ESSAY: The 'Sluts' of Hindi Cinema...

...AND THE PRICE WOMEN PAY ON SCREEN

In January 2011, a police constable from Toronto addressing a forum at York University about crime prevention made the comment, “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised.” His statement sparked off a worldwide agitation called Slutwalk (the organisers of the campaign picked up the word ‘slut’ from his speech, presumably to draw attention to the movement and to reclaim a term which has been coloured with a decisively negative connotation, as a mark of rebellion), whereby women in various cities around the world have taken to the streets to protest against their objectification and to fight for their right to dress as they please without fear of being violated. Next month, Slutwalk comes to Delhi, perhaps the most unsafe city for women in a country that is considered one of the most dangerous places on earth for them owning to its horrendous record on human trafficking, female foeticide and infanticide, not to mention rape and other forms of abuse.

A poster for Slutwalk Chicago. Pic Courtesy Melissa Huang

It may take a much longer thesis to examine how Hindi cinema (even today, largely produced and consumed by a male populace) perceives and portrays women in general. But since the provocation of this movement was the constable’s claim that women leave themselves open to rape because of the way they dress (a view that is rampant in our society), it may be pertinent to examine how our cinema handles the sexual violation of women in order to understand to what extent the objectification and chastisement of women is central to the narrative of rape and how little the way they dress or behave has to do with their abuse.

In Mehboob Khan’s Mother India (1957), Radha’s (Nargis) attempted rape by the lascivious moneylender Sukhilala (Kanhaiyalal) is crucial to the screenplay and to her elevation from an ordinary woman to Mother India. She refuses to sell her body even to feed her starving children, but the point is—Sukhilala believes that in the absence of her husband and in view of her impoverishment, she is fair game. Unlike most others, Khan doesn’t focus on the heroine’s physical allure (Nargis is drenched from head to toe, but her entire face and body are covered with mud) to use the sequence for generating voyeuristic gratification. However, he swoons to the other end of the spectrum, turning his female protagonist into a supra-human figure and projects her as the epitome of Indian womanhood, as damaging an image as the objectification of commercial cinema.

Nargis Dutt plays the archetypal Mother India in Mehboob Khan's 1957 film 

Till nearly two decades after Mother India, although attempted rape continued to be a sub-plot in many Hindi films, more often than not, the heroine was rescued from the villain's clutches in the nick of time, quite like the heroines of the Ramayan and Mahabharat, whose chastity was preserved on account of their inherent 'purity'. Still popular villain of the 1970s, Ranjeet has earned himself the notoriety of having committed a record 350 screen rapes! At one time, claimed the actor in an interview, producers asked filmmakers to feature a Ranjeet rape in their films quite like the ‘item numbers’ of contemporary cinema.

Infamous: Ranjeet in Feroz Khan's Dharmatma 

A WOMAN’S ‘IZZAT’ 

 The film that brought rape to the forefront of the narrative space was B R Chopra’s Insaaf Ka Tarazu (1980), which has subsequently become a case study for many film academicians. Coming as it did at the end of a decade in which the feminist movement was taking firm roots in India and women in urban areas were joining the workforce in unprecedented numbers, Insaaf Ka Tarazu, made by one of the pillars of Bollywood patriarchy, voices the male establishment’s anxiety over women’s liberation. The manner in which it goes about its business of reaffirming a woman’s chastity and restoring her ‘izzat’ (a word vital to mainstream Hindi cinema’s representation of women) is more titillating than righteous, as is often the case with such themes.

The film opens with a rape followed by a murder and subsequently, a courtroom deposition, where an army officer (Dharmendra in a guest appearance) admits that he committed the murder, but describes it as a heroic act, suggesting that preserving a woman’s honour is as noble a task as defending the motherland. Straightaway then, a woman’s ‘izzat’ becomes a matter of national importance and the privilege of the male order to protect and restore it.

Insaaf ka Tarazu was a remake of 1976's Lipstick, featuring the Hemingway sisters 

The film then moves on to its main business of the systematic (and systemic) humiliation of its female protagonist. Not only is Bharati (Zeenat Aman) an independent working woman, she has chosen to be a model, a profession that commodifies women most blatantly. We first see her at a fashion show where she walks the ramp in front of a packed hall that is meant to judge the most beautiful model of the lot. Playboy Ramesh Gupta (Raj Babbar) is so enamoured by her physical allure, he can’t stop drooling from the minute he sets eyes on her. Soon he visits her on an ad film shoot on the beach. We see Bharati, dressed in a semi-transparent night-gown and the director telling her, “Come on Bharati, I want more sex!”

She has been objectified long before Ramesh denudes her, and the filmmaker seems to suggest she asked for it on account of her choice of profession. Casting Zeenat Aman in this role also appears to be deliberate, given that she had already made her mark in the film industry as a ‘sex symbol’, another term that clearly posits her as an object of lust.

Zeenat Aman—Indian cinema's quintessential 'sex symbol'. Here in Satyam Shivam Sundaram

Ramesh persistently stalks her, lands up at her doorstep and, on being spurned in favour of her fiancé (Deepak Parashar), rapes her. But not before he assaults her verbally and physically, tears up her clothes and makes her grovel at his feet. The film’s most horrific and enduring image is a shot of Bharati collapsing at Ramesh’s feet, framed between his spread out legs. The director takes his time delineating this sequence, and also the subsequent rape of Bharati’s younger sister Nita (Padmini Kolhapure).

The court case is a sham (as Bharati’s lawyer played by Simi Garewal has already predicted) and another chapter in the assassination of Bharati’s character—which includes condemning her for coming out in the open about her rape instead of hiding her face in shame and letting the matter die a natural death as any ‘respectable Indian woman’ would. Ramesh is acquitted for lack of evidence and goes on to force himself on Nita, before Bharati finally empties a gun into him and pleads guilty for murder.

Unlike the avenging heroes of the ‘angry young man’ films where vendetta is a man’s to take, Bharati must still justify herself to the patriarchal establishment about her motivations and eventually get validated by the judge’s approval of her actions and admission of his own error of judgment.

Taking the law in her own hands—Zeenat Aman in Insaaf ka Tarazu

But the greater harm that Insaaf Ka Tarazu did was on account of the way it constructed its schizophrenic protagonist, a woman who may be liberal enough to take up a career in modelling, but whimpers obediently when her prospective husband tells her, “You will not work after the wedding.” Also, for a woman who appears to be living on her own terms, she is still steeped in regressive tradition, whether it be dressing up like a demure bride to meet her in-laws, or describing herself as a ‘polluted’ woman to her fiancé who insists on marrying her even after the rape. Worse, in her final deposition, she likens a woman’s body to a ‘temple’ and pillar of Indian modesty. Its violation then, isn’t just a matter of personal shame —although there’s plenty of that too; unable to bear the social stigma, Bharati and her sister are forced to relocate to another city.

In the ‘avenging women’ sub-genre that Insaaf Ka Tarazu spawned, there were many films with popular actresses at their centre, often focusing on urban working women who are raped, humiliated and denied justice, before they take recourse to violence and avenge their violation. Prominent amongst these was Avatar Bhogil’s Zakhmi Aurat (1988) where a policewoman (Dimple Kapadia), after being raped, forms a gang of avenging angels who go about delivering justice by castrating rapists. Predictably, the story ends with a courtroom scene where Kapadia invokes the Gita and derides the nation’s leaders for proving incapable of passing laws to ensure that rape victims aren’t required to provide evidence of their violation. Once again she speaks of the ‘purity’ of a woman’s body and womb and her ‘izzat’, which, once snatched can never be restored.

It is interested to note that even a sensitive filmmaker like Hrishikesh Mukherjee subscribed to this theory of a woman’s fall from grace being irrevocable and a permanent blot on her character. Hence, even though Satyapriya (Dharmendra) reluctantly agrees to marry Ranjana (Sharmila Tagore) and accepts her illegitimate son born of a brutal rape at the hands of the local prince as his own, he refuses to touch her body throughout the course of their relationship in Satyakam (1969).

Hrishikesh Mukherjee with his stars on the sets of Satyakam

DOMESTIC BLISS SHATTERED

Another film that was made a little before Insaaf Ka Tarazu also brought rape to the forefront, albeit in the context of an intimate relationship and handled the subject with far greater restrain. Manik Chatterjee’s Ghar (1978) is about a young couple, Vikas and Aarti (Vinod Mehra and Rekha), who are finally enjoying marital bliss after a long struggle to find a permanent home. One night while returning from a late-night film show, four goons accost them on a deserted road. Vikas is hit on the head and loses consciousness, while Aarti is abducted and gang-raped. Here the director spares us a graphic representation of the woman’s humiliation (standard issue in our cinema) and instead uses the faces of the four rapists to evoke the horror of her tragedy.

The couple struggles to overcome this traumatic episode, even though Vikas is a caring and supportive husband who wants his wife to put the episode behind her as just one unhappy incident in her life. This position itself is revolutionary in the context of Hindi cinema—rarely if ever, has anyone close to a rape victim suggested that the incident was merely an unfortunate episode and not the end of the world or the victim’s life.

Rekha and Vinod Mehra in Ghar

But Aarti can’t shake off her sense of guilt and humiliation, while Vikas too struggles to put up with the social stigma and false sympathy. What the film effectively portrays is the voyeouristic pleasure society at large derives from rape – people read newspaper articles about the incident with relish, ask pointed questions or then, shun contact with the victim. Once a vivacious woman who openly flaunted her desires in the song Tere bina jeeya jaaye na—again amply aided by Rekha’s persona—Aarti wilts into a dull, fearful shadow of her old self, suitably chastised for her unbridled sexuality.

In Rajkumar Santoshi’s Damini (1993) the maid of the house is gang-raped by the younger son and his friends after drunken revelry on Holi day. Damini (Meenakshi Seshardri), the upright daughter-in-law witnesses the rape and her determination to speak the truth not only alienates her from her family, but also drives her to a mental asylum (her husband’s family tries to prove that she’s lost her mind) and is ultimately raped by proxy in court by the ruthless defence lawyer who asks her to describe what she saw in minute detail and cross-examines her as though she was herself guilty of a grave offence.

Meenakshi Sheshadri in a career-defining turn in Raj Kumar Santoshi's Damini 

 Typically garish and over-the-top in its exposition, Damini, while purporting to be a mainstream ‘feminist’ narrative, is essentially another chapter in the degradation of women on screen. The maid, belonging to a disenfranchised section of society, needs someone else to take up her cause. And Damini too has to rely on drunk lawyer Govind’s (Sunny Deol) ‘dhai kilo kaa haath’ for protection and implores her husband (Rishi Kapoor) to believe her and stand by her. The emphasis from the male-centric worldview doesn’t shift an inch, even when the woman is supposedly in the foreground.

BODY AS BATTLEFIELD

Following the release of Shekhar Kapur's critically acclaimed Bandit Queen (1994) based on the book by Mala Sen that chronicled the life of Phoolan Devi, Arundhati Roy wrote a scathing critique of the film and of Kapur's 'middle-class outrage' against Phoolan's character (the director never met the woman he put at the centre of his film, even though she was very much alive and available to corroborate events from her own life).

Roy writes, "According to Shekhar Kapur's film, every landmark—every decision, every turning-point in Phoolan Devi's life, starting with how she became a dacoit in the first place, has to do with having been raped, or avenging rape. He has just blundered through her life like a Rape-diviner. You cannot but sense his horrified fascination at the havoc that a wee willie can wreak. It's a sort of reversed male self absorption. Rape is the main dish. Caste is the sauce that it swims in."

The point Roy is trying to make is that Kapur constructs his heroine as a victim-avenger (not very different from the avenging angels of the B-movies—except that since he employs a realistic style of storytelling, the violation and humiliation of Phoolan is that much more graphic in its representation) and leaves out critical information about her life that is relevant to the construction of Phoolan Devi's personality and a part of Sen's book, but not to Kapur's imagination of her.

Seema Biswas in Shekhar Kapur's Bandit Queen: full circle since Mother India

Towards the end of Mani Ratnam's Dil Se (1998), Meghna (Manisha Koirala) narrates to Amar (Shah Rukh Khan) the horrors of the Indian state's brutality in the North East. While we never see the faces of the men who rape her (as a young girl) and her older sister, the film insinuates that it's the ugly face of the Indian army. In every conflict zone women pay the price with their bodies which are pulverised.

Sudhir Mishra's Hazaaron Khaiwshen Aisi (2004) depicts the rape of its female lead Geeta (Chitrangada Singh) when she, along with her revolutionary friends, are arrested by the local cops in a remote part of Bihar during the Naxalite movement of the 1970s. Here, the director displays rare sensitivity (as does Ratnam) not just in sparing us the gory details, but also in suggesting that while the episode is traumatic for the heroine when it happens, it doesn't shape her life and in fact, she goes back to resume her work in the same parts with the same conviction as before. This goes against the conventional mythology of rape that Hindi film has constructed over the decades.

More often than not though, the emphasis is on the humiliation of the victim rather than the issue of patriarchal society’s perversity (as perpetrators, bystanders, voyeouristic consumers and law makers). Or then a flippant subject of 'comic' interest as evinced in the infamous scene in Rajkumar Hirani’s 3 Idiots (2009), where Rancho (Aamir Khan) modifies the speech Chatur (Omi Vaidya) is meant to deliver at a college function and replaces the word ‘chamatkaar’ with ‘balaatkaar’, which features repeatedly in the address. Chatur innocuously delivers the said speech and everyone in the audience (including the Education Minister) laughs hysterically at his faux pas. As does the audience watching the film in the cinema hall.

Interestingly, 3 Idiots went on to win the National Award for the Best Popular Film providing wholesome entertainment that year and Aamir Khan was conferred the Padma Bhushan, the nation’s third highest civilian honour, in the wake of the film’s unprecedented success. In the realm of popular cinema (and indeed popular imagination) ‘balaatkaar’ is nothing more than a source of salacious pleasure for male audiences (and sometimes for female audiences too, since they see the world through a gaze that's predominantly a male construct)—the woman’s background, her education, career choice, dress or demeanour has absolutely no connection with her unfortunate fate. If she can be exploited, she will be, because the perversion lies not in her body or appearance, but in the eyes of the beholder. A fact that seems entirely lost on our filmmakers. ✑

With inputs from Vikram Phukan. Also featured on Firstpost as 'The 'sluts' of Hindi Cinema - paying a price with their bodies.'

Comments

[bollywoodeewana]

Great Post, I enjoyed reading this. We could accuse Insaf ka tarazu for a lot of things but i think it was a film that tried to highlight this issue plus a femina article which you'll find at the bottom of the link below affirnms that some of these rape based films as tacky as we might think them to be were telling it like it is, i'd recommend that article strongly

http://bollywooddeewana.blogspot.com/2010/12/insaf-ka-tarazu-1980.html

[Pallavi]

@Deepa

I agree with your arguments; I was just unsure as to whether your post was linked with the Slutwalk movement or if it was a critique of it.

@Dinoop

Your Australian student violence argument is as flawed as your perception about women dressing a certain way. I lived in Melbourne and was working with international students through the whole 'racist' attacks period, and even that policeman in Melbourne became the subject of much mockery for what he said. It had nothing to do with carrying cell phones and laptops - every businessman in public transport looks well-to-do with gadgets yet they were never attacked.

The Melbourne incidents were a build-up of crime in lower socio-economic suburbs. No Indian media outlet reported that Chinese/Viet/Thai students were equally victims of crime. It had a minor relation to race, but the major issue was law and order in the poorer suburbs. In the US, these usually house African-American and Hispanic families (higher crime rates there as well) and in Melbourne it happens to be international students living in the cheapest (and most crime-ridden) part of the city, and the vulnerability of poorer people to crime is historically proven - it is the focus of many sociology studies.

Ironically, Indian female students were rarely targets of the 'racist' attacks because fewer female students would choose to live in these suburbs, preferring dorms and hostels for accommodation.

Again, how you dress has nothing to do with rape, just as how much money you have has little to do with your vulnerability to being mugged.

[Deepa Deosthalee]

@Pallavi, the premise of my article is the Slutwalk movement which started as a reaction to the policeman's contention that women leave themselves open to rape because of the way they dress. My article tries to argue that being raped has nothing to do with dress, demeanour, looks, class or caste. It's a manifestation of a physically stronger man's power to violate and humiliate a woman and society's perverse logic of putting the victim in the dock. The word 'slut' is drawn from the movement. I don't believe there as a category of women called 'sluts' in the conventional understanding of the word!

@Dinesh, your argument is contentious. Rape has nothing to do with dress, and that's the primary argument of my article. When Radha visits Sukhilala in Mother India, she is dishevelled, covered with mud from head to toe and totally helpless. She isn't there to provoke him to violate her. She's begging for help because her kids are starving. In Ghar, when Aarti is abducted, she's very respectably dressed in a saree and isn't doing anything to invite attention. In Damini, the maid is raped because she's of a class that's unable to defend itself. In Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, Geeta is raped because she dares to take on the authority of the corrupt policeman. The point is, rape is used as a weapon for exerting power and authority on women. Which is why, often, rapes have nothing to do with the woman's appearance and everything to do with the man's own weakness. That our society doesn't put the issue in the right perspective, compounds women's problems. Asking the woman to act with restrain (in the way she carries and presents herself) is completely obfuscating the real issue.

[Pallavi]

Something funny with the comment posting - so read as one post after the other below. Also, apologies for any formatting errors.

My brother studied engineering and I was distressed when I realised 'rape' - to those in the college phase - has become some sort of colloquial equivalent to abuse or trauma of a minor kind, such as:

"I got raped in my practicals, man!"

This is the worrying aspect of the 3 Idiots effect. I can laugh at the scene in the film, if it didn't really extend beyond the cinema screen, but rape as a colloquialism is extremely unnerving.

1) Because in 3 Idiots, the possibility that a respected, highly educated man in a high post is capable of rape is made laughable and implausible when it should be the opposite - Dominic Strauss-Kahn anyone? Of course boys laugh at it, because students struggling to pass, killing themselves in the attempt to do so in the name of education somehow equals the unfairness of rape to their point of view.

And no one thinks that rape is not just unfair or traumatic, but that it is a crime of violence. When a student kills himself because the pressure is unendurable, Rancho does not hesitate in calling the head of the Institute a 'murderer'. And that is a serious, impacting moment. Contrast that with the speech saying he is a rapist and that is a joke. Neither is true in legal terms - Sahasrabuddhe has not murdered the student any more than he has raped other students, but one is worthy of seriousness while the other isn't.

[Pallavi]

2) Because rape has become a conversation about the victim, something that both the film and the slang have endorsed. The speech is all the more funny because it is true in a way - the students are victims of an abusive system, and the speech is more about THEM than it is about the Minister and the director. Similarly, in public life, nobody talks of rape as a crime, as violence - perpetrated by a criminal. It is as if the victim's suffering is of primary importance, even more so than the criminal's offence.
The above colloquialism for instance - about being metaphorically 'raped' by some figure of authority - does not leave room for the question "Raped by whom?" or "Why were you raped?" This linguistic bias to the verb and its object (and not the subject) makes rape conversation pointless. When we say "The policeman raped Phoolandevi", what ends up becoming conversation is "Phoolandevi was raped". I think this is where Arundhati Roy's piece is brilliant because she pinpoints the pseudo-empowerment at the heart of Bollywood - rape is always about the victim and rarely about the criminal. We are never given any insight into his motivations apart from a leer and some stalking. And studies clearly state rape is not about sex, so much as it is about power.
In my view, this is why Bollywood and much of Indian pop culture has failed to address rape adequately - we are still a society obsessed with rape victims, and not with the rapists. We need to see him (or her, which does on occasion happen) as a criminal using violence to assert dominance/power, not merely as a lustful man. Maybe then, we can even miraculously move on to the next stage and discuss rape as a serious crime meriting serious punishment.

[Pallavi]

Also, I think apart from 'Insaaf ka Tarazu', none of the other women in your study really fit the conventional definitions of the word 'slut', do they? Nor are they raped because of the way they look. Well, maybe in 'Ghar', her sexuality is connected to the rape, but not the others so much, I feel.

[Dinoop Ravindran Menon]

Again coming back to the movies point of view i agree to all you said except for 3 idiots. The word balathkar was used there only for the comedy part, its quiet unnecessary to take things always literally. For instance Murder is arguably a more horrible crime than rape and in movies sentences like " mein tujhe maar doonga "have been used tons of time in comical perspectives..it doesn't mean that the audience who are sitting and laughing watching the scenes are thinking about a murder and laughing about it...this perception is quite wrong. I understand the authors frustration but i feel many of our young and talented writers have to come down to a realistic perceptive while writing an article, than being in the cloud and talking about what is absolute, because humans are never absolute and never will be.

[Dinoop Ravindran Menon]

I feel the article is imposing an absolute idea here.I will come back to Indian cinemas later but first of all I would like to discuss this concept "If she can be exploited, she will be, because the perversion lies not in her body or appearance, but in the eyes of the beholder" I agree, some men are quite fanatics and there are people with criminal mentality who are always looking for a chance.So lets talk a bit on the psychology behind a criminal mind what intimidates a criminal to do the crime. there are many factors, for eg : if its a thief he will try to rob a house which attracts him in terms of its wealth..or a house where he thinks its easy to break in... the same applies to a rapist..I am not against women having their freedom to dress as they like..but when you dress in a bit exposing way ( which i personally dont think is morally wrong) you are trying to grab some attention, so by that you are also attracting attention from the criminals or the rapist..so you are making yourself more vulnerable than others..and sometimes these criminals are also lunatics..so your physical appearance may intimidate them further..This doesent apply just to women ..The best eg: is the case what happened in Australia when Indians were targeted. So police was advising Indians including my friends there not to carry valuables with you like iphones and try to avoid traveling alone at night..So in any situation whoever is vulnerable to the crime should take more precautions..as long as such lunatics persist in the society..but i never meant that its the women's fault.. All i am telling is they have to be cautious to remain safe..

[Deepa Deosthalee]

To answer ittabari, nowhere in my article have i suggested that rape isn't a ghastly form of violation. However, what also accompanies the physical trauma is the social stigma which, unfortunately falls on the woman, rather than the perpetrator. Any kind of violation is difficult to recover from. But it certainly needn't be the end of the victim's world.

I understand that there is a great deal of torture that's inflicted on students in various academic institutions. It's no different from rape. But where in '3 Idiots' does the filmmaker suggest that what these students are doing to Chatur is wrong?? He isn't castigating them for victimising the kid, instead, he's laughing with them (and at him) all the way till the end of the film. Does anyone in the audience ever empathise with Chatur's plight? If the filmmaker managed get us to do that, then the scene would actually mean something different.

[w.t.f.ittabari]

i disagree with your thesis that the use of the word balatkaar in Three Idiots devalues the trauma of female rape. you praise two other films for showing that rape should not be stigmatized and women should be able to recover from its indignity and lead normal lives. in that sense, rape is not some super category of violation that is incomparable to other human experiences, even male ones. i feel that the psychological abuse that students undergo in patriarchal institutions such as IIT border on sexual humiliation (they live in hostels and their bodies are controlled by the faculty; where they go and what they eat, dress, etc). i therefore feel balaatkar is an apt metaphor for the kind of abuse that students suffer in india's residential premier institutions of higher learning. sometimes the scars can be permanent.

[Vikram Phukan]

Just to respond to Dr Dang (also responded on firstpost), sometimes in India we are quite oblivious to the power some words have, and the ability to hurt that they sometimes carry. I think the word 'balatkaar' shouldn't be so light-heartedly used as in this scene in 3 Idiots, which anyway (because of being the biggest 'hit' ever) reaches such a large audience. Amongst friends, we say all kinds of things and that's ok because you know who you're addressing. Even in a film like, Jab We Met, where they use the term 'khuli hui tijori' and 'rape' and someone being considered a whore in Hotel Decent etc - which are all really funny scenes. But these things are far more threatening in real life and the film makes light of it (because of the same mindset that chalta hai, we don't mean any harm etc). It's a spoof and a joke but it is also uncomfortably close to a kind of ugly reality in a India where a woman gets raped every 26 minutes according to some statistics...

[DrDang]

@Deepa I still think that the humour is derived from the insertion of the word into formal speech, not the idea or the action that it represents; but maybe it's because I believe that nothing is sacred in comedy. However, I understand that the word has serious connotations that can conjure up the feelings you talk about. Since you look at it from a female perspective which try as I might I cannot, I can see why it might upset you.

[Deepa Deosthalee]

Thanks for all the feedback. @DrDang, I don't agree with your assessment of the '3 Idiots' scene. It's a manifestation of the casualness with which our cinema perceives a serious issue such as rape. It is the same flippancy with which heroes routinely eve-tease and manhandle the women they purportedly love on screen. But ask a girl/woman who has been teased, pinched, leered at (in India, it's impossible to grow up without experiencing one or all of these) and she'll tell you how horrible it feels. Rape then, is so much worse... If the filmmaker had used the scene to chastise these boys for their stupidity, it would still be ok. But he's participating in the ridiculing of Chatur -- and frankly, that's not important to me. He could have done it any other way, without employing such crude humour -- just look at the glee and smugness on Aamir Khan's face to know how little he (a Padma Bhushan winning star of supposedly high ethics) and Raju Hirani, (a highly respected filmmaker), care about the implications of talking of rape so casually. If either of them knew what it was like to have their body violated, they'd perhaps think differently. Rape is not the same thing as toilet humour.

[DrDang]

This is a very well written article and there aren't enough on this serious issue. Our art is a mirror of our society and it is very depressing what this says about our society. The examples mentioned are vile and unfortunately I can name atleast a dozen more. However I have to say that I feel that scene from 3 Idiots does not belong here, not that I have some great affection for that film. All other instances point to some horrible messages masquerading as righteousness, exposing something horrible about the psyche of the makers. The 3 Idiots scene is a joke that is funny because of the play on the words, not because a specific woman or some woman or anyone in general is getting raped. Nothing of that sort is present in the words. Yes, I laughed at it, because it's an instance of kids (ok, not exactly but bear with me) tricking someone to say something 'dirty' and it happens a lot in schools, colleges etc without any underlying horribleness. I honestly don't think anyone laughing at it would be thinking of it that way.

[Eva, proud SlutWalker]

Great article. It's really important that the issue of rape in popular culture is tackled, and I want to thank the author for speaking out.

[Vikram Phukan]

It's interesting that the 'serial rapist' has now been replaced by the 'serial kisser' (Emraan Hashmi and his ilk). The reason behind having a rape scene in those days and a gratitious sex scene in a contemporary film is the same. It was never to highlight outrage. Yes, these days it's dressed in more progressive garb, but that also underlines that not much has changed when it comes to the representation of women in our films.

[Tanya Attarwala]

The article is nicely written and an account has been given from time to time. Its true that Indian cinema had used "rape" to portray sex in their movies without thinking about the real consequences of doing so or bothering about the image of Women. For them money and more audience is only what matters.
No matter how a women is dressed up does not give anybody right to molest her or behave badly with her.
Why not men think the same way? Will a women behave badly with a man just because he is half naked or not properly?