Are our stars really the stuff that dreams are made of? Was the love peddled to millions of cine lovers built on the tears and humiliation of many women who struggled alongside men to build this palace of illusions? Was the magic of cinema that mesmerised us in starlit worlds just a sham that covered the monstrous greed and megalomania of men who used the economy of cinema to traffic in patriarchal dividends? Do the raptures of agony and ecstasy engendered by cinema that touch our cores make us complicit in oppressively feudal artistic economies?
Among the many film industries in India, Malayalam cinema is considered a cut apart for its progressive politics and innovativeness around plot and style. But, as never before in the history of cinema, Malayalam cinema’s bastions have been stormed and its ramparts razed through a single stroke—Justice Hema Committee’s report filed the epochal voices of a handful of women who questioned the misogynist foundations of this grand castle of deception.
Triggered by the inhuman assault on a female actor in a moving car in broad daylight in 2017 and the subsequent forging of resistance by the Women in Cinema Collective, the state government of Kerala appointed a three-member committee in 2017 under Justice Hema to study the workplace issues experienced by women in the Malayalam film industry. Yet, the very same government sat on the report for four and a half years, citing technicalities and fear of violating the confidentiality of the people who testified. It took many information requests and public outrage for the government to finally make a heavily redacted document available for public perusal, where the nature and extent of the redaction have drawn further flak.
The report, in many places, speaks of the pall of silence and the culture of fear that exist in different cine unions like that of dancers and junior artists, which prevented them from testifying openly before the committee. The fear of losing their meagre employment possibilities, of unauthorised bans and other forms of harassment were enough to silence those whose livelihoods depended on their precarious existence within a male-dominated industry.
One can safely surmise from the report that criminal fiefdoms called entertainment industries are thriving within the largest democracy in the world. What the report lays bare to the civil society, one which will probably find resonance in all other film industries in India, is that behind the star-studded silver screen of mass entertainment that most Indians are so invested in lies a dystopian world of gender oppression, sexual discrimination, harassment, violence and abuse. Prostitution, sextortion and pimping go under the pseudonyms of ‘compromise’ and adjustment’. There are dangerous beasts lurking in the dark underbelly of cinema industries.
Where do they draw their seemingly unquestionable and unlimited power from? What prompts the unholy nexus between politicians and cinema barons that helps regularise the systemic character of the banality of evil that seeps deep down into each vein of the cine industry? How can oligarchic republics of mafiadom, which are not bound by the laws of the nation, operate so freely within the country? Can any democratically-elected government wash its hands of its responsibility to its women by invoking legal justice while turning a myopic eye on the question of social justice?
In a state where even film reviews are often based on hearsay, innuendoes, misogynist inferences and loose talk, the panel’s report takes up women’s labour, oppression, resistance and agency from the level of scandal and gossip, placing it squarely on a terrain that could afford it legal scrutiny and public accountability. That said, suo motu judicial enquiries might not be practical, given that even the actor in the infamous assault case, in spite of all the public furore the issue garnered, had to face further trauma when a recording of her assault was leaked from judicial custody.
How can the confidentiality of victims’ testimonials be ensured in a court under the present circumstances? What is the guarantee, given the present report of the deep-seated cultures of fear instigated in women through trade unions, that their livelihoods would be protected from harm? In a digital era, what makes it so difficult to ensure that individual film sets have a complaint committee in place, constituted of members from outside the industry, to which an oppressed woman can turn to for support or redress? The report states that such complaint committee might be useless in the cinema industry because they are bound to be filled with nominees of power lobbies. This comment has a larger valence in Kerala, where complaint committees are often filled with women who are the handmaidens of patriarchy, defeating the very purpose of gender-just laws and policies in the state.
The attempts to prevent the report from seeing the light of day speaks of possible dubious liaisons between the industry’s power lobby that Justice Hema speaks about and the larger political power systems outside. The unholy nexus between entertainment and politics, irrespective of party affiliations, creates nefarious ‘fanboy’ networks of hegemonic masculinity within which circulate money and many other transactions, creating a system that is difficult to dismantle. This is the patriarchal deep state within which ordinary women technicians, choreographers, dancers and make-up artists—not just women actors—function under conditions of fear and precarity. They are denied basic workplace amenities and equal wages, with abuse and violence being made so commonplace as to be common-sensical.
The committee’s report, instead of being considered an attack on powerful institutions or individuals, should be seen as an opportunity to influence policies. There are many policy decisions a proactive government could take in light of the report without being carried away by the media sensationalisation of the abuse faced by female actors alone, which has led to heads rolling within the industry. Instead, the focus should also be on the 15-odd other serious issues pointed out in the report that take stock of women’s labour, dignity and human rights. It could initiate steps to ensure that men and women, particularly in the lowest rungs of the work order, be given equal wages for equal work. Women suffer heavily in low-paid, insecure and often-unsafe jobs in the industry. The government could take steps to guarantee dignity of labour and decent wages, safe working environments, and provide social protections like healthcare and maternity benefits.
Cinema cannot continue to function as a discriminatory cabal that thrives on women’s labour, but enjoys exclusive rights over the degradation, exploitation, objectification and commodification of their bodies. It is time the state took stock of the crass unionisation of patriarchy in the industry, which forms a conduit for the diktats of power lobbies and for the fear they instigate and the surveillance they enable down to individuals, creating more aggressively feudal men and more silenced women. Unless there are more ‘feminichies’ to upset the applecart of machodom, it would not augur well for Kerala.
(Views are personal)
Meena T Pillai | Professor & Head, Institute of English; Director, Centre for Cultural Studies, University of Kerala; and author of Affective Feminisms in Digital India