Simmba Vs. Broadchurch: What Bollywood Missed About Rape
Content Warning: Discussion About Rape
Simmba released in Dec, 2018. It made a subtle point about rape. See if you can spot it.
That position has enough takers for it to earn 200+ crores. An year later, a rape case in Hyderabad also ended in an ‘encounter’. There was a widespread sense that it was fake. Yet it was lauded by MPs and MLAs, you know, the lawmakers. One may argue against it, but I think it serves as a good model of where we are, as far as the conversation on rape is concerned. And what we are missing.
Support System For Survivors
Like the movie, we’re mostly focused what to do with culprits. We want the cops to be avengers here. And just like the movie, we’ve totally missed the part where the state machinery could be part of the healing process. We absolutely have no model there. Most of us have no idea what it even entails.
Allow me to introduce you to the wonderful series ‘Broadchurch’. Set in a fictional town of Broadchurch, the series explores how a community as a whole reacts to a crime. In its third season, it deals with the topic of rape. Here too, people are shocked and angry, but just check how they deal with it and see if you notice any difference.
When they get a report, they attend to it immediately. They explain to her what’s going to happen next, the reason for it, reassure her, and most importantly, take her consent every step of the way. That’s just the reporting phase. Here I’m posting a few screenshots. There are a few important dialogues I had to skip for clarity.
After that, there’s collection of evidence. Check how it is done. Note —
1. I’m going to be with you all the time you’re here.
2. If you’re not comfortable, we’ll stop.
Not included in the above screenshots was when they explain the tests and comfort at the same time. Ellie Miller tells Trish that they’re gonna take swabs, the reason they do it first is she can have tea. Once the basic evidence is collected, does the support stop there? Nope.
Here come the sexual violence advisors who help you cope up the investigations. At one point, they take the survivor to the crime scene to see if she remembers any more details. She asks if the advisor can hold her hand and they go through it together.
But wait there’s more, press releases. Ever wonder how the press releases can be mindful about survivors? Before this, it hadn’t even occurred to me. Appreciate how stories can transport your mind to places it didn’t know existed.
You may say — Hey! Cut some slack. Simmba is a commercial movie. It’s not a documentary. I’d say, “Point! Although isn’t it amazing that Simmba’s closer to being a reality than any court appointed panel’s recommendation?”
Still, it’s a valid question. How deep can we expect commercial movies to cover a serious topic?
Can Commercial Movies Cover A Serious Topic?
To be fair, Director Rohit Shetty said in a Film Companion interview that he needn’t make a movie on rape to be commercial. He has made more than enough blockbusters. He made the movie because he genuinely resonated with the movie’s message.
Also, to be fair, Broadchurch was a series. It had twice or thrice the time to flesh out its characters. To ask a movie to cover the topic as multi-dimensional as rape, is like asking a WhatsApp forward to be as rigorous as an academic journal. It can happen but it’s smarter to not count on it.
So, does it mean Simmba did the best it could? If it’s goal was to earn money, yes, it did. If its goal was to get people to behave better with women, then its tricky. While it may state people have to respect women, it has a section where hero, an inspector, coerces a stalker to scare heroine so he could gain entry into the heroine’s house and that is played for laughs.
So, that’s where we are at right now. Movies may not be an accurate representation of reality but they have the magical ability to transport you to a place you’ve never been before, just to show it’s possible. You’ve just lived it.
I know we currently aren’t the most supportive folks when it comes to the rape survivors, but we’ll get there. Now that I’ve seen what it looks like, I believe it’s possible.