The Indian Film Industry as a whole has had some questionable formats and misguided representation of certain aspects of different elements over the years. It is evident, however, that the industry is progressing in terms of content and representation. One aspect that still needs a lot of progressing is the portrayal of rape in Indian movies and series.
Rape is more of an act of asserting power rather than an act performed to achieve sexual satisfaction. This has been exploited in Indian movies over the decades. The movies in the late 70s and 80s showcased a number of rape scenes, which were supposed to be an act of power and assertion of dominance by the villain.
Typically, this act was done to the women who belonged to the protagonist’s family, be it his wife, sister or mother. Whenever a villain rapes or physically assaults a woman of the hero’s family, he feels empowered, giving him a higher ground. Some examples of films like these are Andhaa Kanoon (1983), Amar Akbar Anthony (1977) etc.
Even with so much of censorship around sex scenes, there was a sudden rise of rape scenes in Bollywood cinema in the 80s. Many of them were revenge rape scenes. Certain actors such as Shakti Kapoor, Gulshan Grover, and Ranjeet became famous for portraying the role of a rapist.
Ranjeet reportedly confessed to having acted in more than 400 rape scenes, alone. Films that had Ranjeet playing the rapist were a huge success at the box office. Hence, big producers always had a rape scene in their films that featured Ranjeet.
The main problem with these rape scenes was that instead of the villains being painted as the bad guy, they became the macho role model for men across the country; this led to numerous acts of sexual violence against women in India, as men would assume that they can get any girl if they get into her pants.
For instance, in the film Raja Ki Aayegi Baraat (1997), the character of Rani Mukherjee was raped and then later forced to marry the guy who raped her and the filmmakers gave the story a romantic turn which glorified rape as a romantic act.
Another problem with these rape scenes are that, instead of enraging the audience with anger, it only titillated the crowd. And this is not a problem only within movies, series such as Crime Patrol and Savdhaan India have also come under criticism.
They involved a lot of love making scenes that were intended to titillate the audience when the message could clearly be delivered without the usage of such scenes.
So, the question arises, are rape scenes really necessary to establish the power of a character? Do the rape scenes need to be as graphic as they are today? Why are the love making scenes censored but not the rape scenes?
Betsie Ranglong, MA Journalism & Mass Communication (NEHU)