Looking at the Semiology in Shoaib Mansoor’s Bol: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Cinema across the world has influenced societies and vice versa. Given the universal obsession towards cinema it initiates discussions and at times provides us with solutions and food for thought. One such film seems to be acclaimed Pakistani director Shoaib Mansoor’s Bol. The film is a multiple discourse and looks at many aspects of life signifying gender issues through various signs. One important issue the film diligently tackles is that of third party reproduction. The film effectively portrays a male character fathering a child in a complex relation. The current society is witnessing third-party reproduction in a big way .Parents who are unable to have children or out of their will engage in third party reproduction. But the relations in these situations are highly complex and many a times the third party develops emotional bond with the child or is not treated with its due respect. The issue calls for an insight into the portrayal of the same in cinema as the phenomenon is changing the very basis of the human society-the family system.

This paper intends to find conversational practices in a conventional society applying semiotic analysis under the wider shield of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to provide with critical recognition to Mansoor’s Bol. The paper uses qualitative analysis using the selected film as primary data sources supplemented by secondary sources like documents related to the film. The paper uses Chandler’s (2000) categories of codes so as to match with CDA and the consequential conversational practices in Mansoor’s Bol. In ‘Bol’ film, among other gender issues, third party reproduction is articulated via societal, explanatory, syntagmatic and paradigmatic codes. These codes are progressed by two regulatory codes gender and religion. Background, music, images, customs, happenings, natural phenomena (darkness) and psychosomatic state of characters are other signs which imitate implied meanings. Also obscurity and brilliance have been deployed for echoing inherent meanings. Thus, this paper underwrites suggesting a systematic approach to the study of the cinematic representation of third party reproduction in Mansoor’s.