Produced with the promise to acknowledge the contributions of female combatants in the Liberation War of Bangladesh, Guerrilla (2011, director Nasiruddin Yousuff) is found to be operating as a strategic campaign for the then-ruling Awami League (AL) government. This paper examines the politics of representation that Guerrilla—a blockbuster and the highest nationally awarded movie in Bangladesh—employs while ostensibly resisting patriarchal nationalist discourse by uplifting the role of female combatants, which has been strategically suppressed since independence. Drawing on Stuart Hall's cultural representation theory and employing the visual analysis methods, this examination focuses on the strategic techniques of constructing the Other by identifying what is included and excluded, what is highlighted, what is obscured, and whether any hierarchy is constructed, finding the dissonance. This paper identifies explicit and subtle frames used in the film that position it as a political ally of the AL government, contributing to the legitimisation of state-driven policy initiatives, particularly the war crimes trials, criticised by some as a politicised agenda lacking procedural fairness. While war crimes trials targeted alleged war criminals—many of whom were affiliated with the political party Jamaat-e-Islami (JI)—Guerrilla also portrayed JI as a brutal, inhuman entity responsible for war crimes. The film allocates nearly one-third of its screen time to repeated depictions of violent wartime atrocities, explicitly naming JI as perpetrators. By foregrounding these representations, Guerrilla employs a postmemorial public motivation mechanism directed against JI, which in turn operates to emotionally validate the government’s controversial war crimes trial project.

Authors:
Afroza Bulbul, Erasmus University, The Netherlands

About the Presenter(s)
Afroza Bulbul
PhD researcher International Institute of Social Studies (ISS, The Hague) of Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Area of Interest - Mass media representation, conflict studies, gender studies, development communication.

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