message that a society sends permeates even the strongest minds. How can a teenage student withstand these overpowering suggestions of desirable femininity? The movie shows the viewers how Appu persists in her attire.
The flipside of the coin is Shravs who wears western clothes most of the time. Her fashion sense invites comments on her character. A male-student remarks that because Shravs dresses ‘like that’ she is open to ‘more things’ (referring of course to sexual intimacy). This brings us to a difficult question. What are the options of dress for a girl student? If a girl does not want to be called boyish or of loose character, it is advisable to stick with conventional wear.
Like Sye, the campus in Happy Days is also a site of claim, where a few male students want to police the female interaction. Who should the girl be friends with? Should a girl date? What would she become if she dates a member of the opposition group? When a male-senior tries to badger Madhu about who she chooses to make her friends, Madhu retorts saying that it is her express right to choose anybody to be friends with. This leads the viewers again to the age old trope of boundary markers. Madhu becomes the symbol of prestige to be won by the senior group.The campus-film culture of deciding a girl’s love life on her behalf brings us to a great sociological impasse. What would the girl’s agency be in choosing a lover, or a friend on a campus? What happens when she seeks a lover by herself? Is that normal? Will such an autonomous action be condoned by the Telugu-campus film culture? These are a few questions that are worth reviewing in every campus related discussion.
The above films are the tip of a larger iceberg. The tendencies and gender stereotypes mentioned above are only a sample of more dangerous and provocative atittudes towards male-female interaction in Telugu campus films. Movies like Siva (1989), Master (1997), Chithram (2000), Dil (2003), Kotthabangaru Lokam (2008), 100% Love (2011) provide knotty stereotypes involving females on campus and the extent of female agency on campus. The campus-space is a dynamic social corner where individuals are actively formed. Rather than copying the exisiting gender (im)balance a campus must be a field open for voices that have been previously unheard.

Vennela is a student at the University of Hyderabad