How ‘Assi’ challenges the way cinema portrays rape |
Rape in cinema has certain specific functions. One of these is to arouse the male in the audience sexually. Another is to use, to a certain extent, the opportunity of explicit representations of the female anatomy in a physically violent act and forced on that very body. The fragmentation and fabrication of the female body, the play of skin and make-up, nudity and dress, the constant recombination of organs as equivalent terms of a combinatory are but the repetition, inside the erotic scene, of the operations and techniques of the apparatus.
Assi is different. It has a deceptively straightforward storyline where an ordinary schoolteacher Parima (Kani Kusruti) is gang-raped on her way home following a farewell party which ended late. My casual use of the word “straightforward” suggests that I, a woman and a journalist, have not only internalized rape but have also ‘normalised’ it in my mindset. Parima is married to Vinay, a Hariyanvi (Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub) who works in a shopping mall. They have a small son Dhruv (Adwik Jaiswal). Vinay’s parents have disowned Vinay as Parima is a Malayali.
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The rape is shown mainly through passive shots taken from the front seat of the car with the young driver constantly requesting the four involved to ‘let go’ but they don’t and he too, later, joins the party. This is no simple abduction and gang-rape. It is used as a test of the ‘staying power’ and sexual strength of the young men who keep count of how many times they can have a ‘go’ at it while someone captures the act on his mobile. The woman struggles as much as she can but is too hurt to protest and is thrown unconscious and half-naked alongside the railway tracks till a young man takes her to a hospital.
Sinha takes care not to capitalize on the actual rape except through sounds and suggestively captured hazy visuals which focuses on the deep pain in the victim and the brutality of the rapists almost solely through sound effects. In the FIR, the five rapists are reduced to four, the medical examination reveals little and........