The content of this documentary is VILE. And we can only hope that these people are those that are scraping the bottom of the societal barrel. Coz if they’re not, then we as a society have some serious shit to deal with. Which is why, the most scary bit for me was when the prison psychologist described these men as “normal human beings with anti-social traits in them.” Them? Normal? Now that is scary!
While everyone has focussed on the rape-accused, I actually find the views of his lawyers significantly more disturbing. Coz they’re supposed to be ‘educated’ members of society. Actually, they are the ones who epitomise the rot in our society and their statements should be used as case studies on ‘what beliefs one should NOT have’!
Obviously this docu should not be banned, but neither should it be made mandatory watching. The depravity of the content of this documentary is not necessarily a mandatory pollutant of the relatively clean(er) and hopefully sane(r) minds of the teens of today.
This documentary and the incendiary statements within are like a video of ISIS beheadings. Yes it happened. Yes its terrible. But no, not everyone needs to see it.
Secondly,
It is a really badly made documentary. Honestly, from the furore around it, I thought it would really be probing & incisive. Its not. It epitomises the word ‘superficial’. It swings between wildly scandalous and blood-curdling statements by human beings and really terrible re-enactments of events and is accompanied by a voice-over similar to those that accompany one of those electronically-guided-tours of tourist places (where they hand you a digital player and a map and as you to go down a particular route a highly patronising voice describes dumbed down versions of the historical significance of what you’re seeing). Also, the statements of both the rape-accused and the lawyers are so incendiary that I honestly question what were the questions asked to them to evoke such responses. Strangely enough, we see & hear their responses, but not the documentarian’s questions which have evoked these responses. I would really like to see how leading these questions were. i am pretty sure that they will be…
Honestly, it is so badly made that if it hadn’t been banned or the subject of so much discussion, it would probably have been dismissed as a bad piece of cinema and would’ve got limited viewership. So the MHA ended up countermanding its own efforts by having it banned. The ban has given this very-poorly-made documentary iconic status among those documentaries that a nation-state has banned and has ensured that everyone in the world sees it. Ironic!
Also, a lot of ink & voice will be consumed talking about why these rapists have still not been hanged. That is a fair question. If this is a ‘lets send a message’ case, then the supreme court should not have taken a year to hear the accused’s appeal. It needed to have moved faster.
So, while all this is going around, I’m thinking – what can all of us, upwardly mobile, socialmedia-armchair-commentators do about this? The answer is EDUCATE!
We all come across people from lesser levels of education, lesser levels of socio-economic class, lesser levels of being world-aware, or having lower gender-sensitivity. In our houses, in our offices, in the cafes we go to and the public transport we use. We need to talk to them. Not talk AT them. But genuinely get into a discussion on what they think about the opposite sex, and why they need to keep both genders on par. One of the major aspects not addressed in this docu is the role women play in the corruption of thought in men. Even today, a significant number of mothers give more importance to the boy-child over the girl-child. This causes the male to have an overdeveloped sense of being god’s gift to mankind and it causes the girl to have a lower level of self-worth. This needs to be stopped as Both men & women thinking that men are higher beings than women, is, in my opinion, the crux of objectification of women and the cause of ensuing gender-releted crimes.
if you change even one mind, you have enabled society towards eliminating gender-related crimes!