That Day After Everyday: A Commendable But Flawed Effort

Since December 2012, when the brutal Delhi gang rape (and murder) shook India, discussions of violence against women (VAW) have not only gone mainstream but taken on a new urgency. Television slanging matches, social media debates, miles of newsprint, and of course the generally ridiculous statements from political and religious leaders have shone a not particularly flattering light on the state of women in the country.  It is in the context of this renewed discussion that Anurag Kashyap's short film That Day After Everyday  (see film above) was released earlier this month.

An aside: I wonder if we should count the short, despite its online release, as the director's 'Diwali release' (to use that much hyped term). In purely audience terms, it has certainly garnered the eyeballs necessary to count as a success! 

Kashyap has long made 'realist' cinema his signature (with caveats of course), depicting a gritty, dark reality of India, often ignored by more mainstream 'Bollywood' directors. In many ways, his films are heirs to the 70s 'parallel' cinema, apparently more 'intellectual' as opposed to the 'fluff' produced by the industry. Just to be clear, this is not my classification or description but a distillation of commonly held and aired views by film critics and scholars about Kashyap's oeuvre as well as 'Bollywood' vs 'parallel'/alternative/new/multiplex cinemas. In my own view, over the past century of Indian cinema, the 'fluff' makers have often better, more insistent and regular at engaging with complex social concerns than many self-conscious 'parallel' film-makers, and with the added advantage of reaching a wider audience. However, that is a discussion for another time.

That Day After Everyday, as much of Kashyap's work, has high production values. The camera work is stellar, adding to both the sense of claustrophobia as well as fear of the protagonist. His use of mobile phone cameras to capture digital stalking of the women highlights the sense of micro-violations that is a daily experience for Indian women (and yes, I will not 'caveat' that - it is a rare Indian woman who has not experienced sexual harassment, gender-based intimidation, micro-aggressions and violations. And that rare woman will have to live in rarified socio-economic atmosphere available only to the likes of the country's super-elite such as Priyanka Gandhi). The constant sounds comprising of horrific news reports of VAW, crass comments by various colleagues, casual sexist comments by family members are effectively utilised. The actors are uniformly good with special kudos to Radhika Apte, the protagonist. The costumes, make-up, setting all signal a 'realist' non-glamourised, non-Bollywood world, similar if not the same as the one inhabited by most Indian women. Then there is the script, tightly structured with a couple of sharply etched and readily recognisable lead characters. Written by Nitin Bhardwaj, it works well to create the claustrophic, sinister lives circumscribed by casual sexism and persistent micro-violations.

So far so good. But then come the discomforting moments: the film ends with the harassed women fighting back (after getting trained in self-defense). While this makes for a suitably feel good moment, it also feels cliched and for a Kashyap film, surprisingly 'Bollywood.'  I must also say that I found the fight sequences less than convincing, as Kashyap seems to jettison all rules of self-defense and hand-to-hand combat to grant his 'heroines' their 'feel good' victory. Really? A knuckle duster? Which is seized by the opponent before even the first contact and then thrown away? The 'victory' such as it is feels contrived and unrealistic. Given the gritty realism Kashyap brought to Gangs of Wasseypur, Gulal or Dev D, the fight sequence and its conclusion feels gauche and heavy handed.

Then there is 'Didi' (played by Sandhya Mridul), the woman who apparently teaches the protagonist and her friends self-defense. I suppose there is some comfort to be gained in the non-heteronormative way she has been represented: short hair, 'butch' clothes, cigarettes. In my more sympathetic moment, I thought of her as a hopeful representation of female queerness in Indian cinema. But then I wondered why does a character bending gender-norms have to be represented by simplistic and reductionist masculinization? Why is her body language so gendered and in such cliched ways? Why did she remain in the background during the fight? There is a clever but unexplored cinematic moment as Didi and the husband stand on two ends of the fight, watching the harassers-turn-avengers. That tiny moment could have opened news ways of representing and seeing female characters; instead it re-inforces the masculine gaze that the film fails to subvert. Finally, she left me wondering if even our best 'alternative' filmmakers are open to considering gender and sexuality in ways that are not caricatured and stereotypical.

But the discomfort does not end there. The film ends on a 'humorous' note - of the demanding, sexist husband now cowed by his 'warrior' wife into making her tea on the morning after the fight. And yet this scene is heavy with tragedy as he asks her about the amount of sugar she prefers, indicating yet again that despite his new (temporary?) demeanour, he has made little or no effort towards the marriage. For Kashyap and the film, fear, not affection, and definitely not choice, appears to be the only motivation for men behaving kindly, gently, humanely towards women!

The ending in many ways encapsulates the problems I have with this film: in guise of making an inspirational short, the film peddles age-old victim-blaming narratives, this time from the other end of the spectrum. If the family members in the filmic text tell the women to not fight back as a way of avoiding sexual harassment, the film seems to assert that the only way to not be harassed is to fight back physically. In both cases, the onus is squarely on the women who are the victims of harassment. There is never any mention of the perpetrators, nor is there any real critique of them at any point in the film. The implicit message seems to be 'men are brutes that women must protect against.' That is a bizarrely regressive message from a director lauded for his 'progressive' films!

The film also individualises any fight back against VAW. Yes, by the end, the particular goons who have been beaten up may have learned the lesson against sexual harassment, but as any woman who has navigated public spaces in India can explain, there is no end to men who have not been taught that lesson by a mythical 'warrior' woman. There is no space in the filmic narrative to consider what happens to women who can't fight back, or if the same heroic protagonists are faced in the future by a new set of thugs. There is no understanding that the solution to VAW is not individualised punishment meted out by the state or citizens but rather structural changes in how women are perceived and valued.

Worse still, the film takes the simplistic route of equating class with VAW, and thus the 'fight back' is limited to the drunken thugs on the street, but not the men - both in the women's housing society and in the office - with cameras whose micro-violations are just as terrifying, sickening and unacceptable. Nor is the fight back aimed at the family members who are party to the embedded sexism and discrimination that aids and abets VAW.  As a result, Kashyap's protagonist, having learned self-defense can fight off goons on the street, but will stay in a loveless marriage where her husband can only muster up basic acts of sharing and affection (such as making tea) as a result of fear. There is in fact not the smallest attempt to even reference the structural aspects of gendered violence.

A corollary of this simplification is to set up men and women as irreconcilable antagonists, locked in fear and violence. Furthermore, in presenting a uni-dimensional view of men as predators or cowardly enablers, the film serves Indian men ill. Surely Kashyap can imagine a wider range of masculinities? Worse still, with the sole older woman in the film replicating and repeating misogynist narratives while the younger women battle alone, the film appears to set up VAW as a problem only for young and attractive (even if un-made-up) women. Thus the film repeats the long-held but false corollary of rape and VAW being about sexual desire rather than about power, and as such undermines its own intent, message and effectiveness.

I realise that the points raised here may well be rebutted with "it's only a short film." But even twenty one minutes are ample in hands of a sensitive, thoughtful filmmaker to make a truly revolutionary point. Perhaps if Kashyap had considered his film on the Bechdel test, he would have come up with a different story line, viewpoint and characters. Or perhaps if he had remembered his own varied cinematic examinations of contemporary Indian masculinities, the film would have had a different slant. Given Kashyap's skill and intelligence, I look forward to another film that can fully deploy his directorial skills towards making a truly inspirational film about the topic...of the current filmmakers in the country, he is one of the most capable of doing so.

Till then, I suppose we should be grateful for the scraps that India's artists throw out towards concerns of gender discrimination and VAW.

PS: I really wish this film had been subtitled. It seems a sadly inward looking to release a film with international appeal, and online, without allowing non-Hindi speakers access to it.

A Different Angle to Women Reporting on Conflict:Beyond Lara Logan

I must start this piece with a disclaimer (Usual readers: you'll see why this is necessary): At no point do I support or condone sexual violence towards or harassment of Lara Logan or any other journalist or indeed professional trying to do her job.  This piece is NOT about the sexual harassment/violence that women journalists face but rather of the "whitewashing" of the issue in the debate following the much publicized attack on Logan.

As a kid in India, I had family and friends who were/are journalists. Some of these are women. They covered riots, wars, crime, the Union Carbide gas tragedy. They were true heroines and my inspiration.  Growing up in India, writing fiction was not a viable career choice and I always thought that journalism was a respectable, even noble, second option.  Not surprisingly, after finishing my BA, I took up journalism. I worked as a reporter, editor and free-lancer off and on for fifteen years in all sorts of places in Africa, Latin America, India, on stories that ranged from culture to business to human rights abuses.  And I used those skills for a range of media driven organisations: state-owned, private corporation and advocacy groups.

What I learned in those years of reporting convinced me that just as the feminist theories of universal sisterhood had meant the silencing of non-white female experience, the same holds true for the practice of journalism.  Outside India, many of my colleagues were drawn from an internationally motley group, primarily made of Europeans and north Americans.  Most were male. Like many women reporters, I had to work twice as hard to get the "tough" assignments, to prove myself as capable as the men.

But I had a second disadvantage: I also had to prove myself better than the white female reporters. You see, despite self-avowedly "liberal" milieu of the typical international newsroom, an implicit hierarchy still exists. The liberalism of my editors and colleagues meant they pretended to be blind to my race while continuing to assign stories that demonstrated their racist assumptions. And no, I will not go over instances of the prejudice simply because this post is not a whine or a rant!

The colour-blindness played out more oddly at the level of colleagues.  My white male colleagues, for most part, would deal with me without the sexual charge that often informed their interaction with white female reporters. So in a way, my skin colour gave me the added benefit of being sexually invisible as well with the result that I could drink and "hang" with the boys and swap tips without any of the "baggage" that marked similar interactions for my white female colleagues.  This had its good and bad: I developed a great network, felt less sexual pressure, and felt no need to "out-tough" the guys. The bad side was that I felt invisible, was treated by many white female colleagues as the male "runt" of the press club litter and often dealt with visible contempt.  Crossing of race and gender ensured that I was always the outsider.

Yet the same qualities gave me a strange edge while in the field. Even as most Latin Americans recognised me as a foreigner, my dark skin provided a strange protection: identified clearly as not linked to the social, economic, political and military power structures (ie EU/UK/US), and people spoke to me with greater ease.  In Africa and parts of Asia, my Indian-ness was and still is recognised and generally greeted with great affection, something for which I have to thank Nehru's foreign policy and Bollywood films.

Time and time again, locals have stepped in to assist, protect and inform me in ways that were not available to my white colleagues, regardless of gender.  Moreover, my skin colour ensured that I could blend into the crowds in a way white colleagues could not; and sometimes that tiny fig leaf is greater protection than any one can hope for.

There is a more complex aspect to this. Another sort of sexual invisibility protected me in crowds: People often forget that sexual harassment and violence is mostly about power not desire.  Whiteness is an indicator of historic power disparities in many parts of the world (read Fanon, Said, Shohat for the complex arguments of these issues) even though many of us choose to deny or ignore this.  White women thus become symbols of a larger historic imbalance of power than their individual selves, a factor in many of the cases of sexual harassment that not only women reporters but also average travellers face.  In contrast, my colour gives me an unexpected advantage: harassing me provides little redress for historic grievances.  Not surprisingly, I meet camaraderie and respect in places where my white female friends and colleagues only find aggression and harassment. It is an advantage that I have been always been grateful for, though I have done little to win it.

Finally, perhaps there is also a cultural education angle to this. Unlike most of my European and American women friends and colleagues, I have grown up with an acute awareness of power imbalances between genders. There is also greater awareness of cultural codes with clear sense of covering one's body and/or head if necessary without major ideological agenda.  This translates to clothing, body language, even reporting techniques. Even at my most aggressive, I am/was aware of potentially transgressing cultural norms and made subtle adjustments as needed.

This too is a gift - however ambivalent - of growing up in India where we adapt and adjust as needed.  It may also be a result of a postcolonial heritage which has never granted me the privilege of cultural, racial even gendered arrogance/naivete that I often see amongst many European and Americans.  For example, unlike Sabrina Tevernise, I would never assume that walking into an empty hotel and encountering a man would be anything less than risky, regardless of the part of the world. That too is a complex negotiation of culture, race, gender and history!

As a nonwhite women journalist, I recognise that I occupied a strange space when covering international stories. Without ever being told so explicitly by my employers, I knew that my "value" was lower than that of my white female colleagues. And while things have changed in the past decade with increasing number of nonwhite women reporters working for mainstream media, many of the experiences and issues I mention here have not drastically changed as long as one works for a western media outlet.  In frankest of terms, this means that I always recognised that I made less of a story than my American or European colleagues would (For those who question it, compare the media inches granted to Logan vs the temporary detentions of Sonia Verma the Indo-Canadian reporter or Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros in Egypt).  This knowledge informed the risks I took as well as the professional decisions I made.

At the same time, I and other nonwhite reporters can access people and places that many "western" journalists can not, regardless of gender. And that is an advantage that few media outlets can ignore, especially as the power balance shifts away from the traditionally western centres of power. 

Perhaps, to reference Toni Morrison, it is the privilege of whiteness (or lack thereof).  I confess that I have used it to my advantage, as have many other women journalists from Latin America, Africa, Asia.  I also have to admit that it has worked to my disadvantage, although more at institutional rather than human/individual levels. 

As Kim Barker astutely noted: "Without female correspondents in war ones, the experience of women there may only be a rumour."  That is indeed true. But to whitewash the ways in which race and culture inform not only women reporters' functioning but also the response they receive is to be equally ingenuous as maintaining a silence on the issues of sexual harassment and violence.  

I hope these thoughts capture some of my own reactions to the debate triggered by the Lara Logan incident. I write in hope of giving voice to a set of women (and very able professional reporters) who are again being whitewashed from a narrative historically dominated by white middle-class women who position their own experience as universal; in making such a whitewashed case, and with greater access to mainstream western media, they also once again silence many of us who share their gender but not their race.

Update: Eyewitness accounts from Tahrir contradict the CBS statement on Lara Logan incident making my impression of Orientalist narrative that evolved around her even stronger. 

Shilpa-gate in Britain: What will Channel 4's CBB do now?

After a long time, I have a post. No excuses really except I have finally been working on the thesis.

And I have been watching Celebrity Big Brother – and yes, this is where my family starts to giggle uncontrollably – because it is RESEARCH! Let me explain – as a student of cinema, my doctorate looks at how films work. More specifically, I look at how commercial Hindi cinema works!

That means all those “first day, first show” scrambles are research. So is incessantly played Hindi film music in my house and office. And all the DVDs and cinema books! To quote a family member, my PhD thesis is a “Laloo-barabar scam!” Be that as it may, my thesis - for the record - is extremely scholarly and theoretical.

Going back to CBB - I began watching the show primarily to see how stars are constructed, and star narratives are built. With Shilpa Shetty entering the house, I had a perfect case study. After all here was an “unknown Bollywood star” as one British tabloid called her. The general British audiences did not know her (except of course the small minority of Hindi film fans, from South Asia and beyond) and she was going up against well-known names and faces from the West. It was the perfect scenario to answer a question that confounds me: do stars have something inherently different that makes them stars, or is their star status a function of media “spin.” Of course, it is most likely a combination of the two but Shetty was the perfect case to study. And what a case study this has been!

She stated her motivation – and thus indicated her screen persona for CBB – by explaining that she wanted to represent India and Indians as “glamorous, modern and intelligent.” So of course she arrived at the house looking radiant, in a pink sari, and proved herself supremely articulate. She emphasised her “Indian-ness” by teaching the firangis to chant “Om” and meditate, cooking Indian food, walks around in gorgeous kurtas and gold bangles, with stunning pashminas and jamawars flung about her shoulders – a picture of Indian cinema diva.

Then came the first clashes – with another “house-mate” named Jackiey (sic) who refused to pronounce her name, decided to call her “the Indian,” wondered whether the star lived in “a shack,” and threatened to “sweep her out of the kitchen with an Indian broom.”

When that particular housemate was voted out by the public, a trio of other British “chavs,” famous for rather dubious reasons “celebrities” decided to gang up on the actress. These “celebs” btw are: a foul-mouthed, pea-brained woman who apparently was ranked fourth on a prior Big Brother show; a former Miss Britain whose crown was revoked for a sex scandal involving one of the judges; and former popstar whose music is apparently unknown beyond British borders (ie, people famous for being famous!).

In the past few days, the three have mocked her accent (which I am grateful Shilpa Shetty has neither tried to adapt nor disguise), told her that she was “just the cook” while others in the house were friends, suggested that she “wanted to be white,” and finally suggested that food prepared by her was making them ill, and that Indians were “unhygienic” for a host of reasons including, eating our chicken raw, eating with our fingers (“who knows where the hands have been”), and that Indians were “thin and sick” because we all suffered from constant food poisoning from poorly cooked food.

Shetty has also been called a “dog”, “wanker” and a “fucking cunt,” (the last is still under discussion as Channel 4 chose to beep out the word and many viewers believe the word was the racist slur for Asians in general, ie, “Paki.”). Of course, she has retaliated, although with far more grace and attitude than I would have ever expected from her: “I am not patronising, look it up in the dictionary,” “It’s a name, not a frigging sentence,” etc. However many of the nasty digs have been out of her hearing.

Here it must be said that Shetty has neither backed down nor stooped to the level of the bullying trio. On the other hand, she has played the audience and the three bullies with the skill of a maestro. The softly spoken, articulate, sympathetic, tearful, and fragile-looking Shetty has managed to gain the audience’s sympathy. At the same time she manages to effortless rile up and counter the bullies. This must surely count as Shetty’s greatest performance yet!

Of course more of the narrative has unfolded beyond the boundaries of the text. From the “unknown” Bollywood star to the centre of “race row,” Shetty has managed to acquire a massive sympathetic following in Britain in days (so how is a star made again?) Press has pitched in to support her, and reaction against the racist remarks lobbed at her and her bullying have flooded Ofscom (the media watchdog body) and Channel 4. Net forums seem to be grouping to pressure the show’s main sponsor, Carphone Warehouse into pulling its support. An opportunist Keith Vaz has taken up the issue in the parliament. What a “masterful” star narrative in making! What a pleasure to watch the process (won’t bore you with the technical details of this one).

Within two weeks, Shetty has moved to occupy a volatile intersection of class, race and gender. Her mastery of English and manners (not to mention the “fabulous” lifestyle) has managed to startle and annoy the bullying trio. Her ability to attract masculine support and attention within (and outside) the house is forms the crux of sexual jealousy (bell hooks, you are SOOOO right! So much for Western "sisterhood" bs!). Finally, the race factor burst the floodgates of anger and outrage against her treatment. Channel 4’s refusal to acknowledge the racist bullying and an attempt to “spin” the abuse as having been incited by Shetty herself has worsened the situation. At the close of business (5 pm GMT) on Tuesday, media watchers had clocked 7,600 complaints lodged at Ofcom while another few thousand had been lodged directly with Channel 4.

Shetty – ironically has become the rallying point for the South Asian diaspora in Britain. While terrorism and religious fundamentalism have divided the South Asian communities in Britain on mostly national lines (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi) over the past years, the current incident has hit viewers across the board, raising personal memories of racial abuse. Moreover, Shetty is not an unknown quantity among the diaspora – she has been a well-known, and often well-loved figure of Hindi cinema for many years and her ill-treatment by CBB housemates has been taken far more personally by viewers than imagined. Perhaps, Channel 4 had underestimated the power of Hindi cinema?

A final factor must be noted here: the internet! Although CBB is only being broadcast in Britain and Ireland, a quick search on youtube.com for “Shilpa, CBB” throws up all the necessary footage required to be outraged on Shetty’s behalf. Same goes for the heavily edited and controlled Big Brother website on Channel 4’s homepage:
http://www.channel4.com/bigbrother/index.jsp. The coverage and forums on http://bigbrother.digitalspy.co.uk/ as well as the bbc.co.uk’s Asian network forums have also been prime movers in mobilising the protests.

So what happens next? Well, Channel 4 better find a quick way to solve the crisis they have on their hands. This afternoon, the show’s live feed was blocked and only reinstated when the bullies had been separated from Shilpa and her support group in the house. The live feed has been since censored to prevent viewers from discovering the reason for the separation (one hopes that Shilpa wasn’t physically attacked in the house – that could have ugly consequences outside).

And they better hope that no Indians with internet access – from home or other parts of the world - get in on the act. After all if Indians with net access could upstage all Hollywod stars to vote Amitabh Bachchan the “star of the millennium” on BBC’s online poll back in 2000, imagine what we could do with a few choice addresses from Ofcom and Channel 4.

Fyi in case you want to follow this one on your own: www.youtube.com (seach for Shilpa and CBB), http://www.channel4.com/bigbrother AND to protest: ofcom.co.uk, bblb@channel4.com, bbbm@channel4.com, AND here is the petition doing the rounds already: http://www.petitiononline.com/Shilpa/petition.html

I know, I know - but I am Indian yaar, and nothing better than some sabre-rattling (nonviolently of course) and rabble-rousing to get things going....