The undeniable abhorrence of all sexual predators was an opinion I once considered to be widely held; I carried no other preconceived notions about social perceptions. I had hoped to identify recurring patterns and characters to better understand the values and standards of acceptable female behavior. This assumption was immediately dismantled in a profoundly disturbing manner, intensifying my interest in the new questions that materialized.
The popularity of Pakistani dramas can be traced back to the 1960s, when this particular form of cinematic storytelling first emerged. The dramas introduced after 2009, however, have ushered unprecedented levels of success and viewership, including Dastaan, Zindagi Gulzar Hai, and Humsafar. The mere year between 2013 and 2014 witnessed a 7.5% increase in the expenditure of entertainment channels as a fraction of the aggregate amount spent on television, from 42% to 49.5%. The same fiscal year showed a burgeoning increase in market size from 13.6% to 25.5% in 2012-13, and 25.5% to 27% in 2013-14 (Aurora Fact File). Networks such as Hum TV, ARY Digital, and GEO TV broadcast content to hundreds of thousands of households within a broad socio-economic bracket. On weekdays, the sound from the small, round television in my grandmother’s kitchen echoes in strange synchronicity with the one in the lounge.
Textual and cinematic representations of social experiences do not exist in a vacuum; instead, they have a very serious bearing on how such issues are thought about, perceived, and acted on. “Like physical actions,” writes Sarah Projansky in Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture, “rape discourses have the capacity to inform, indeed embody and make way for, future actions, even physical ones”. They are not merely metaphors for how people behave, neither are they standalone creative depictions that exist outside the orbit of sexual politics that surround them. They should instead be viewed as “structures of feeling”, as coined by Raymond Williams, for how people behave in certain social contexts. These narratives mold the cultural discourse surrounding rape, shape the structure of the stories about them, and inform subsequent action. An irresponsible, sensationalized, or overly dramatized depiction of rape can be very harmful to cultural attitudes and social perceptions.
The question of sexual violence is a controversial topic, one that is engulfed in an eerie silence. Problematic and misinformed representations have an adverse effect on the discourse surrounding subjects with limited social appraisal to begin with. Cinematic and literary depictions of rape provide spaces where certain collective fantasies are actualized, or allowed to exist. In order to better understand a macrocosmic set of attitudes, one must closely regard the narratives that introduce, implicate, and subsequently inform them.
I learned that Sangat (2015) and Muqabil (2016), the productions addressed in this article, were both written by Zafar Maraj; this served as a compelling starting point. Sangat follows the life of Ayesha, a woman raped during a home invasion, and the birth of her illegitimate child, Sangat. It details the transformation of her marital relationship after her husband realizes that Sangat is not his child by birth; Adnan starts to distance himself from his wife and her child, unable to live with another man’s creation. It also traces the development of Ayesha’s relationship with the rapist, Shahvez, as she allows him to re-enter the child’s life.
Ayesha conceals his identity to make it possible for Shahvez to continue to donate blood to treat Sangat’s thalassemia. Eventually, Adnan cannot stand to be in the same house as Sangat, and Ayesha decides to leave her in the care of Shahvez and his new wife, only to find herself incapable of doing so at the last minute. When Adnan learns that Shahvez was responsible for “staining the honor” of his family, he shoots him several times in a fit of rage, ending his life. Adnan and Ayesha are reunited, and decide to raise Sangat together.
Muqabil is about Parisa, a quiet and reserved victim of child molestation; the story follows her strained relationship with a socialite, careless mother that wants to see her married. Parisa, in an act of apparent defiance, insists that she is in love with the son of her mother’s manager, Armaan, an intelligent and thoughtful man from a social class beneath her family’s own. This decision is an act of twisted vengeance, as it is revealed that Armaan’s father, Mehmood sahib, raped Parisa in the swimming pool of her home twelve years’ ago.
At the climactic moment, Parisa confesses this to a drunken Armaan; when he comes to understand her words, he attempts suicide but survives. When the actions of the family’s patriarch are revealed to Mehmood’s shell-shocked wife and daughter, Parisa returns to her parents’ house and confesses. Her mother confronts Mehmood with a gun to his head, only for him to take it into his own hands and shoot himself. With the help of her mother’s NGO, Parisa holds a press conference where she tells her story to the world, and the drama ends with Parisa and Armaan reuniting to start a new life.
It is imperative to study the treatment of women in popular culture to understand the social realities these visual texts mimic, emulate, or even attempt to critique. There is, for example, a case to be made for Muqabil’s merits. It touches upon important social issues such as child sexual assault and the concept of the perpetuator being a trusted individual from within one’s own home. Well-intentioned but poorly handled productions, however, can result in the opposite of the desired impact. Attempting to critically reflect on, satirize, or hold up a mirror to society in a wildly misleading way can instead convey the idea that the rapist is not to blame. These shows seem to gesture unironically to how women should conduct themselves in both the private and public sphere, assigning blame to everyone but the rapist.
A disturbing pattern then emerges: the rapist is presented in a forgiving, even deeply sympathetic light, as he is painted as a victim rather than as the perpetrator. Ayesha and Parisa’s interiorities and their experiences of trauma and rehabilitation remain one-dimensional as the dramas flesh out their husbands and rapists. Shahvez is presented as a likeable, sensitive man who, tormented by his “mistake”, attempts suicide and is eventually killed by Ayesha’s husband in a fit of jealous rage. Muqabil’s child molester is unable to cope with nerve-wracking guilt that no number of rosaries or prayer can relieve him of, and arrives at the ultimate act of redemption through the solitary act of suicide.
A narrative that sympathizes with the rapist is not limited to the Pakistani small screen; a report on the representations of violence against women published by ANROWS (Australia’s National Research Organization for Women’s Safety) confirms that depictions of the perpetrator often “indirectly provide[s] excuses for [their] actions and diminish[es] their responsibility for the crime”. Violent behavior is often described as “out of character”, or the “story’s context [is] juxtaposed by references to perpetrators’ positive personality traits, including that he was “friendly”, “a hard worker”, or a “good guy”.” This is witnessed to a troubling extent in Sangat and Muqabil; rather than being seen as something undeniably wrong, rape occupies a gray area shrouded in moral ambiguity.
Presenting the rapist in this way and encouraging women to remain silent on such widely-watched platforms affects how rape victims speak out. This robs women of their right to grieve, act out, and deal with their trauma on their own terms. Two types of women are typically made manifest: the weak, pathetic, damsel-in-distress, powerless before the raging bestiality of the masculine, and the selfish, inhumane working woman. Parisa’s mother in Muqabil is villianized far more than the rapist as a self-made, proud woman with no time for her child, whose parental neglect led directly to her daughter’s situation. Parisa goes so far as to blame her mother for her undoing when she cries through her tears “meray barbaadi ke zimedaar sirf voh nahin the” (he isn’t the only one responsible for my destruction).
One would expect Ayesha’s mother, a university professor, to sympathize with and stand by her daughter through this time. Instead, her mother tells her to forget that it ever happened (“Usay ek haadsa samajh ke bhool jao” (this is an unfortunate accident that you should just forget about)), urging her to think of how her husband would reject her if he were ever to find out that she had been with another man, as though she had a choice in the matter. Rather than focusing on rehabilitating her daughter, Ayesha’s mother is repeatedly in the presence of her colleague’s son Shahvez, whom you may remember as the show’s antagonist.
Udaari (2016) demonstrates a sensitive and effective narrative about sexual violence. Imtiaz (the rapist) is portrayed as a dangerous and manipulative man that is able to maintain a façade of goodness and decency, and is written along with a very common pattern of abusers. What separates his characterization from Shahvez and Mehmood’s is how clear it is that he is the show’s antagonist. Unlike the grey, morally ambiguous characters in Sangat and Muqabil that demand the viewer’s sympathy, Imtiaz’s veneer is clearly transparent. Shame plays an important role in narratives surrounding rape, and Udaari leaves no room for misinterpretation when it comes to who is in the wrong and who is not.
The mantra, “mein victim nahin, survivor hun” (I am not a victim, I am a survivor), repeated by Arsh (Zebo’s lawyer) and Zebo (the child victim of rape) has several implications: the body, no longer seen as an irrevocably damaged site of sin, now has the potential for survival. The voice of the victim is no longer subdued, but is instead used as a powerful tool to participate actively in the healing process.
Zebo’s trauma is met with initial uncertainty from Sajjo (her mother, and Imtiaz’s wife), but the purpose of this is not to demonize her. Sajjo’s blind eye to Zebo’s signs of distress is understandable; as a widower, she is painfully aware of her place in society. If her marriage with Imtiaz fails, she will fall more deeply into a pit of troubles she had already been experiencing. Confronted with a grim set of socio-economic realities, she perhaps does not want to believe that her second husband would hurt her daughter. The moment it is made clear to her, she attacks and leaves Imtiaz for dead, finding asylum in the Kashf Foundation.
As mentioned earlier, encouraging women to keep silent about their experiences by making them fearful of social ostracization, and by portraying their aggressors with a moral vagueness, can cause them even further harm. Udaari shows viewers that it is possible for women to find justice, highlighting key aspects of court proceedings and NGO aid.
A Facebook page for popular Pakistani dramas posted a message sent anonymously by one of the show’s viewers about coming to terms with molestation at the hands of a relative. “Yesterday I was watching Udaari,” she writes, “and the way Ash explained Zebo everything really motivated me a lot today. I went to that guy and made him realize what he has done. Thank you Udaari for giving me the courage and to bring me out of this shame”. Real, tangible change is seen when such narratives are broadcasted to a large number of viewers in a setting where we have very little understanding of sexual abuse.
There is a disproportionate representation of rapists in the media as mentally ill or as driven by factors beyond their control, and in textual and cinematic depictions of the act itself. Psychoanalytic theories often overemphasize them to be motivated by mental illness; to the same effect, these dramas present men as riddled with guilt, granting them the sweet release of death in a way that allows them to redeem their actions. By blaming people other than the rapist and focusing on ‘what makes them good’, the wider cause and meaning of rape is ignored. Violence in general and rape, in particular, can have both internal and external sources.
Rape should not be understood as the psychotic, isolated behavior of some men, but should instead be placed within a nexus of social and political considerations. Depicting men as natural predators with overdeveloped, uncontrolled sexual instincts takes away from the power considerations invested in the act of rape. It is important, thus, to represent this act with an understanding of the implications surrounding it, and of the subsequent effect on its collective and societal understanding.
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