Narrativizing Disease and Famine on Screen

Abstract

This essay will investigate the possible links between the two films of Satyajit Ray—Enemy of the People (Ganasatru, 1990) and Distant Thunder (Ashani Sanket, 1973)—and the fundamental dilemma of the present times, namely how we should think and act during this pandemic. My attempt to relate the 1990 filmic interpretation of Henrik Ibsen’s play, An Enemy of the People, with the present situation examines the administrative trends of suppressing facts across the countries, politicizing the virus, taking delayed decisions about various safety measures to control the pandemic. My interest in the narrative of Distant Thunder is justified by the ways in which the film subtly recounts the manmade Bengal famine (1943). It gets naturally connected with both the film, Enemy of the People, as well as with the present situation as the practical consequences of the pandemic explicitly shows how the law-and-order situation deteriorates when the economy fails and human trafficking increases as its direct consequence and the village women are forced to prostitute themselves to barely meet the needs of life. The unwillingness on the part of the town administration to temporarily shut the temple down in Enemy of the People has sharp parallels with the alleged tardiness of the international health organizations as well as some governments across the Global South in naming the COVID-19 a pandemic and imposing necessary travel restrictions/lockdown. The authority manages to manipulate the local newspaper into suppressing the scientific claims of the doctor, only unknowingly letting the people know the truth and the progressive leftist group of the people takes the side of the doctor at last. Distant Thunder shows the manmade Bengal famine in 1943 just after the Second World War that killed over five million people in rural Bengal in hunger and epidemic. The film also particularly shows how the cholera epidemic was utilized by the Hindu Brahman priest for financial gains because of his advantageous position in society. He gains financially from the ignorance of the people about the disease since, being an educated man, he does not believe that the disease can be stopped by worshipping the goddess. As a representative of the most privileged class in the society, he gains from the ignorance and helplessness of the poor villagers but as a member of the community, he tries to save the people tactfully by asking them to drink boiled water for the next few weeks. The death of the powerless and the most vulnerable class of the society, however, is not just a consequence of the oppressive role played by the capitalist state, but also a protest against and resistance to the panopticon position of the powerful and majoritist group of the society. As Stuart J. Murray argues that thanatopolitics being both a response and a resistance to the biopolitical power of the ruler, the advantageous position of the majoritist groups can be dismantled by the death of so many subordinated people who suffer and die in silence but can spread the disease among the majoritist groups also, breaking the hierarchical structure of differential exposure, which seems to be ensured by biopolitical governmentality as professed by Foucault. For example, the death and the plight of the millions of migrant workers in India and the rising unemployment must have some long-term negative impact on our economy and thus acts as a resistance to the collective cruelty of biopolitics. So our thesis is that the virus is politicized as part of the biopolitics to purge away the subordinated race as a method of population control, but subtle antithesis is that thanatopolitics being the extreme methods as well as consequences of biopolitics can inevitably counteract the biopolitics and the long-term adverse effects of this politicization of the virus on societal, economic, political and medical fabrics of our society, that in turn resist the politicization itself. The synthesis is that some positive images of humanity, as shown in both the films, offer hope for a better society amid an unprecedented crisis and hence naturally resist the apparently gloomy present and the gloomier future.