Thinking Activity: Midnight's Children

Hello Readers ,

This blog is a part of my classroom thinking activity and this activity given by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir . Here I'm gonna write this blog on the Film adaptation of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children , so let's start…

Basic Information :-

"Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie and the movie adaptation "Midnight's Children" directed by Deepa Mehta and narrated by Salman Rushdie.

In this story of Grandfather to son Saleem and another boy Shiva. With the born of independent India at mid night some children were also born and with their grows symbolically growing of India is presented. Movie is like collage of so any things. Many stories goes together with various symbols, hidden meanings and mechanics of the movie. Midnight’s children is like National History in Fictional way. Deepa Mehta try to make it Dreamy and Dramatic. Salman Rushdie is himself screenplay writer, though it is not as good as novel.This people who are cross over people hybrid identities like Deepa Mehta, Mira Niar.. They look at history in rather different perspective and which are normally not much in same way and their work hatred r being attacked by Hindutva identities or people.

The film is not very good film, the way Novel has been appreciated time and again and we see that screen play written by same writer of novel yet, even it is not as good as novel. It goes to that idea that when same writer translate the work, it’s not good translation but, it may be not 100% true theory because, writer like Harold Pinter, who was also screen paly writer, but His understanding medium of media and stage very well.

              Let's have a look at some of the topics of the film ;

1.First point to ponder upon is narrative technique. How was the narrative technique of the movie adaptation and in the novel ? 

Salman Rushdie is undoubtly one of the most famous novelists in presenttime. His second novel Midnight's Children received greater critical acclaimand made Rushdie a famous literary figure in English speaking world. The novelwon for him Booker of Bookers prize in 1993. In the novel Rushdie introduces aninnovator narrative technique which is different from the contemporary writers.He uses the first person narrative through Saleem Sinai, the protagonist of thenovel. Rushdie also makes good use of the device of Magic Realism in Midnight'sChildren. Further Rushdie's use of cinematic elements can clearly be seen inthe novel. All this shows Bombay Cinema's influence on Rushdie and Rushdie'suse of Indianized English is his biggest achievement. His use of Indian worldlike ekdum, angrez, firangee etc. give Indian flavor to the novel. Above all,Rushdie can be considered the master of narrative techniques at present time.

In the following, we consider these adaptations from the perspective of the audience, and evaluate how they engage with the spectator/reader. Audiences are large and diverse. By “audience” here, we do not mean any specific (reader or spectator constituent) or intended (target) audience, but rather an audience that is constructed discursively through various ways of address, such as via film trailers. Our analysis is supplemented by Rushdie’s essays on the acts of adaptation and translation from one artistic medium to another.8 Our purpose is accordingly not to measure the failure or success of Rushdie’s and Mehta’s adaptation (although an aesthetic evaluation would indeed be of interest); we argue instead that the film adaptation is a protracted creative project that has taken into consideration, more than previous adaptations of the novel, not only new forms of representation and new ways of reading, but also new ways of engaging its constructed audiences.

 Comparisons with the novel are not made in order to calibrate its success but as variations on a theme with two foci: the question of beginning, and the question of address. We conclude that the adaptation by the author of the “original” presents different types of adjustment, and that the questions of audience and media are more relevant.In the opening scenes we can observe differences in the way the versions address the audience: the novel’s narrator uses the first person to provide, in a deferred and roundabout way, his story; in the film, there is also direct speech, but the narrative proceeds much more unswervingly. 

The novel and the film thus seem to initially create a more personal rapport with their constructed audiences. It is significant in this respect that the character of Padma, the novel’s original immediate addressee and audience — the person who listens to and comments on Saleem’s narrative, and the second main character in the novel, after the protagonist — is included in the first two adaptations, but in the film she is supplanted by Rushdie’s voiceover. Padma’s role in the film was originally offered to the actor Nandita Das, who had worked with Mehta in Fire and Earth, but Das abandoned the project for personal reasons.

 No Padma: The author–audience bond

 What happens, then, when there is no Padma, as in the film? How does the narrative proceed when she is not there to probe Saleem to get on with the story — “You better get a move on or you’ll die before you get yourself born” (MC: 37) — or to question the validity of his claims — “All the time […] you tricked me” (MC: 131)? To begin with, 512 The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 52(3) Padma’s questioning (and doubting) voice disappears. In the 39 instances wherein the film’s narrator appears, only four present questions, while the remaining are declarative statements. In three of these, the questions are immediately answered by the narrator: “Why did she marry him so quickly? For solace? For the children they both wanted so much? My mother, Ameena Sinai, in her new incarnation resolved to forget the poet Nadir and fall in love with my father, Ahmed Sinai” .

2.The second point is about characters :-

These are the main characters. Satya Bhabha as Saleem Sinai, Shriya Saran as Parvati, Siddharth Narayan as Shiva, Darsheel Safary as Saleem Sinai (as a child), Anupam Kher as Ghani, Shabana Azmi as Naseem, Neha Mahajan as Young Naseem, Seema Biswas as Mary, Charles Dance as William Methwold, Samrat Chakrabarti as Wee Willie Winkie, Rajat Kapoor as Aadam Aziz, Soha Ali Khan as Jamila, Rahul Bose as Zulfikar, Anita Majumdar as Emerald, Shahana Goswami as Amina, Chandan Roy Sanyal as Joseph D'Costa, Ronit Roy as Ahmed Sinai, Kulbhushan Kharbanda as Picture Singh, Shikha Talsania as Alia, Zaib Shaikh as Nadir Khan, Sarita Choudhury as Indira Gandhi, Vinay Pathak as Hardy, Kapila Jayawardena as Governor, Ranvir Shorey as Laurel, Suresh Menon as Field Marshal, G.R Perera as Astrologer. 

In the opening scenes we can observe differences in the way the versions address the audience: the novel’s narrator uses the first person to provide, in a deferred and roundabout way, his story; in the film, there is also direct speech, but the narrative proceeds much more unswervingly. The other two versions do not construct a rapport with the audience in such a straightforward way by direct address. In movie, the audience is shown both the historical background on screen and the event of the twin births on stage. Only after these opening scenes does the narrator step in, either as a voiceover or as a character onstage. 

The novel and the film thus seem to initially create a more personal rapport with their constructed audiences. It is significant in this respect that the character of Padma, the novel’s original immediate addressee and audience the person who listens to and comments on Saleem’s narrative, and the second main character in the novel, after the protagonist is included in the first two adaptations, but in the film she is supplanted by Rushdie’s voiceover. 

Padma’s role in the film was originally offered to the actor Nandita Das, who had worked with Mehta in Fire and Earth, but Das abandoned the project for personal reasons. Rather than looking for a substitute for the role of Padma, this setback was compensated by introducing the voiceover. The choice has been regarded variously as a success and a failure by critics, for example, from the gender perspective. There are indeed grounds for interpreting the substitution of a female voice with a male as problematic; this change may even be attributed to the authorial ego. 

3.The third point is the themes and symbols :-

In this concept of Themes and Symbols I want to say , yes .  If we talk about the various themes of the novel we can see this major themes :

.Truth and Storytelling

.British Colonialism and Postcolonialism

.Sex and Gender

.Identity and Nationality

.Fragments and Partitioning

.Religion

Knees and nose :

The other pivotal symbol is the nose of Saleem. Saleem inherits his rather large, and perpetually congested, nose from his grandfather, Aadam Aziz, who also uses his nose to sniff out trouble. Saleem’s nasal powers begin after an accident in his mother’s washing-chest, in which he sniffs a rogue pajama string up his nose, resulting in a deafening sneeze and the instant arrival of the voices in his head. Saleem’s power of telepathy remains until a sinus surgery clears out his nose “goo.” After his surgery, Saleem is unable to further commune with the other children. Ironically, after Saleem’s nasal congestion is gone, he gains the ability to smell emotions, and he spends much time categorizing all the smells he frequently encounters. In short his all power goes after the operation, but one other ability he gets after operation also.

The perforated sheet :

In the movie we have seen two times The perforated sheet through which Aadam Aziz falls in love with his future wife performs several different symbolic functions throughout the novel. Unable to see his future wife as a whole, Aadam falls in love with her in pieces. As a result, their love never has a cohesive unit that holds them together. 

The silver spittoon :

The silver spittoon is an important symbol used in both art, novel and film. It is given to Amina as part of her dowry by the Rani of Cooch Naheen who is responsible for Saleem’s loss of memory. Even when he has amnesia, however, Saleem continues to cherish the spittoon as if he still understands its historical value. Following the destruction of his family, the silver spittoon is the only tangible remnant of Saleem’s former life, and yet it too is eventually destroyed when Saleem’s house in the ghetto is torn down.

 Spittoons, once used as part of a cherished game for both old and young, gradually fell out of use: the old men no longer spit their beetlejuice into the street as they tell stories, nor do the children dart in between the streams as they listen. So it can be considered as an important symbol. 

Truth and Storytelling:

Self-proclaimed writer and pickle-factory manager Saleem Sinai is dying—cracking and crumbling under the stress of a mysterious illness—but before he does, he is determined to tell his story. With the “grand hope of the pickling of time,” Saleem feverishly pens his autobiography, preserving his stories like jars of chutney, searching for truth and meaning within them.

British Colonialism and Postcolonialism:

Born at exactly midnight on the eve of India’s independence from British colonialism, Saleem Sinai is the first free native citizen born on Indian soil in nearly a hundred years. 

After a century of British rule, in addition to a century of unofficial imperialism before that, Saleem’s birth marks the end of a two-hundred-year British presence in India.

Sex and Gender:

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is a harsh critique of the gender-related power struggles of postcolonial Indian society. After generations of purdah—the belief that Muslim and Hindu women should live separately from society,behind a curtain or veil, to stay out of the sight of men—postcolonial women are encouraged to become “modern Indian women” and remove their veils.

Identity and Nationality:

From the moment Saleem Sinai is born on the eve of India’s independence from Great Britain, he becomes the living embodiment of his country.

Saleem is India, and his identity metaphorically represents the identity of an entire nation; however, Saleem’s identity is complicated and conflicted. A nation, generally understood as the same people living in the same place, only loosely applies to India’s diverse population. 

Fragments and Partitioning:

Following their 1947 independence from British rule, India begins to break up in a process known as partitioning. British India splits along religious lines, forming the Muslim nation of Pakistan and the secular, but mostly Hindu, 

nation of India. India continues to fracture even further, dividing itself based on language and class. Meanwhile, Saleem Sinai, the living embodiment of India, 

Religion:

Religion is at the forefront of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, and it drives most of the narrative throughout the entire novel. 

Saleem Sinai, the narrator-protagonist, is born Muslim but lives most of his life in the Hindu-steeped culture of Bombay.His lifelong ayah, Mary Pereira, is a devout Catholic, and his sister, the Brass Monkey, ultimately joins a nunnery.it is a major cause of the civil unrest following India’s independence. Suppressed under British rule, freedom of religion is a fundamental right under India’s new constitution, and it has saturated society.

4 .The texture of the novel :

 We see the good attempt by Salman Rushdie and Deepa Mehta. The film is not told in chronological order, but it is told in flashback. When Salim remembered something he told the audience and listener. And then come back to real life from that flashback. Whole story is told by Salim. And he described the things that he felt. This is my interpretation of the novel and film adaptation. Well some symbols are used very closely in some movies, like Taj Mahal. But Salman Rushdie and Deepa Mehta haven't took very close up scene of Taj Mahal. That we can see in the movie,

 5. What is your aesthetic experience after watching the screening?

 This movie tries to show what the situation was like with imagination and history. Speaking  against politics was a big challenge. Emergency was imposed by Indira Gandhi at that time. It was not an easy task but writing such a novel in the face of politics at that time was a big challenge. Which Salman Rushdie has done. Salman's midnight children novels have become very popular. This novel tells the same story but the way of telling the story changes.  we can say that it was great combination of various scenes. I recommend you to read the novel. I have suggest to possible watch the movie. You will surely enjoy and learn many things from this movie.

Thank u...