I did not watch Kabir Singh. I think people decide which movies to watch based on the publicity material that is released before the release of the film. Posters, teasers, trailers and in some countries including ours, songs. Reviews come from the watchers and not the makers. I decided not to watch Kabir Singh looking at its poster. I also watched a review that told me that what i guessed from the poster was kind of the gist of the film.
It had an indian male who looked rebellious - unkempt hair, sunglasses, staring at us and the name of the film was probably the name of this indian male. Hmmph. I thought. This is probably one of those films in which the genius of a man, whose genius no one can understand, lives his life while inconsequential beings - women, for example - make way for him.
All this from a poster? Isn't it too harsh? Maybe. But this medium called cinema is very telling. What we see immediately translates to concepts, ideas, prejudices and assumptions in seconds. The poster below follows the same format - an indian male staring at us with the name of the male for the name of the film. Yet, this poster did not make me think that the film was going to bathe everyone in toxic masculinity like how the Singh thing did.
There are a lot of factors doing this to each and every viewer. I am sure there are books and research that tell us how the colours, the lighting, the font etc. work together to form opinions that can be shared and understood by human minds. I will not delve into that because this is supposed to be about the film 'Article 15.'
I talked about Kabir Singh because that was the other film that was showing in the theatre i went to watch Article 15. So i could pan my head to look at Shahid Kapoor in sunglasses and pan back to Ayushmann Khurrana in sunglasses. This must be why i got obsessed with posters and reflective surfaces when i decided to write about why Article 15 was a much needed film in this country. As ridiculous as it sounds, it is so because Khurrana's sunglasses reflect something and Shahid Kapoor's are see-through.
Article 15 is the story of a police officer who conducts an investigation into the rape of three Dalit girls in rural india. The investigation is heavily influenced by casteism and it becomes extremely difficult for him to find and arrest the perpetrators.
The image on Khurrana's glasses was one that was splashed across all media when the incidents on which the film is based happened. People who remember would remember how two minor girls in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh were raped by a group of men and were hung on a tree for everyone to see, to serve as a warning to the people of the caste that the girls belonged to. Article 15 is about caste discrimination - something indians don't talk about in films. Indians usually talk about Kabir Singhs in films.
I did see reviews that pointed out how it was a story of an upper caste hero providing justice to helpless lower caste victims. It is. But i also think this is the least bollywood can do. Create a hero out of someone who fights caste based violence. Tell people that if you are an upper caste male who is in a position of power, the least you can do is do your job.
If you look at it, the hero of this film is not someone who beats up a hundred able bodied men. One might say that he is a rebel. But is he? He is in fact going by the rules. If you receive a complaint of a missing person, you file an FIR. That is your job as a police officer. The hero in Article 15 does only that. The film is making a hero out of an officer who goes to work every day and does his job.
Bollywood thinks if a person has a job and he works in an office, there has to be something missing in his life. Think Lunchbox and every other boy-meets-girl-who-makes-him-understand-there-is-more-to-the-world-than-his- 9-5 job. If he has a desk job, he definitely needs a road movie. The one in which he finds the meaning of life. The hero in Article 15 is not interested in the meaning of life. He only wants to make sure that an investigation is done if a complaint is registered. An autopsy is done if there is a dead body. A search is done if there is a missing person.
This has to be seen in the light of the fact that in India, most of the positions of power, be it in media, academics, administration, judiciary are filled with upper caste people. It is no secret that Brahmins who come to around 5% of the population control most of these systems. This film therefore looked like a user manual for them. I don't think that it is an exercise in vain, educating the privileged. It has to be done but keeping in mind that it is not the marginalised people's responsibility. A similar situation can be found in patriarchy. Men need to be taught feminism but they have to understand that it is their responsibility, not women's. For everything else, there is google.
The illusion that Khurrana is a rebel is created only because the rest of the people - his subordinates - are determined to not do their jobs. The only other rebellion is in his past when he says 'cool' to his superior (instead of cool, sir, i suppose) but that doesn't count. Rebels pee in their superiors' pools, break bottles on their heads or if they are speaking, give a lengthy eye opener of a speech with swear words in Hindi, if possible. Our hero can't even swear to his heart's content because his subordinates don't understand English swear words.
I am not saying that the film is without problems. For a film dealing with caste based discrimination, it gives undue importance to the hero's personal life. A writer-activist girlfriend who gives him strength to do his job is inappropriate in the context. It is true that upper caste humans also feel defeated and scared while dealing with ground realities. But it can be shown in a film and be justified only if at some point they realise that their tribulations are irrelevant. The only things that matter are the crime and the victims. The film does not do that. The upper caste couple gets their personal victory while the lower caste couple are unable to even live. And i still haven't figured out why there was an encounter killing of Dalit leaders in the script.
The film looks like the makers researched pretty well before making it. Which is why i find it a little strange that they did not touch upon the subject of the caste of the girls. I understand it was not a replication of the Badaun incident that they did in the film. There is a dialogue where the Badaun case is mentioned. So in the film, the incident is happening after Badaun and therefore is different from it. But the Badaun case was riddled with questions regarding the caste of the girls. It was falsely reported that they were Dalit. Later it was reported that they belonged to OBC. This is a major part of the caste politics of this nation. One reason is that the caste determines if the perpetrators can be charged under SC/ST Atrocities Act. The other, as always, is votes. In Article 15, all three girls who were abducted were shown to be Dalit. At the same time, they have made use of the details from the Badaun case like how the fathers of the girls were falsely implicated, how the CBI took over and bungled the investigation, the protests by local Dalit activists etc. So why change the caste identity of the girls?
The family of the girls have been reported to be upset about this fact. '...we belong to backward caste but the movie shows the cousins as Dalits and accused as upper caste...' they have been quoted as saying.
'...caste system has two aspects. In one of its aspects, it divides men into separate communities. In its second aspect, it places these communities in a graded order one above the other in social status. Each caste takes its pride and its consolation in the fact that in the scale of castes it is above some other caste... Now this gradation, this scaling of castes, makes it impossible to organise a common front against the caste system.'
I started with the image of the girls hung on the tree seen reflected on the hero's sunglasses. It is common films - something that indians find a lot appealing because half the strength of our heroes comes from their sunglasses. But this image was so shocking and painful that the decision to publish it when the incident happened was heavily criticised.
We needn't be disrespectful to the victims to understand the injustice. They were hung in that manner to be a lesson. By publishing it we are only broadcasting the message from the upper caste perpetrators - 'Dissent from you shall be rewarded in this manner.' I myself am guilty of using the image in one of my short films.
Some part of me still believes that these images that we see all over media, the happenings in this country, the political developments, history - all come to haunt us in our dreams. Sometimes i think that we are only being honest by reproducing these images. Be it in our dreams or in films. Remember the time when China was offended by the Leica camera advertisement that showed the Tiananmen Square man reflected on the lens. Yes, the difference here is that that was a picture of dissent while the girls' picture was that of the 'punishment' for it by those in power. At the same time, i also feel that the discomfort that the real image causes to india is a necessary reminder of the privileges that keep the alive alive.
So forgive me if i sound hypocritical when i say that i absolutely detested the depiction of rape in the film. It was shown in flashes, it was shot from the point of view of the perpetrators and it lacked respect.
But there are sequences that were handled brilliantly. Sometimes with no dialogue. In one of the shots Khurrana is speaking over phone in front of a tea shop oblivious to the man who was sitting on a bench beside him. Seeing the upper caste man, this person gets up and sits away from him and only the audience see it. It is amazing how the normalisation - it is almost as if a switch was turned on and a light shined - of caste based discrimination was brought to screen with just one shot and two characters, one of them an extra.
The hard hitting documentary 'Shit' by Amudhan R P which was about manual scavenging had a segment called 'Vandemataram - a shit version.' (Seen below.) It used the patriotic song as the sound track showing the conditions in which dalits worked to clear the shit and garbage produced by the rest of india.
The same has been done in Article 15. It is ironical that Amudhan's films run in festival circuits and other independent screenings while this one becomes mainstream. But i will have to admit that i loved it because every single person in the theatre had stood for the national anthem in the beginning, before the screening. It is an amazing feeling when the director succeeds in making the air in the theatre tense.
In other Article 15 news,
Isha Talwar joined the list of 'female characters whose absence wouldn't change anything in the film.'
The rap in the end with Khurrana standing there, staring at us while rappers rap about caste and India undid everything the film did right.
I liked the film the same way i liked 'Gully Boy'. It is definitely a much needed intervention in Bollywood.
Article 15 mentioned in this piece refers to the film and not the Article in the constitution of india.
i don't capitalise my i's and proper nouns because i don't see the point.
 |
| The faces in Kabir Singh and Article 15 posters |
It had an indian male who looked rebellious - unkempt hair, sunglasses, staring at us and the name of the film was probably the name of this indian male. Hmmph. I thought. This is probably one of those films in which the genius of a man, whose genius no one can understand, lives his life while inconsequential beings - women, for example - make way for him.
All this from a poster? Isn't it too harsh? Maybe. But this medium called cinema is very telling. What we see immediately translates to concepts, ideas, prejudices and assumptions in seconds. The poster below follows the same format - an indian male staring at us with the name of the male for the name of the film. Yet, this poster did not make me think that the film was going to bathe everyone in toxic masculinity like how the Singh thing did.
 |
| Raees poster |
There are a lot of factors doing this to each and every viewer. I am sure there are books and research that tell us how the colours, the lighting, the font etc. work together to form opinions that can be shared and understood by human minds. I will not delve into that because this is supposed to be about the film 'Article 15.'
I talked about Kabir Singh because that was the other film that was showing in the theatre i went to watch Article 15. So i could pan my head to look at Shahid Kapoor in sunglasses and pan back to Ayushmann Khurrana in sunglasses. This must be why i got obsessed with posters and reflective surfaces when i decided to write about why Article 15 was a much needed film in this country. As ridiculous as it sounds, it is so because Khurrana's sunglasses reflect something and Shahid Kapoor's are see-through.
Article 15 is the story of a police officer who conducts an investigation into the rape of three Dalit girls in rural india. The investigation is heavily influenced by casteism and it becomes extremely difficult for him to find and arrest the perpetrators.
The image on Khurrana's glasses was one that was splashed across all media when the incidents on which the film is based happened. People who remember would remember how two minor girls in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh were raped by a group of men and were hung on a tree for everyone to see, to serve as a warning to the people of the caste that the girls belonged to. Article 15 is about caste discrimination - something indians don't talk about in films. Indians usually talk about Kabir Singhs in films.
I did see reviews that pointed out how it was a story of an upper caste hero providing justice to helpless lower caste victims. It is. But i also think this is the least bollywood can do. Create a hero out of someone who fights caste based violence. Tell people that if you are an upper caste male who is in a position of power, the least you can do is do your job.
If you look at it, the hero of this film is not someone who beats up a hundred able bodied men. One might say that he is a rebel. But is he? He is in fact going by the rules. If you receive a complaint of a missing person, you file an FIR. That is your job as a police officer. The hero in Article 15 does only that. The film is making a hero out of an officer who goes to work every day and does his job.
Bollywood thinks if a person has a job and he works in an office, there has to be something missing in his life. Think Lunchbox and every other boy-meets-girl-who-makes-him-understand-there-is-more-to-the-world-than-his- 9-5 job. If he has a desk job, he definitely needs a road movie. The one in which he finds the meaning of life. The hero in Article 15 is not interested in the meaning of life. He only wants to make sure that an investigation is done if a complaint is registered. An autopsy is done if there is a dead body. A search is done if there is a missing person.
This has to be seen in the light of the fact that in India, most of the positions of power, be it in media, academics, administration, judiciary are filled with upper caste people. It is no secret that Brahmins who come to around 5% of the population control most of these systems. This film therefore looked like a user manual for them. I don't think that it is an exercise in vain, educating the privileged. It has to be done but keeping in mind that it is not the marginalised people's responsibility. A similar situation can be found in patriarchy. Men need to be taught feminism but they have to understand that it is their responsibility, not women's. For everything else, there is google.
The illusion that Khurrana is a rebel is created only because the rest of the people - his subordinates - are determined to not do their jobs. The only other rebellion is in his past when he says 'cool' to his superior (instead of cool, sir, i suppose) but that doesn't count. Rebels pee in their superiors' pools, break bottles on their heads or if they are speaking, give a lengthy eye opener of a speech with swear words in Hindi, if possible. Our hero can't even swear to his heart's content because his subordinates don't understand English swear words.
I am not saying that the film is without problems. For a film dealing with caste based discrimination, it gives undue importance to the hero's personal life. A writer-activist girlfriend who gives him strength to do his job is inappropriate in the context. It is true that upper caste humans also feel defeated and scared while dealing with ground realities. But it can be shown in a film and be justified only if at some point they realise that their tribulations are irrelevant. The only things that matter are the crime and the victims. The film does not do that. The upper caste couple gets their personal victory while the lower caste couple are unable to even live. And i still haven't figured out why there was an encounter killing of Dalit leaders in the script.
The film looks like the makers researched pretty well before making it. Which is why i find it a little strange that they did not touch upon the subject of the caste of the girls. I understand it was not a replication of the Badaun incident that they did in the film. There is a dialogue where the Badaun case is mentioned. So in the film, the incident is happening after Badaun and therefore is different from it. But the Badaun case was riddled with questions regarding the caste of the girls. It was falsely reported that they were Dalit. Later it was reported that they belonged to OBC. This is a major part of the caste politics of this nation. One reason is that the caste determines if the perpetrators can be charged under SC/ST Atrocities Act. The other, as always, is votes. In Article 15, all three girls who were abducted were shown to be Dalit. At the same time, they have made use of the details from the Badaun case like how the fathers of the girls were falsely implicated, how the CBI took over and bungled the investigation, the protests by local Dalit activists etc. So why change the caste identity of the girls?
The family of the girls have been reported to be upset about this fact. '...we belong to backward caste but the movie shows the cousins as Dalits and accused as upper caste...' they have been quoted as saying.
For instance, we belong to backward caste but the movie sho ..
However, if seen as a story based on true events, there is a brilliant conversation in the film about caste that the hero has with his fellow officers. Portions of this scene can be seen in the trailer as well. It clearly shows how caste discrimination is so deep rooted, that the oppressed castes further discriminate based on caste. It is amazing how passages from Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste (AoC) were translated to moving pictures and sounds. For example, the scene mentioned above is a translation of the following passage from AoC for me. '...caste system has two aspects. In one of its aspects, it divides men into separate communities. In its second aspect, it places these communities in a graded order one above the other in social status. Each caste takes its pride and its consolation in the fact that in the scale of castes it is above some other caste... Now this gradation, this scaling of castes, makes it impossible to organise a common front against the caste system.'
I started with the image of the girls hung on the tree seen reflected on the hero's sunglasses. It is common films - something that indians find a lot appealing because half the strength of our heroes comes from their sunglasses. But this image was so shocking and painful that the decision to publish it when the incident happened was heavily criticised.
We needn't be disrespectful to the victims to understand the injustice. They were hung in that manner to be a lesson. By publishing it we are only broadcasting the message from the upper caste perpetrators - 'Dissent from you shall be rewarded in this manner.' I myself am guilty of using the image in one of my short films.
 |
| Screengrab from 'Gi,' a short film i directed |
 |
| Tiananmen Square man seen reflected on the lens in the Leica advertisement |
So forgive me if i sound hypocritical when i say that i absolutely detested the depiction of rape in the film. It was shown in flashes, it was shot from the point of view of the perpetrators and it lacked respect.
But there are sequences that were handled brilliantly. Sometimes with no dialogue. In one of the shots Khurrana is speaking over phone in front of a tea shop oblivious to the man who was sitting on a bench beside him. Seeing the upper caste man, this person gets up and sits away from him and only the audience see it. It is amazing how the normalisation - it is almost as if a switch was turned on and a light shined - of caste based discrimination was brought to screen with just one shot and two characters, one of them an extra.
The hard hitting documentary 'Shit' by Amudhan R P which was about manual scavenging had a segment called 'Vandemataram - a shit version.' (Seen below.) It used the patriotic song as the sound track showing the conditions in which dalits worked to clear the shit and garbage produced by the rest of india.
The same has been done in Article 15. It is ironical that Amudhan's films run in festival circuits and other independent screenings while this one becomes mainstream. But i will have to admit that i loved it because every single person in the theatre had stood for the national anthem in the beginning, before the screening. It is an amazing feeling when the director succeeds in making the air in the theatre tense.
In other Article 15 news,
Isha Talwar joined the list of 'female characters whose absence wouldn't change anything in the film.'
The rap in the end with Khurrana standing there, staring at us while rappers rap about caste and India undid everything the film did right.
I liked the film the same way i liked 'Gully Boy'. It is definitely a much needed intervention in Bollywood.
Article 15 mentioned in this piece refers to the film and not the Article in the constitution of india.
i don't capitalise my i's and proper nouns because i don't see the point.
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