“Fantasy as Subversion”: Ray, Totalitarianism, and “Dissensus”

Abstract

Satyajit Ray’s faith in the integrity of his middle-class protagonists and his philosophical detachment coupled with his aesthetics of contemplation have often been brutally criticized by his Marxist critics. They have accused Ray of being a bourgeois humanist, a political effete without any specific ideology, estranged from tackling pressing contemporary social and political issues. The article attempts to trace Ray’s thoughts on cinema and analyze how his films, even those that seem to be fantasies, are not situated in a rarefied atmosphere but are determined by a number of sociopolitical events that intersect and interact in myriad ways. A ghost story by Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury, provided the filmmaker with the perfect narrative trope to critique what he considered the germs of contemporary social and political conditions, the vantage point from which his allegory could address not only the contemporary scenario but also the distant future. In his fantasy-based musicals Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha, 1969) and Hirak Rajar Deshe (The Kingdom of Diamonds, 1980), Ray decided to be at his subversive best. These films based on magic realism were not simply departures from his neo-realistic narratives but also veiled satires that indicted the establishment.