Things that women were doing right before they got raped: taking a math test (Bring Back Our Girls), going home after watching The Life of Pi, etc. Things that men were doing before raping girls or women: looking for women to rape. In the latter case, they were drinking and driving around a private bus hoping to ensnare someone. Who is at fault? Unsurprisingly, according to the rapists and their defense attorney, it is the woman because she was behaving inappropriately. Blink. No, really. She was out at night with a guy. Also she shouldn’t have fought back.
India’s Daughter: The Story of Jyoti Singh is a sixty-three minute documentary, which is otherwise unremarkable except for the incident that it chronicles; yet it was banned in India. Why? Because the defense’s excuses violated the Indian Penal Code by making statements that are conducive to public mischief, intend to breach the peace and cause alarm in the public and insult a woman’s modesty. The Indian Government prevented the airing of this documentary to protect their women, y’all. Don’t you feel protected, women of India? Oh hey, look at the cops in India beating peaceful women protestors on the street demanding equal rights! Who is really getting protected?
I heard of Singh’s excruciating final days, and I live in the US where we rarely hear international news without searching for it, but I honestly didn’t even realize that it was worse than I expected. (Rape really is an understatement in this case. She had no intestines by the end of the night.) India’s Daughter: The Story of Jyoti Singh tells the story in a fairly straightforward fashion. It interviews her relatives, the medical personnel that treated her, the cops in charge of the investigation, the legal community’s response and the outrage of the general public, including talking heads providing context regarding the scope of the public’s response in comparison to the past. It was unprecedented and historic.
India’s Daughter: The Story of Jyoti Singh distinguishes itself by spending a considerable amount of focus on each of the rapists, specifically by interviewing Mukesh Singh, the driver of the rape bus, who naturally claimed that he only drove the bus, but didn’t participate in the gang rape. Sure, dude. Totally. (Real talk: if he is telling the truth, that would mean that it is such a part of your private rape bus routine to rape women that you would occasionally pass up on taking a turn because you were not in the mood this time or that it would be unprofessional as a driver to get involved since you were on duty. How many times did rapes happen on your rape bus, and it was not reported? School bus drivers are less tolerant of lesser offenses.) Singh provides a profile of his fellow rapists, which include his brother, coworkers and other friends or associates. The documentary never demonizes them though Singh occasionally tut-tuts them for their use of steroids. The film actually spends a few moments to empathize for their families, who are now even more impoverished from the loss of their husbands and sons, the women in their family just as vulnerable as Singh without these rapists’ dubious protection.
Lest you are ready to dismiss rape as a problem of the impoverished and uneducated population, their lawyer shows that education does not inoculate you from misogyny. He says (pardon me if I’m misattributing this quote to the wrong person and please correct me), “We have the best culture. In our culture, we have no place for a woman.” He clearly did not recognize that his comment was less a defense than an admission of everything that contributed to that horrible Delhi night on December 16, 2012. It was brilliant to let these men hang themselves by their own admissions. Rape is only the extreme culmination of negative attitudes to women and girls and these men’s harsh judgment of how women’s lives should look while stubbornly not reflecting on their own misdeeds. India’s Daughter: The Story of Jyoti Singh starts by comparing and contrasting Singh’s parents, especially her father, as a traditional family governed by modern thinking with the shock and disgust of her uncles when Singh’s parents financially encourage her pursuit of higher education.
If you think that India’s Daughter: The Story of Jyoti Singh is being too generous in its treatment of the convicted criminals, it can afford such largess to pursue its higher goal-a condemnation of society that can create such violent sentiment against women among men of all classes. These men simply acted out what most men simply believed. Even the lawyer proudly claims that he would burn his daughter alive if he found out that she went out at night with a boy. These guys weren’t monsters or aberrations. They were a symptom of a larger, harmful system, which sadly is a universal problem. We can’t only take misogyny seriously when it takes the form of rape, but must also trample it when it takes the form of fewer opportunities or discrimination. Unfortunately the movie loses some momentum when it begins to examine the problem in an academic fashion.
Other than the loss of a promising life and the violence that Singh endured, another tragedy of that night is many were left behind to struggle with undeserved feelings of guilt. Singh’s mother has a nagging feeling that God was punishing them for eagerly counting down when they could stop worrying and she would no longer be a student. I just wanted to run to her and say, “Nooooooooo.” It is unimaginable to me that Singh could survive long enough to report her attackers to the police and say goodbye to her loved ones. India’s Daughter: The Story of Jyoti Singh successfully conveyed Singh as a human being, not defined by a single horrible moment.
India’s Daughter: The Story of Jyoti Singh is criticized for unfairly criticizing India when other countries have worse sexual violence statistics. I saw a documentary about a parking lot and liked it. You can make a documentary about anything, and a famous rape that made international headlines counts. If people want to discriminate against India, sure rape may come up as one of the top ten comments, but it won’t be the only one. People are dumpster fires and can find any reason rooted in fact or not to discriminate so if people generalize incorrectly or not based on an actual incident, it will sadly be an improvement in the discrimination game. Alaska is allegedly the rape state of the US. People still go there for work and to check out the natural sights. I definitely want to go on a cruise to Alaska. Your tourist dollars will be just fine. If you don’t want to be known for rape, don’t have famous rapes. The improper response is, “Other countries are bad too.” Duh. The demon of misogyny and rape knows no borders, but rape buses are kind of memorable so next time, when being misogynistic, don’t try to be so original. There is plenty room for criticizing this documentary, but making a country look bad is not one of them.
India’s Daughter: The Story of Jyoti Singh is notable in its choice of subject, but the actual execution is fairly mediocre; however considering it is Leslee Udwin’s directing debut, I suppose that could be expected and forgiven. There are other movies about this subject, but I don’t think that they are available to be viewed in the US: Anatomy of Violence and Daughters of Mother India, both of which women of Indian descent with more experience in film and their culture directed, Nirbhoya and Indian Never Again Nirbhaya, which sound like dramas. A major question is why aren’t all these movies as easy for viewers to watch as the one by the newbie….well, except in India?