“I mean we see that like almost every single time, like from Simba, when they’re showing a broken system, in the end it is the rogue police officer with the right, whatever moral compass that comes to the rescue and then does some kind of encounter inside the police station. Or (how) it is like in ‘Pink’, for example, very glorified- it builds to that climax like the very glorified- courtroom drama in which obviously the male savior is then going on to defend the women with his very right moral compass.”
— Rajvi Desai, cultural editor at The Swaddle, reflects on saviorism in pop culture, in conversation with co-hosts Vandita Morarka and Ruchika in this episode
Pop culture is everywhere, and every piece of media we consume shapes us, for better or for worse. There has been an explosion of shows and films that portray gender-based violence as the central plot, in the Indian film industry. And these narratives are most often set around the police and the court system. In this episode, co-hosts Vandita Morarka and Ruchika, sit with Rajvi Desai to discuss ‘Pink’, ‘Mardaani’, ‘Thappad’ and more – critiquing the lack of care and survivor-centric narratives, the harnessing of diversity under the capitalist regime, and glorification of punitive measures and how unhelpful those may actually be to conversations on justice.
Content Warning: This conversation includes mentions of assault, rape, and mental, emotional, physical and institutional violence.
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Love to read or want to revisit your favourite bits? Dive into the full transcript below!
Ruchika
Hello and welcome to the fifth episode of the In Search of Justice podcast. I’m Ruchika.
Vandita
And I’m Vandita. And today we’re going to be talking to you all about what conversation in terms of justice means when we think of gender-based violence and pop culture. I think for all of us, gender-based violence has been depicted on our screen since forever, right? Like we’ve always seen it as part of the shows we watch or like movies we consume but I think over the last decade there’s been such a dramatic increase in social consciousness that aim to be more sensitive in the portrayal of gender-based violence- even say post the 2012 Delhi gang rape case, there have been quite a few more instances of this portrayal and I find that gender-based violence in pop culture in general, right, from music to memes to TV shows has just grown so much. Even in terms of everyday gender-based violence, I’m very excited to be having this conversation today.
Ruchika
There’s already a lot of analysis of the problematic portrayals of gender-based violence and popular media. I will link to some of them in the bio, but today we’re specifically going to talk about and specifically going to focus on the portrayal of justice in the cases of gender-based violence and how justice is portrayed, not necessarily the gender-based violence.
Vandita
Content Warning: Just before we begin, I’d just like to give us the trigger warning for discussion of various forms of violence and rape culture. So please, at any point you need to step away from the episode for your well-being and come back and you feel up to it or just completely disengaged as well.
Ruchika
So we live in a country where the Hindi film industry and even regional cinema alongside TV and various OTT platforms, heavily influenced and also reflect on where we stand on various issues in our society. So, it only makes sense to sort of scrutinize how these films and TV shows shine a light on what justice is, or what justice looks like or what justice should be or could be, and maybe talk about what could be done better.
Vandita
No, definitely Ruchika. I feel that alongside this, there’s so much cultural collectiveness that sort of develops around films, around movies, the songs that we listen to, the sort of pop culture references we refer to in our jokes. So, much of it comes from our understanding of gender-based violence because of how it’s depicted, and I think we have the perfect person to be having this conversation with. Today we have Rajvi Desai, who’s the cultural editor at Swaddle. So excited to have you with us.
Rajvi
Hi, Vandita, Ruchika, thank you so much for having me here. I’m very excited to have this conversation, especially because, you know, like I’ve done a lot of movie reviews of these movies because it just falls within the scope of what the Swaddle does and I find myself- I mean, it’s always like a very tough line to kind of tread because at one point you’re kind of happy that these movies are being made but then also so many, have such faulty presumptions and like fundamental assumptions from which it tells the story, and I find myself rolling my eyes a lot of times in the theater. So, I am going to the theater and watching movies at like 8 in the morning. So yeah, I mean, this is a great opportunity to dissect exactly what we see. Another thing that I find is also, you know, a lot of people coming into contact with these movies, you just kind of is happy that you know, somebody thought of doing this, and then in order to not, like I say, trouble the feminism of it all, keep away from dissecting or critiquing like the premise of the movie. Which I think is quite problematic because I mean the only way better movies will be made is if you can talk about what’s wrong with it?
Ruchika
So, I’m going to start with the first question I have for you, I mean you kind of sort of already answered it, but maybe if you have some more insights- What do you think about how gender-based violence is covered by popular mainstream media currently? Do you think it shapes our societal understanding of what justice can look like? Maybe you could use some specific examples of movies or TV shows that come to mind to sort of make the point you’d like to make.
Rajvi
So, one of the main unrelenting tropes of gender-based violence that I see, right, of how it’s handled- and of course there are exceptions like Guilty and Highway- I think are two movies that are exceptions -is that it’s always shown as something that happens out of the blue walking down the street or in a home invasion that it’s done by a stranger but in India at least, police data shows 97% of people know their perpetrators. It could be family, friend, colleague, acquaintance, something that they already have had some kind of interaction with, right? So, it always baffles me- why is this not a reality that is reflected in the films we watch and most of the films that we watch? I think at the end of the day it does that- there is a reflection of society there because I don’t think we’re ready to deal with this complication because it would mean then that if we were to kind of reckon with the fact that a majority or like an overwhelming majority of gender-based violence happens with people that you know, then we wouldn’t be duped about somebody else’s innocence or guiltiness based on their class or their caste status, right? You can easily do that when it’s a stranger. You can easily rejoice when a police officer does an extrajudicial killing and sends a stranger to prison for the rest of their life but, for example, how complicated would it be if you had to send somebody’s father, brother, husband, breadwinner/sole breadwinner to prison? Like what would that do for the victim or the survivor? So, I feel like then it becomes not so cut and dry. So, I think the movies we watch are kind of essentially just giving us an easy way out of dealing with these and we see that reflected 100% of the time in real life because we outrage for what? Like a week, and then we forget and then the next one happens and the cycle just continues.
Ruchika
If I’m not wrong in Mardani, at the end, that’s essentially what happens when Rani Mukherjee’s character, instead of sort of turning in the perpetrator, just allows the survivors to beat up, beat him up to death and I mean- it is essentially an extrajudicial killing and I think the fact that it’s even celebrated or glorified on screen.
Rajvi
Yeah. I mean, Oh my God, like the end of the movie Mardani too especially you know like she has like this like bat in her hand I think, and you know like when she has like blood on her face and there’s like background music playing and like this scene is supposed to give you goosebumps and I’m not like lying it did give me goosebumps but then she’s supposed to be this all powerful like person out to deliver justice, but I mean just because a woman is doing it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s fair, right?
Vandita
I think somehow there’s also a dream sort of like putting survivors into these molds, which happens with a lot of pop culture, that either the survivor is portrayed as someone in constant distress needing support, or then they are portrayed as a person avenging what’s happening, and in a very specific sort of revenge mindset. I think with most media, right?
Ruchika
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it also stems from the idea that for us justice is sort of a form of avenging or taking revenge or like it’s very punitive in that, like that’s our mindset. So that’s the only way we can sort of see it happen on screen as well.
Rajvi
So I’ve also been like, very fascinated with this, like, punitive idea of justice, right. I mean, it’s, I mean, obviously as a society with the carceral system, we see that, but I mean, in relationships with parenting, with kids, right? Like there’s this idea of punitive repercussions, that’s a very common idea and it’s weird because it just never works, but we still keep doing it and the main question is why? And I think because the alternatives are so daunting and long term and complicated for us to even begin to start you know like OK, you have to raise boys differently. You have to introduce sex education in schools. The solutions to this are so multi-pronged and so complicated that the only thing you’re left with to deal with the helplessness of not being able to do any of those things is to then like pay for somebody’s blood.
Vandita
Right. And that’s extremely valid as when it actually takes me to this earlier question I had, that while there’s a certain portrayal of gender-based violence in pop culture, there’s also sort of certain furtherance of rape culture through popular media. I think that really ties into what we were talking about, like how we raise our boys and what is really needed to prevent gender-based violence at the first instance. So how do we then work with that?
Rajvi
That’s really interesting because I think it’s also one of the tropes of gender based-violence in films, right? Sexual violence especially is always shown as stemming from sexual desire, but like it almost never does. Like it is a tool to assert dominance and power over somebody, right? So, I think that’s one way in which it does like perpetuate rape culture, you know, if the woman, for example, doesn’t go out at night or doesn’t wear XXX clothes or doesn’t drink or this or that or whatever, then this wouldn’t have happened to her because, you know, boys will be boys or we have to instead, you know, protect the women. And I mean, it’s weird because we mentioned Mardaani, because I think Rani Mukherjee is one who is kind of like- talked about this a lot- self-defense Sikhao (Teach self-defense) types. But yeah, I mean it’s interesting, I feel like if film makers, for example, understand the basic, basic fundamentals of why such violence occurs, I think that’s the first step to not perpetuating rape culture through the portrayals that they then decide to bring to us but I think at the heart of it all is just like a misunderstanding or a full ignorance that then gets subbed in for sensationalism.
Vandita
As you said Ruchika earlier, definitely. I think what I would just like to bring out from what you shared Rani Mukherjee and then just the focus of these movies also on self-defense and on sort of placing the responsibility of one’s physical safety on the survivor. So, which often becomes a case of, you know, why did you go on this lane because it was a dark lane, you know, that’s an unsafe lane or why aren’t you equipped to be able to defend yourself? And that’s the truth we tend to fall into. And I think with pop culture there’s such a heavy influence on everyday minds that what should necessarily be like an individual thing, right? Maybe I avoid a certain dark road because I know it’s unsafe, becomes a systemic solution where we are mapping unsafe spaces and we say oh don’t go into these unsafe spaces or we’re doing like these mass self-defense programs in colleges and saying, oh, all girls should be taught how to, like, fight off an attacker. But linking back to what you said, like 97% perpetrators are from your family. And mostly in cases of where a stranger is involved, you often don’t have the capacity to be able to fight of someone because imagine what we’re asking people to do, right? I mean, there’s a feminist theory like which links this in, which says that we’re always asking women to live by a rape schedule because all our lives, our entire day is spent navigating the fact that we could be sexually harassed or raped. So, we’re constantly prepared to not, and I can’t imagine the damage this does, and also how much of our culture perpetuates this damage for each of us.
Rajvi
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s also how like I think there is some kind of stat, right, like something 99% of sexual violence cases go like unreported, and the idea is that why do they go unreported? Because, like, the extreme punitiveness of the carceral system obviously deters survivors from reporting the people that they know, right? Because they might want some consequences, they might want some kind of rehabilitation, both for themselves and for their perpetrators but they definitely do not want, like a death sentence or a life imprisonment for them. But if those are the only choices that you are left with, of course they’re not going to, you know, put themselves through the very difficult ordeal that is also like years’ long processes of acquiring justice or whatever justice means.
Ruchika
Yeah. So I want to circle back using what you’ve just said to Thappad. In Thappad when she decides to file for divorce, she doesn’t make any demands for alumni initially. I think that’s something that our formal legal systems don’t really account for- that survivors’ needs might not be what the courts think is justice, and I think there’s a complete lack of commentary on this in pop culture. All of the recent movies that we’ve seen, Delhi Crime or Mardaani, Pink, they’re essentially trying to talk about justice, but they’re not really discussing whether this is what justice looks for survivors, if this is what they want in the first place. And I think that’s a really important conversation for these movies to be having, you know?
Vandita
But actually that makes me also think about how when you portray a survivor as someone, say, who doesn’t want alumni, I think it really links into our society’s morality, right? Because our understanding is always that even at workplace sexual harassment, that a survivor will not want money, or in a divorce case, maybe a domestic abuse survivor will not want alumni. And as a lawyer myself, I’m just like, why? Because it really takes away from the reality of these cases because what we’re doing is we’re pedestalizing survivors who take on this whole aura of morality, which means not taking money. Complete different conversation on how much we link money and morality, but often in cases of abuse, domestic or otherwise, survivors have suffered financially. Women have put careers on hold to take care of their families, they’ve not been allowed to complete their education, at the workplace they’ve suffered career related consequences and money is not an amoral thing, it’s compensation. Like if you were in a car accident and you lost your limb and if you were compensated by the state for it or by the driver or by an organization, it would be considered fair and just. But in a case where you may have suffered some other kind of harm, career wise, financially, otherwise just the idea of money becomes this called moral issue. I think it feeds into the narrative of who is a perfect victim or who is a perfect survivor because the moment you take money, you’re not. And I mean personally, as a lawyer, I find that so difficult because these are women who had all their opportunities taken away from them.
Rajvi
This is so interesting. This is reminding me of the whole Stormy Daniels thing when I think Donald Trump was like first trying to be president and this whole idea that okay, if she might have broken like confidentiality to then come forward- ‘why did you accept money in the first place’ like ‘why didn’t you like stand by your conviction of your allegation’ or something. And it’s like do you see how difficult the justice system makes it to have conviction over your allegations at every point somebody is trying to deter you from going to that next court hearing, trying to, like, make it essentially easier for you- I mean, that’s how they paint it to you- to not have to go through this process. So, I agree with you, there’s absolutely no shame in not wanting to do it. Yeah.
Vandita
I mean, in fact, I’d go as far as to say that it is your right because anyway, our societal system or economic system does not recognize a lot of the contributions that women, who tend to be a majority of the survivors, make. So, I feel like it’s a right that you exercise.
Rajvi
When we’re talking about The Perfect Victim, it’s also like some women are painted as almost deserving of what happens to them. Like Akanksha Ranjan Kapoor’s character in Guilty, for example- you know, she wears short clothes, she’s very flirty, she, you know, gets drunk and you know, dances like with men, etc. and that’s shown as antithetical to the protagonist and how she’s like, you know, closed off and she wears like punk clothes and whatever. So, when something does happen to Akansha Ranjan Kapoor’s character, it’s almost like she’s painted as a person who’s not worthy of that sympathy or worthy of believing. I’m thinking about what consequences that has for the expression of women’s sexuality or their sexual expression and how it essentially exists in a perpetual state of being curbed. Women also grow up not knowing what healthy sexual expression means, like what their own boundaries are, or being completely unable to set those boundaries.
Vandita
This is such a valid point because I feel like this is something that’s so easily, I can link to something I see every day, right? Like if like, imagine in a college, there are young girls who are told that if you dress like this, you’re provoking the boys in your class and popular culture has such a massive influence on that because it’s teaching us that there is a certain type of woman who deserves things like this, who deserves violence being perpetrated against her or any harm of being against her. I think it tends to solidify that understanding of who deserves to be violated, I think in a way, in everyone’s psyche.
Ruchika
So, this is something we’ve already sort of touched upon in our conversation so far but one thing that a lot of the movies that we’ve discussed right so far is that most of them sort of depict justice revolving around courts and police systems and involvement of state and higher authorities, and this is a very sort of carceral and punitive lens to what the idea of justice is. Can we use some examples to further talk about how this sort of plays out and is anti-survivor and anti-justice in a lot of ways?
Vandita
Thanks for bringing that up, Ruchika. So mainly carceral feminism is feminism that looks at state and like state induced punitive involvement for addressing causes of gender harm in different communities in different spaces and often there is a space for that, right? So, there is a space for that when other justice systems fail, and there is a space for that when communities haven’t been built in a way that can accommodate alternative forms of thinking or transformative forms of justice. However, popular culture has such a massive influence on how we even think about justice that imagining depiction of justice in different ways would be really powerful to even further like a larger narrative on thinking about transformative justice.
Rajvi
So, like when you spoke about like how you know the courts and the police, like they’re the only avenues for people to access. I mean we see that like almost every single time, like from Simba, when they’re showing a broken system, in the end it is the rogue police officer with the right, whatever moral compass that comes to the rescue and then does some kind of encounter inside the police station. Or (how) it is like in pink, for example, very glorified- it builds to that climax like the very glorified- courtroom drama in which obviously the male savior is then going on to defend the women with his very right moral compass. When it comes to alternative ways in which this happens, I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a movie that does it exactly right but it’s little things like this.
I’m thinking of ‘Unbelievable , that’s an English show on Netflix, and I think that does it well to a certain extent in the way that female cops are a little bit more considerate when they first make the survivor. They, you know, ask the survivor, hey, like, is it okay we do this? Are you okay to go to the hospital, like just essentially establishing consent in small ways because their consent has been violated in such a big way. So antithetical to this is essentially just care, which feels so obvious, but it’s definitely not something that’s centered when we think of courts and the police and the criminal justice system.
Vandita
That’s beautiful. In fact, for me that also links into how justice doesn’t just have to be shown after an incidence of abuse or violence has happened, but how pop culture can often be very responsible for just portraying justice in the form of what a just world would look like. I think some examples that come to mind are like shows like ‘Schitts Creek’ or ‘Kinston Indians’, where things are dealt with very sensitively and very delicately, while also providing opportunities for people to learn to shift their perspective, to show that sort of change within individuals and communities and I think that can be a very powerful portrayal of justice as well. So, even like showing the difference in thinking about, say, marital rape within a family can be a portrayal of justice in a way that imagine something beyond just a carceral system, beyond just portraying justice under the state.
Rajvi
I think when you go beyond a carceral system, I think it also kind of removes the onus of a crime having to be really, really bad to warrant punishment. You know, like in Thappad, for example. Like, the main main idea is Ki ussne mujhe thappad mara, voh nahi maar sakta (He hit me, he didn’t have the right to) And like he’s, you know, not abusive in any other way, whatever. Like he arguably, I don’t think he’s a good husband at all but I feel like if she were to go to the police to be like, hey, listen, this happened, I want justice for that. I mean I don’t think victims actually go and do this in real life like the burden of proof would be on her, you know, Thappad he toh hai (it’s just a slap) like what’s the big deal, go back home. So I think when we say things, when we look at alternative ways of handling something like this by centering the survivors’ needs, then we don’t have to prove to anyone what happened to them is bad enough to warrant resources or whatever. Like we can just center what they need instead of trying to quantify how to punish somebody.
Vandita
But I find that sometimes for activists like us working in this space, there’s a romanticization of the other side of justice. And I find that that romanticization can sometimes do the same thing that current ideas of justice are doing right. It describes one form of justice over the other while, not perhaps accounting for the fact that our communities are not ready for that sort of justice or that survivor agencies may not be centered. I think that is just something that I would throw the line around and I would say that we have to be careful while identifying what sort of justice we expect and we don’t because eventually justice has to be centered around survivors.
Rajvi
Oh my God. So this is exactly what I wanted to ask. I was thinking about why the criminal justice system as it stands, has such pervasive roots and it feels like a very huge monolith to try and even start to overcome. I think it’s because it’s an institution and like the ways in which we’re talking about community, ideas of justice, like India is such a diverse country and with such disparate experiences obviously there is no way to kind of homogenize or standardize like how something like this is dealt with in a more humane, considerate way. So, essentially then people who experience sexual violence or gender-based violence will then have to kind of resign themselves to the communities that they are in and in a patriarchal society with so much conditioning, so rampant within almost every family, like not just men, I feel like what would you do if you are stuck in a place where you don’t have access to this? That’s why the police are an easy person to call, right? Like because it’s just accessible to everybody, at least in the beginning.
Vandita
No, I completely agree. In fact, it’s the case, right? Like both parties are not necessarily going to be supported in most cases, like your friends and family or the police in the institutions. So, you don’t necessarily have a place to go to and I feel like I’ve said this before even in the podcast that in India when you think of community based accountability or thinking of something like a khat panchayat -and those are traditionally being very anti women, they’ve been extremely casteist, they perpetuate tradition and oppressions and they’ve done that over centuries, right. So, before we even think of transformative justice, even when we’re portraying it, say in pop culture, in media, in songs, even in general discussions, I think the precursors for it have to be really built. I think there has to be a lot of focus on building community relationships, understanding what this sort of accountability can be like held in trust. Like if I, as a survivor, would I feel safe and comfortable and like, feel like I would be heard and respected if I took this? To some sort of community resolution and not necessarily something under the carceral system. So, I feel like that is quite missing when it comes to our communities. There are a few lines from this book ‘We will not cancel Us’ by Adrian Marie Brown, where she says that a lot of her teachers have helped her see the limitations of restorative justice and this is something that I’m personally grappling with as well, right? That restorative justice often means restoring conditions that were fundamentally harmful and unequal and unjust. For example, if the racialized system of capitalism has produced such inequality that someone is hungry and steals a purse to resource a meal, returning the purse with an apology or community service does nothing to address that hunger and then she goes on to talk about transformative justice, which addresses harm at the root, outside of the mechanisms of the speech. So, we can grow into a right relationship with each other and directly picking this up from her book, and I find that everything that you shared has been so powerful around that because there are a lot of conflicts and questions when we start exploring other forms of justice as well.
Rajvi
Yeah, absolutely. I remember last year at some point I was talking to Swagatha Raha. She works at Nfold India and we were talking about restorative justice models in India and certain universities around the country where it’s happening. And so, it was really interesting because yes, you know, like you kind of figure out some kind of a resolution centering the victims or survivors need in tandem with their perpetrator to whatever extent they feel comfortable with the exposure to them. But again, my main concern with this model- and it sounded quite good – is scale, right? But you need people who understand how this works. You need people to be able to depend upon, you need resources, you need a community that is understanding. So, I feel like currently all alternatives to the criminal justice system are kind of a work in progress where it’s just difficult to figure out where to move forward from here.
Ruchika
Yeah, but I think this is also where pop culture can play a role, right? We’ve already sort of touched upon this where if we just portray a better society or a society which doesn’t sort of perpetuate rape culture within the scripts or the cinematography, like everything- just basics. And I think it’s really ironic that Bollywood is seemingly so concerned with the idea of gender-based violence with all of the movies it produces around gender-based violence, but it actually isn’t concerned with gender-based violence because it continues to perpetuate stereotypes that actually lead to gender-based violence. It’s like a cycle, you know, they really need to understand their role in perpetuating this gender-based violence and sort of creating a just world.
Rajvi
I was thinking of going to Kabir Singh and the reason or the justification that its makers kind of gave for showing whatever the character with impunity. Okay, this is a very common justification, that oh, we are holding up a mirror to society and I don’t have a very complicated answer to that. I just have a very simple rebuttal, which is like how many movies do you need to make? Like we saw ourselves in the mirror. We’ve been seeing ourselves in the mirror for decades now. Like I don’t need it anymore, show me something different and even forget social issues and forget social responsibility, which I do think are important things to talk about here. Like only think about filmmaking and try doing something different for the sake of the craft, like Wo bhi Chalega (That will also make do), you know? So yeah, I think this mirror to society argument is old and should be completely retired now.
Ruchika
Also I feel like, and this is something I think that activists and folks who sort of advocate for anti-carceral systems of justice often say is that there’s a lack of imagination when it comes to alternative forms of justice where “incapable” of figuring out what that would look like, and it also seems very lazy to just be like, oh, I’m just showing a mirror to society instead of sitting and imagining how society could be, and actually that brings me to the next question. How do you think we can work towards creating pop culture that doesn’t cross into sensationalism or glorification of violence or punitive ideals of justice and sort of explore alternative forms of justice within pop culture? How do you think we can get there?
Rajvi
So, I think one of the first things is to introduce diversity into who gets to tell these stories. There are so many times like people who have no idea or have no experiential knowledge of a topic like for the sake of art or whatever launch themselves into – because they have the platform they have the privilege -they launch themselves into being like telling these stories, which most often than not falls flat and is inaccurate because nahi hai experience (they don’t have the lived experience) like I don’t think that something as complicated as this can be told by somebody who does not have any tangential relation to something like that. It is a horrible thing. But I think that’s the first step to change the people who get to make stuff and that comes with funding that comes with making a better, more welcoming atmosphere for women, trans, non-binary people across caste and class lines who get to, you know, have the resources to do this, and who get to kind of have their work shown to a lot of people. As long as men keep making this, I don’t think it is possible to move the conversation forward.
Vandita
Definitely. Actually, I agree with all of that. I think that it’s also extremely important that a lot of these smaller instances of gender-based violence and gendered biases and stereotypes that come across through popular culture definitely need to be addressed. And I would say popular culture, say from gaming to music, TV shows, all of them- like, I mean, from what I know, 50% of gamers across the world are women, but in India it’s about 20%. So, what does that do for, like, the games that are produced in India, because they’re not produced for a certain market. What about the violence that exists within these games, very small biases that do as well. And I know alternatively there are so many games that have done a beautiful job of being inclusive. The popular culture encompassing all of this has such a massive role in how it shapes minds and how it influences such a large number of people that even pre-gender-based violence, I think it has a massive role to play in just normalizing certain things, taking away from biases and stereotypes. What about you Ruchika, would love to hear your opinions as well?
Ruchika
So, I have a really sort of love-hate relationship with the idea of diversity because I think it only goes so far. I definitely think diversity is important purely because everyone should be able to tell stories they want to tell, everyone should be able to create art they want to create regardless of their gender identity, sexual orientation or caste or class of locations. But I also feel like until and this is that my imagination also sort of stutters- until we are living in a capitalist society where stories are being told to make money and that the bottom line is what is most important, I think that systemically that would need to change. I feel like that’s- I don’t know how that would work. Like how do you create media for no money and how do you fund it, you know, how would that work?
Rajvi
I completely agree with you Ruchika. Like absolutely 100% agree with you. I mean Voh he toh hai na (That is what na) like whatever – deep conversation- like I said, depth you introduce into any subject, I think capitalism pay baat ruk jati hai (the conversation stops at capitalism) you know, because it is literally the way that our society is ordered. And yeah, I mean there’s always this dilemma, do you encourage and figure out alternative ways of introducing different kinds of art into a society? Or do you ask that art to conform to the mainstream because there’s always, you know, like a method of distribution, for example, that is set up in place. And yeah, I mean, I still don’t have an answer for that.
Vandita
I think but also just add that for me, for a really long time this is where my imagination or conversation could stop. I think more and more for me recently this has been a starting point for thinking about things I haven’t thought about before. And for me here is where so much of the influence of people involved in say the movie making business or other like popular culture related businesses come in. I find that a lot of what we consume now and a lot of what we enjoy consuming is not necessarily our first choice or our inherent choice. It’s not an inherent bend towards that sort of art or that sort of content, but it’s something that over time we’ve been conditioned to enjoy and like more. And I feel like the same way we can be conditioned, and I know it’s within capitalism, but till we are within this structure, I find that consumer behavior in that sense can be shifted- there’s just a lot of intent required as well. Alternatively, I find that there’s just so much art being produced that is cloud funded. There are people-led community-based art that just has power that I don’t think any mainstream art does. I know that power doesn’t always equate to money and for the other forms of capital we need to survive but I find that it is coming up and I think a lot of people like us are just pushing the boundary in terms of thinking, so now what next? Like, if this is where our conversation stops, how do we get to survive?
Rajvi
That’s really interesting. So like, when you were talking, I was just thinking of an analogy with how the art world, for example, has progressed. You know, like we’ve always seen these galleries to be like very elitist spaces, right? And so now I feel like the newest art is all coming from social media or from alternative places where you essentially ignore the institution that has a history of exclusion instead of trying to convince the institution to be better, which is definitely something that I guess, with the democratization of information we could try to achieve.
Vandita
No, definitely. Like I feel like- for example, you get a number of hip hop artists that come from communities that have traditionally not been given space in the music industry, right? Like there’s so much of that form of art that has become more accessible. I wouldn’t say it necessarily applies across bord because I know that even access to the Internet can be so difficult, but I think shifts are happening and I find that there is a consumer base that is willing to support it. It’s just that the support is going to start looking different, like it’s going to stop. I hope that it’s going to stop being this one producer or one media house, and it’s going to be like maybe people like us, right? Like a lot of people like us, coming together to be able to support artists, to be able to make art something that is popularly consumed and not something that is – that really just like you said.
Ruchika
Thank you so much, Rajvi, for coming on the podcast today and sharing your thoughts and knowledge with us. We hope that this can be a start and a much longer conversation around portrayals of gender-based violence, justice, pop culture and mainstream media. And hopefully in our lifetimes, we see that shift in this portrayal on our screens.
Rajvi
Thank you everybody for listening. So as Ruchika introduced me in the beginning, I’m the Cultural Editor, The Swaddle. It’s a Bombay based gender, culture and health magazine. You can follow us @theswaddle on Instagram and @theswaddle on Twitter (X) and also tune into our own podcast called Respectfully Disagree that I co-produce. That’s on all streaming platforms. Thank you.
Ruchika
Thank you. We hope to see you, all of you listeners, in our future episodes where we converse with various guests in Search of Justice.
| Caged Bird by Maya Angelou A free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream till the current ends, and dips his wing in the orange sun rays and dares to claim the sky. But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage can seldom see through his bars of rage.His wings are clipped and his feet are tied, so he opens his throat to sing. The caged bird sings with a fearful thrill of things unknown, but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill. For the caged bird sings of freedom. The free bird thinks of another breeze, and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn. And he names the sky his own. But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams. His shadow shouts on a nightmare scream.His wings are clipped and his feet are tied, so he opens his throat to sing. The caged bird sings with a fearful thrill of things unknown, but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill. For the caged bird sings of freedom. |
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About the In Search of Justice Podcast
As we strive to collectively build towards social justice, it becomes imperative to challenge and reorient the very conceptions of justice. Justice, in popular culture and the zeitgeist overall, has been synonymised with carcerality, which presents a very myopic perspective of justice and diminishes the significance of justice as an intrinsic human right. Further, in the case of survivors of abuse, pathways to justice are further limited and often don’t include the survivors themselves in the process. Justice thus, becomes a destination, an outcome, rather than a collaborative, collectively-built journey or process. Through this compilation of the transcripts of the In Search of Justice Podcast, we aim to explore this discourse surrounding justice, particularly in the context of gender-based violence, in bite-sized episodes. Co-hosted by Vandita and Ruchika, these conversations seek to navigate the multiple meanings of justice, especially when it is considered the penultimate goal by questioning carceral systems, introducing alternative justice systems and leading the conversation into how we can build justice systems that are receptive and responsive to the various needs and desires of survivors.