Open AccessThe Reluctant Wife: Ginnen Upan Seethala and Gendering Revolution
Author(s) -
Kanchanakesi Warnapala
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
european journal of life writing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2211-243X
DOI - 10.21827/ejlw.10.37916
Subject(s) - wife , politics , witness , ideology , representation (politics) , independence (probability theory) , prime minister , expansive , sociology , gender studies , history , law , political science , statistics , compressive strength , materials science , mathematics , composite material
This paper sets out to examine the politics of representation of the biographical film, Ginnen Upan Seethala (2018), which focuses on the life and times of Rohana Wijeweera, a rebel leader who led two failed insurrections in post-independence Sri Lanka. It argues that while the film seemingly exonerates the leader and the movement, through a discourse of domesticity, it simultaneously engages in a nuanced representation of Chithrangani Wijeweera, the wife of Rohana Wijeweera, a woman who has been positioned at the margins of the masculinized historical record of the JVP party. While such records have largely ignored testimony in which Chithrangani constructs herself as a reluctant wife who is subordinated to the dominant ideology of the party and its leader, the film provides her a more expansive and empathetic role and thereby bears witness to her tale of victimhood and survival, unraveling how patriarchal political conquest coopts women as strategic sites of political domination.