#Metoo in Our Film Industries

Introducing the Anveshi conference on 

#Metoo in Our Film Industries

29th and 30th March 2019

On behalf of Anveshi Research Centre for Women's Studies, Tejaswini Madabhushi and I welcome you all to two day conference on #Metoo Moment in Our Film Industries. Even as I stand here welcoming you, after four months of planning and organizing, I cannot believe that this is actually happening. For one, we already seem to be in the midst of the post Metoo moment. Not in the sense of overcoming the plethora of issues thrown up but, in being forced to deal with its adverse ramifications for the women who had named and shamed the male mentors, teachers and other powerful men. While the social media enabled the visceral anger of women to turn the patriarchal weapon of shame towards men the changing of working conditions seems to be a long drawn process whether it is corporate offices, entertainment industry, media, film industry or universities and colleges - all the spaces that the young aspirational generation wants to enter, inhabit or occupy in contemporary India. It is still very much a work-in- progress!

But, I am getting ahead of myself. Let me pull back to give you the story of how and why Anveshi is organizing this conference, though it is obvious in the broad sense to everyone gathered here - a feminist research group seeking to understand a significant historic moment of women’s collective anger against male privilege. The first of these is the effort to understand and deal with the institutional culture of sexism and harassment for half a decade. Second is the specific involvement in the local movement against sexual privileges in the Telugu film industry. Third is the political possibilities that the women’s challenges within our film industries offer for understanding the broader Metoo movement. 

1.     Engagement with sexuality and harassment in public spaces 

Anveshi’s engagement in a way it began after the Delhi gang rape in 2012 when many of us were galvanized into action and thinking about women's place in public spaces in urban India. The issue that the first Hyderabad midnight march organized by Tejaswini and Natha raised, in which many women’s groups including Anveshi participated wholeheartedly, was the safety for women did not lie in getting locked up but occupying public spaces. The protests at this moment sought to delink women’s sexuality from safety in public spaces, highlighting public policy and culture as the problematic arenas/ issues. 

In January 2013 when the UGC special task force on sexual harassment and gender equality in universities asked Anveshi to coordinate Open Forums in four universities in Hyderabad, the wide ranging discussions with students, faculty and the non-teaching staff in Osmania University, EFL university, University of Hyderabad and Maulana Azad Urdu National University gave us a vivid picture of the problem. In general, University spaces, despite the increasing and large scale presence of women were not equipped or prepared to handle the gender dynamics and the problems therein. As such sexual harassment faced by women students was difficult to raise and each instance quickly got mired in severe politicking as many groups and associations sought to protect the men involved. While the CASH committees worked well in relation to harassment by male students, they could not do much when teaching or non-teaching staff were involved. Administration did not want to take action against senior staff. There was a general atmosphere of anger and frustration with the functioning of the committees even when they were known as the best, as they were widely perceived as not doing justice.  

During 2015- 2016, when we were asked to write a textbook on gender sensitization by a team of bureaucrats that investigated women’s safety in the newly formed state of Telangana, in order to address, contain and combatamong other issues, the growing instances of harassment of young women on and off the street. One of the textual materials that we used in this book was the films and film songs that glorified sexism and sexual harassment. In the teacher training programmes that films always sparked a lot of discussion, including confusion about how entertainment could be related to education, society and culture. Isn’t it fun some asked.  But women also want to be ‘teased’ some claimed.

Next came the Raya Sarkar list in 2017 that evoked mixed feelings

and reactions amongst us, some appreciating it as the guerilla tactic in the face of large scale non-functioning of the institutional mechanisms while some wondered if this could at all be called feminist politics. Metoo still had not arrived in India, but many of us could see that the LOSHA marked a new moment in the battle against sexual harassment. The shame that always accrued to the women was being shifted to the men, naming and challenging it as the privilege that men as men enjoy. While shifting the gaze to actions of men, many instances in the List also alerted us to recognize that these women as beings with sexual agency who did not conform to the image of the asexual victims of the earlier era. 

2.  Metoo in the Telugu Film Industry 

In April 2018 we found ourselves in the midst of an unprecedented protest in the Telugu film industry, with actor Srireddy's protest by disrobing in front of the Film Chamber of Commerce on 6th April 2018, that exploded in the public and consumed us for the next several months. For a month before her protest, Reddy spoke of lack ofopportunities for Telugu actresses in the film industry, the conditions of‘quid pro quo’, the culture of (sexual) ‘commitment’ that was demanded from aspiring actresses and her difficulties in getting a membership in the MAA.  Following her protest, the Movie Artists Association,instead of standing by her, banned her on the ground of obscenity which led to widespread public support to her and the issue. But what turned it into one of the most debated issues is the support from the invisible sector of the film industry – the female dialogue artists. They raised disturbing questions about the exploitative culture and politics of the film industry. Within a week, this insurrection sparked off a huge public discussion about the sexual exploitation in the Telugu film industry – probably the first time in the history of Indian film industry. Support by women’s groups and some Telugu news channels also proved crucial in turning Sri Reddy’s desperate and isolated protest into a media event, one that could no longer be ignored.

The dialogue and character artists began to own up Reddy as symbolising their struggle for survival and dignity. At great risk to their livelihoods, these women not only called upon women’s groups to support them but also went ahead to speak about the sexual and economic exploitation that they have suffered. They laid  out their lives in the open, inviting viewers to stand in their place and see the industry from their perspective.

In a round table meeting convened by women’s groups on April 15, cis-women and transgender women artists cried and broke down, speaking about how they had to continuously service the sexual greed of directors, and producers in the TFI. They also described in detail the economic exploitation that they were subjected to. The pervasive system of brokers/managers/coordinators not only insists on sexual favours but also take a major cut in their earnings.

A “commitment contract” seems to be the most common contract in the TFI which fixes wages, days of work and sexual favours. In recent years, in spite of committing to sexual favours, these artists stopped getting adequate work as the brokers insisted on light skinned and thin women for every role, including mother and aunt’s roles. Even as they compromised their dignity, many said they were not getting a chance to be an artist.The artists argued that long-term measures are needed to address their issues, rather than criminal complaints. What they have demanded are a minimum of ten days of work in a month, toilets and changing rooms in shooting locations, regulation of brokers/contractors and an end to sexual exploitation.

Women's organizations Joint Action Committee with more than 30 organizations, of which Anveshi too is a member stood with them firmly, explaining and defending their protests in the public sphere. The JAC petitioned the then Cinematography minister Srinivas Yadav for setting up High Level Committee to do a comprehensive investigation of the conditions of women in the film industry. When the government did not respond despite several promises and meetings, JAC went to the Telangana Film Development Corporation, then to the State Women's Commission and lastly, it filed a Public Interest Litigation to instruct the government to set up the High Level Committee, on the lines of the UGC Task Force. A few Telugu film industry women started Voices of Women to work on some of the issues and we will have their representative speak tomorrow on our public panel. But the numerous issues raised by the dialogue artists remain mostly unaddressed by any of the official bodies of the film industry. 

3. What we hope to achieve through this conference 

We debated whether we should have a conference on Metoo in general but decided against it. Confining it to film industries we realized allows us to explore the issue in its broadest possible terms and as a method will also teach us to understand how male privilege works in other fields too.  More importantly, what we are pulling together into this description seem to be connected to the global and national Metoo movement politically and structurally, but not organically or temporally. The local but powerful protests, that can be called little insurrections, whether it is Women in Cinema Collective or Srireddy and dialogue artists in Telugu, have preceded the Metoo movement in India.  Describing them as Metoo in a sense is the task of feminist politics. What is achieved through this description? The characterization of these disconnected protests against sexual harassment and male privilege enable us to establish the structural connections among not only the protests in varying domains but also the historically specific agency that the women are claiming through it. The dialogue artists, for instance, claimed sexual agency, although inconsistently and fretfully. They pointed out that they did not fit into the societal stereotype of a virtuous asexual woman but argued that this did not entitle men in the industry to exploit them or violate them.  However fleetingly, this is what connects this fully local movement to the national Metoo movement that unfolded slightly later. The women protestors who named their harassers sought to claim their bodies, their sexuality, their right to take risks, also refusing to conform to the notion of pure and innocent victim prayed upon by evil predators. They are unapologetic about their sexuality and refuse to occupy the innocent victim position. This is one of the things that marks them from earlier instances of protesting and naming sexual harassment. 

Film industry in that sense is the perfect test case for women whose performative sexuality is a talent that is explicitly used while the women themselves are demanding dignity, rights and respect and rights not to be exploited. They are refusing the handed down script of virtuous woman vs bad woman. And this is a conundrum that is being faced by young women claiming sexual selves in every space - all of which encourage a certain performance of sexuality while seeking to wrest control over their bodies and sexuality, away from women. The challenge that the Metoo movement is throwing up is also this - women want to take risks but do not want to be preyed upon by powers that be. 

In a sense, this conference wants to wrestle with this conundrum. It mostly takes off from where our Telugu industry movement stopped. It had raised the issues of quid pro quo situation for women; film industry as a workplace; the surveillance of women and the exploitation of newcomers; the male dominance in the crafts unions, the all pervasive male hero and the meagre roles for heroines, the obsession with light skin. But these discussions also made us wonder if this were the permanent reality of the industry. Were women never powerful in the industry? Since when did this virtuous heroine who retires after marriage take over? What role has the industry and the fan clubs played in restricting the on and off screen roles for women? 

More importantly, we want this conference to be a connecting platform for women working within different industries and on filmic representations too. Conversations need to occur across between women (and men too) in order to change the prevailing situation for better. Two decades after Bhanwari Devi’s struggle and Visakha guidelines, we are seeing sexual harassment at workplace finally becoming socially/culturally delegitimized. Is this #Metoo moment the beginning of the butterfly politics that Catherine Mackinnon seems to suggest, where, rather than legal action against sexual harassment, social attitudes themselves become recalibrated to shun such behaviour? We really hope this is so and this conference will also contribute to the ongoing conversations and discussions!

Dr.A.Suneetha 

Tejaswini Madabhushi