A Feminist Reading on the Exploration of Female Identity and Sexuality in Sri Lankan Cinema: A Case Study of Asoka Handagama’s Selected Works

Abstract

Since the emergence of the feminist movement, the distortion of feminine identity and sexuality is profoundly discoursed in relation to literature and other genres of art. This research has endeavoured to articulate how female identity and sexuality is portrayed in Sri Lankan cinema with reference to selected work of veteran filmmaker, Asoka Handagama. The sample comprises of the award-winning movies, “Thani Thatuwen Piyambanna” (Flying with One Wing, 2002), “Aksharaya” (A Letter of Fire, 2005) and “Aege Aesa Aga” (Let Her Cry, 2016) which features three significant female characters and their plight in patriarchal society. The researcher has deployed Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze Theory which examines the voyeuristic and scopophilic representation of women in media along with the Lacanian and Freudian concepts of gaze as the theoretical approach of the study. The research was predominantly conducted utilizing the qualitative approach while textual analysis and interviews focusing on the director of the selected films, critics and academics were the major tools of primary data collection. The secondary data was collected through research publications, newspaper articles, the internet and magazines. The hermeneutic approach was deployed in interpreting the sample and the collected data focusing on the connection between the selected sample and the broader discourses. Even though Laura Mulvey exemplifies that women are always being projected as passive objects in cinema, the findings of the study reveal that the selected sample represents the female figure as a more assertive and emphatic entity regardless of the persistent patriarchal norms.