Gooppi Gawaiya Bagha Bajaiya (Shilpa Ranade, 2019) and Adult Animation

**Fig. 1 - Shilpa Ranade’s *Goopi Gawaiyaa Bagha Bajaiyaa* (2019).**

Animation has, of course, never been only for children. To limit an understanding of the audience of animation to just children is to deny the medium’s potential as an art form to both reflect and reimagine reality in increasingly innovative ways. As Eric Herhuth observes, the ever ‘expand(ing)’ definition of animation has repeatedly uncovered the art form’s “capacity for political expression” (2016, 4). The field of so-called ‘adult animation’ has often been a vessel for both the novelty of moving drawings and the simultaneous exploration of complex topics. Animation for adults is, perhaps, most readily defined by both taboo themes and strong language as much as a general maturity in subject matter (beyond simply vulgarity), as well as individual ‘countercultural’ filmmakers (Ralph Bakshi) and even specific sites of exhibition and distribution (from advertising and music videos to WW2 propaganda shorts). Recent television series such as South Park (Trey Parker & Matt Stone, 1997-) and Family Guy (Seth MacFarlane, 1999-) (Cohen, 1997) have been understood as shows that are characterized by their simple drawings, lewd jokes, and intertextual references to current affairs (see Falvey, 2020). These series, based on American cultural norms, have thus far formed the modern canon of adult animation. However, it is imperative to emphasize that there is not a monolithic idea of ‘adultness.’ By both expanding our definition of ‘adultness,’ and decentering its canon from the Hollywood-driven American animated industry, we can witness animation as a tool for cultural commentary within alternate national filmmaking traditions. This blog post will use Shilpa Ranade’s 2019 film Gooppi Gawaiyaa Bagha Bajaiyaa (GGBB) to examine precisely this potential for considering adult animation, and the stakes of why we need to rethink adultness, or at least conceptualise it in different industrial and cultural contexts.

Based on the characters Goopy and Bagha created by filmmaker Satyajit Ray's grandfather (the writer and painter Upendra Kishore Roychowdhury), GGBB was marketed as ‘India’s First Children’s Film for Adults’ (Fig. 1). This tagline establishes the story's universality as its fundamental appeal, as it aims to emancipate its narrative from the traditional reception of animated cinema as a juvenile form of entertainment. Rather, GGBB offers a musical, an animated film, and a social commentary all in one. The story starts with Goopi, an aloof artist who disturbs all the residents of his sleepy neighborhood with his out-of-tune voice. His voice rings through the town at a particularly tumultuous time, as the King of this area is in the midst of heated (and escalating) disputes with the neighboring kingdom. Goopi’s fellow residents complain about his atonal voice to the authorities, who then condemn him to banishment to the forest. In the forest Goopi meets Bagha, a musician from the neighboring village who has suffered a similar ostacisation. Their fundamental compatibility is illustrated by the song they compose on the spot together, ‘Hum to Bus Nachenge Gaayenge,’ which translates as ‘We will just dance and sing.’ Their union is therefore one of two artistic spirits who reject the archaic and limiting disputes between their respective kingdoms.

GGBB can be read in modern India’s political climate as an allegory for tensions between India and Pakistan. The driving force that unites the film’s protagonists is the theme of ‘exile,’ which naturally references the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan which left the region in a state of exile, forced migration, and painful separation. With a recorded 15 million people displaced, and at least 2 million dead[1], the partition was one of the largest recorded cases of human displacement in history. The repercussions of this since has been a ‘Cold War’ of sorts between India and Pakistan, manifested through proxy wars and disputes over territory and land. Thus, the travel of Goopy and Bagha to a mysterious land named ‘Shundi’ in order to avoid an impending civil war demonstrates that while the journey to peace is difficult and uncertain, it is a necessary one to take. While it is not said directly, the medium of animation allows the reworking of heavy political allegories, making the narrative both digestible and universal. However, the #StopTheWar slogans at the beginning and end of the film crystallise the director’s intention to make this an anti-war film calling for the self-reflection of warring nations and citizens alike.

The animation for GGBB was produced by the Children’s Film Society of India, but the layers of political reference would be lost on any audience that did not grow up in the midst of increasingly hostile relations between India and its neighbor Pakistan. Since the partition of 1947, the division of the former country into two nation-states led to both sides working towards absolutist national identities in the absence of a previous union. In less than 70 years, the countries have fought 4 wars and continue to collide over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Goopi and Bagha are delightfully above such idiosyncratic disputes. They use song and dance as a unifying force between two kingdoms, and call to their cruel leaders to surrender greed and conceit - why fight, when you can be friends? One of the tools that the pair use for uniting the two kingdoms is food. When they meet a genie in the forest who grants them whatever they would like, they ask for daal (lentils), mint chutney, mango pickle and imli (tamarind). These are staple dishes of both nations, and existed as a collective cuisine for thousands of years before partition and the major “social disruption” (Mansergh 1965, 3) that it caused. The use of food that is meaningful to both countries illustrates how the relationship between Goopi and Bagha serves to unionize two nations that are divided only in name. By acknowledging what India and Pakistan have in common by virtue of shared staple dishes, the film champions a call for peace and friendship.

GGBB’s animation style is delightfully and distinctly South Asian too. Film director Shilpa Ranade’s MPhil thesis was on ‘Indigenous Images and Narratives for Socially Relevant Animation[2]’, which undoubtedly informs the fact that GGBB’s animation style served as an important reclamation and reinvention of South Asian representation in media and animation. With big eyes, larger noses, and full lips, the characters’ features are intended to be distinctly South Asian - and as Someswar Bhowmik notes, it is such testament to indigenous heritage in cinema that has become “vulnerable in the post-war period” (2003). These ‘exaggerated’ facial features draw directly on the aesthetic of ancient Mughal paintings (Figs. 2-4). Combining these features with a ‘textile’ like aesthetic, the animation style simultaneously infantilizes the characters (by making them appear as rag dolls), while immortalizing them through the iconography of South Asia.

India’s status as a post-colonial nation has rendered standards of attraction and beauty as ‘eurocentric' (see Chen, Lian, et al. 2020, 2), so Ranade’s illustration style in GGBB is a rare and refreshing reclamation of natural Indian facial features - a nuance that may be lost on international audiences. This is compounded by the film's use of regional slang, bright and colourful animation that is reminiscent of architectural and textile aesthetics, and filmic references to iconic filmmakers such as Ray. GGBB emerges thus as both a canonization and a celebration of South Asian culture, and a dismantling of national gatekeeping, by acknowledging the way that culture is shared beyond borders.

In fact, Ranade's mode of animation and the design of the characters also appears caricature-like. Caricature, as Herhuth identifies, holds the power to “render political statements comprehensible” and “amusing” (2018, 627). The depiction of The King in GGBB is also juxtaposed with the two earnest protagonists; indeed, his gassy and gourmand nature aligns with caricature’s ability to “critique bourgeois society and political elites” (Herhuth 2018, 636). However, the King is humanised too by virtue of his vulnerabilities, and particularly through his troubled relationship with his twin, which allows the film to engage and animate India's troubled relationship with the neighbouring Pakistan. Such cultural references in animation are afforded possible due to its relative detachment from reality and rhetorical, enunciative form. As a fantasy of two countries, GGBB functions as a necessary tool for cultural commentary, an entertaining cartoon, and a rare call to surrender arms in an increasingly hostile climate between India and Pakistan. The reclamation and sharing of South Asian culture and heritage enforces GGBB as a unique force in the global animation sphere, and sets the precedent for more media designed for the function of healing partition lines to follow.

It naturally follows to ask - is there a comparison to be made between this film and the way that mainstream media claims to champion its move towards representation of South Asian culture as “authentic.” The key nuance is the history of the creators and the target audience. Authentic representation is not created with the aim of introducing ‘culture’ to a foreign audience, but rather, creating work for the represented audience. This is most introspectively done through small gestures of understood culture - which GGBB does extensively. The subtextual references to partition, the romanticisation of national dishes and the use of regional slang demonstrates how this film functions as a uniting force in the South Asian region.

**Article published: July 22, 2022**

Notes

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/06/29/the-great-divide-books-dalrymple.

[2] http://www.idc.iitb.ac.in/people/faculty/ranade-shilpa.

References

Bhowmik, Someswar (2003). "From Coercion to Power Relations: Film Censorship in Post-Colonial India." Economic and Political Weekly 38, no. 30. Available at: https://www.epw.in/journal/2003/30/commentary/coercion-power-relations.html.

Chen, Toby, Kristina Lian, Daniella Lorenzana, Naima Shahzad, and Reinesse Wong (2020). “Occidentalisation of Beauty Standards: Eurocentrism in Asia.” Across The Spectrum of Socioeconomics 1, no. 2: 1–11.

Falvey, Eddie (2020). “Situating Netflix’s Original Adult Animation: Observing Taste Cultures and the Legacies of ‘Quality’ Television through BoJack Horseman and Big Mouth.” animation: an interdisciplinary journal 15, no. 2: 116–129.

Herhuth, Eric. 2016. “The Politics of Animation and the Animation of Politics.” animation: an interdisciplinary journal 11, no. 1: 4–22.

Herhuth, Eric. 2018. “Overloading, Incongruity, Animation: A Theory of Caricature and Caricatural Logic in Contemporary Media.” Theory & Event 21, no. 3 (July): 627–651.

Mansergh, Nicholas. 1965. “The Partition of India in Retrospect.” International Journal 21, no. 1 (Winter): 1–19.

Biography

Annusheh Rahim Qureshi is a writer and film director based between London, Lahore and Tehran. She holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Comparative Literature with Film from King’s College London, and is now pursuing her Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. Her short film, ‘Raqs’, premieres at the BFI (British Film Institute) July 2022.