12/29/2015 From Bollywood to Game of Thrones, screenwriters must stop using rape to sell stories

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SWETA PAL @sweta_pal89

ART & CULTURE | 6-minute read | 28-12-2015

Last night I watched the popular '90s flick Mohra. I had never watched it asa child, but like every other '90s kid, Mohra's iconic songs have been part ofall my drunken parties, so when I saw that the film was on, I decided to sitdown and watch it, seedy songs and all. As entertaining as the film was,something stood out as a red flag. Some would say I am overanalysing, but Ihave to put it out there:

In the film, Sunil Shetty's character is in jail. Why is he in jail? Because hekilled four men. Because they drugged and raped his sisterinlaw and gotaway with it. Later, they tried to assault his wife too, but she committedsuicide to escape them. Enraged and hopeless, Vishal (Shetty) murderedthem.

The flashback shows gruesome details of how the four men drugged the girl

From Bollywood to GoT, screenwriters must stopusing rape to sell storiesAs a plot device, it erases the violence and pain experienced by the survivor.

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and her boyfriend and proceed to attack, disrobe and finally rape her. Prettyroutine for that genre of Bollywood films. So what was it that bothered me?The rape existed only as a plot device and only to justify Vishal's charactertraits. Nothing more. A woman is drugged and gangraped and we hardlyeven know the girl's name. That entire episode only occurs as a tool toestablish Vishal's character and the pain we see and feel are only his. So evenin her worst moments, we only know of the sisterinlaw's pain through theemotions felt by the man (saviour?) around her.

Her experience is never taken up and engaged with in a critical or thoughtfulway, she is only important because she is a raped body and Vishal is soenraged that he ends up killing the four men. So now, we know Vishal is acaring, loving brother and husband but also "macho/masculine" andimpassioned enough to avenge the attack on the women in his life; he's notjust a random criminal. The women don't matter here. They function only asvictims of violence and to justify the acts of violence committed by Vishal inrevenge no more than a plot device.

This is not all. During a visit to her father's jail, Roma (Raveena Tandon) isattacked in a similar fashion by a group of convicts only to have Vishal comeand save her. Here too, the film doesn't bother to know whether she istraumatised or at least shaken by this incident, but only that she is extremelythankful to Vishal for saving her and then on makes his release from prisonthe goal of her life.

But there's nothing new in this. It is routine. It is just lazy writing. Bollywoodhas always used rape a heinous, violent, deplorable crime as an element tojustify one of the following: to give the hero a cause to fight for, or toeliminate a character from the plot as the victim almost always commitssuicide, or to establish a vile character of the villain. Examples? GarvSalman Khan's sister is gangraped and he kills the perpetrators for revenge,KoylaShahrukh Khan saves Deepshikha from being raped, but she ends upbeing sold to a brothel anyway, RaavanAbhishek Bachchan kidnaps

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Aishwarya Rai to avenge the rape and murder of his sister by the police,RaajneetiArjun Rampal rapes Shruti Seth to avenge a false rape accusation these instances are just off the top of my head. The list is endless.

So what is the problem? Rape happens. True. But using rape only as a plotdevice not only contributes to its sensationalisation, but it also functions todesensitise the audience to the issue of violence against women. Rape is a bigdeal. It is not equal to a theft/kidnapping/smuggling or any other crime thatyou could use to show a character's bad trait or the rage felt by a goodcharacter. Yet, rape is almost always the goto. SA Aiyar wrote, "Oldtimevillain Ranjeet did close to 100 rape scenes, with the audience almostcheering him on."

Depicting rape in this way desensitises us because it erases the experience ofthe victim, makes it the background to the hero's "more important" storyand, therefore, ignores the grave reality of rape. We become furtherdesensitised because rape and sexual assault is used in this way in film,television, and literature time and again, and Bollywood is not the only onedoing this.

Take the storyline of Game of Thrones, for instance. That very controversialscene of Sansa Stark being raped on her wedding night by Ramsay Bolton inseason 5. Of course it wasn't required, and we have seen enough violence andsadistic behaviour in Game of Thrones, and we know the show runners onlyadded that scene for the ratings. But that scene was made even worsebecause at the time of being raped, the camera went from Sansa's scared andshocked face to focus instead on Theon Greyjoy's. So we were instead madeto see what Theon went through rather than what happened to Sansa. Oncemore, rape was only a plot tool in Theon Greyjoy's story. (Theon, however,enjoyed complete screen time while he was being sadistically tortured andcastrated by Bolton.)

So what did I expect?

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Exactly. What DID I expect? In an industry where almost every film is aboutmale lead characters and where mainstream, bigbudget "modern,progressive" films don't even bother to delve into the character traits of thelead female character (I'm looking at you, Tamasha), it is not surprising thatthe films ignore the story of the character who was raped. Films are writtenfor men, by men, about men and the women in these films only exist inrelation to these men and the little amount that we know about them is tosomehow establish the male characters. Think Bechdel test and how almostevery film you have seen in the past year fails miserably.

Why is this dangerous?

Using rape again and again as nothing but a plot device causes the audienceto forget what rape really is: a traumatic and violent event perpetratedagainst an individual as a result of a variety of intersecting and oppressivefactors such as gender, race, sexuality, class, and ability. NCRB recorded that36,975 women were raped in 2014. When broken down, it means that onewoman was raped every 14 minutes, last year. And the actual number isbound to be bigger, as a lot of rape cases are not even reported. When we userape and sexual violence as only a storytelling device, and fail to engage withthe character's experience, we negate the experiences of the thousands ofpeople for whom rape is a reality and not just something that happens in thebackground of someone else's story on screen, stage, and in books.

It is lazy writing and exploitation of the trauma and violence for plotprogression and entertainment value. It furthers our existing rape culture,oppression, objectification and degradation of women. And provides morefodder to our existing patriarchal setup. And I am not even going into how itfeeds into rape fantasy and fetish here.

#Sexual violence, #Rape, #Game of Thrones, #Bollywood,

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12/29/2015 From Bollywood to Game of Thrones, screenwriters must stop using rape to sell stories

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WriterSWETA PAL @sweta_pal89

Bookworm, feminist, foodie - not particularly in

that order.

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