Shraddha Kapoor and Rajkumar Rao’s film ‘Stree 2’ has made a great bang in the theatres. In more than half of the months of this year, the theatres have not seen the kind of crowd that many films had gathered last year.
Last year, such a huge crowd of audience was seen in theatres for action films like ‘Pathan’, ‘Jawan’, ‘Animal’ and ‘Gadar 2’. This year, without A-list Bollywood stars, a horror-comedy film, ‘Stree 2’, attracting such a huge crowd is a big surprise even for the experts who understand the intricacies of the film business.
Talking about crowds, these days crowds are the most common thing in most of the pictures seen from TV to social media. Recently, a huge crowd was seen at the railway station in Badlapur, Maharashtra, demanding justice for the rape cases of girls. A similar crowd was seen on the streets of Kolkata demanding justice for the heinous rape of a female doctor.
In the pictures related to these cases, there is a crowd which is agitating for the respect and justice of women. On the other hand, there is a crowd which is so happy to see a horror comedy film in the theatres that the bank accounts of the makers of the film are going to be rich. But this film, ‘Stree 2’, also has a very important message related to the condition of women in our society.
Did you notice this message while being a part of the crowd gathered to watch the film in theatres? This message targets the mindset that often weaves the patriarchal thinking that is at the root of heinous crimes like rape. Not only men but women are also victims of this thinking.
Every time, whenever debates start to x-ray the incidents of rape, someone or the other who nurtures this thinking is easily found in the middle. When a film like ‘Stree 2’ is released, people return from the theatres after immersing themselves in the thrill of horror and comedy. But the message of the film is left behind. Did you pay attention to the message of ‘Stree 2’?
Layers of messages in the story of ‘Stree 2’
In the 2018 film ‘Stree’ starring Shraddha Kapoor and Rajkumar Rao, there was also a hidden message in the plot of the story. In the story, there was a witch who used to kidnap men who went out at night. She was a beautiful prostitute before she died. But when that prostitute fell in love, she became a criminal for the men who used to go to her to fulfill their unfulfilled desires and she was killed.
In anger of incomplete love, the soul of this prostitute became a witch and started tormenting the men who had wronged her. When Rajkumar Rao’s character ‘Bikki’ treated her with love, she calmed down. But here there was a twist in the story, which took the story of the second part forward. This twist was – the braid of the ‘woman’. Cutting the braid of the ‘ghost’ and making her powerless, was such an image which was a big satire on the society. How? To understand this, remember the news.
You will find different news from across the country where when a woman’s love affair was caught, first of all her hair was cut and she was humiliated in the whole village. She was subjected to violence, ill-treatment and in many places men crossed all limits of cruelty with her. The story of ‘Stree 2’ starts from here. This time the topic of the story is ‘the terror of the sarkate’.
The moving ghost of ‘Stree 2’ and the ego of men
Ghost stories are found all over the country and these include stories of Sarkata ghosts. In Konkani folk tales, the character of Sarkata ghost is named ‘Man Kapya’. In this, ‘Man’ means head and ‘Kapya’ means chopped off. Here the real game is hidden in ‘Man’ because head is not only a part of the human body, it is also a symbol of pride and ego. And symbolically, ‘Sarakta’ is a ghost whose honour has been violated.
You must be aware that the state of insult is called ‘head bowing’ in the proverb. And it is not just a coincidence that the goblins found in Bengali and Marathi folk tales are often deeply hurt by their insults.
The Sarkata ghost of ‘Stree 2’ is also like this. In the story of the film, it is the ghost of Chanderi’s king Chandrabhan, who believed that women are made only to serve men. Chandrabhan and the other men with him could not tolerate that a beautiful prostitute loves and marries him of her own free will. Chandrabhan felt insulted by this, his ego was hurt and he killed the prostitute. And when this prostitute became a ‘Stree’ ghost after her death, the first person she killed was Chandrabhan.
What does Sarkata want?
Chandrabhan, who felt insulted by the prostitute, became the ghost ‘Sarkata’. As long as ‘Stree’ was in Chanderi, she used to protect women by keeping the men under control. But at the end of the first film, ‘Stree’ was chased out of Chanderi, which opened the way for Sarkate to come. And this Sarkate preys on those women who are ‘modern’ according to him. On seeing such women, his ego starts getting hurt and he kidnaps them. This Sarkate, who comes out of the netherworld, makes these women bald and keeps them in his captivity.
His first victim is the girl who is out of the house at night, smoking cigarettes in a T-shirt and shorts. You later come to know that all the girls whom Sarkata took along were a little more modern as per the environment of Chanderi. Some were working outside, some wore ‘short’ clothes, some had become a social media influencer by wearing glamorous clothes, some had many friends with boys, etc.
There is a sequence in the film when men under the influence of Sarkate literally have a veil over their eyes and start behaving like Sarkate. Mobile phones are taken away from girls, their studies are stopped, they are confined to their homes. Married women have to cover themselves completely and serving men becomes their religion. This is the real terror of Sarkate. In the climax of ‘Stree 2’, the same braid that was cut off in the first film plays a big role in killing Sarkate (aka Chandrabhan’s ghost). Here, ‘Stree 2’ surpasses the first film released in 2018 in giving a message.
‘Curious’ patriarchy and rape culture
Now let us return to the debates on women’s safety. In such debates, you will always hear a side which thinks that the biggest lapse in women’s safety is their living according to their own will. And this is not surprising because there are still many men in our own families who think that their women becoming ‘modern’ is an insult to their masculinity, their culture and society.
There is enough evidence that this thinking is the reason behind many crimes against women. The statements of the criminals in the famous Nirbhaya rape case of Delhi were mind-boggling in this matter.
In the BBC documentary ‘India’s Daughter’, Nirbhaya’s rapist Mukesh had said, ‘You cannot clap with one hand. No decent girl will roam outside the house at 9 o’clock in the night. In that case, a girl is more responsible for rape than a boy. Boys and girls cannot be equal. Housework and staying at home is the work of girls. How can they go to bars and discos at night? They wear obscene clothes and do wrong things. Only 20 percent of girls are good.’
There is so much similarity between the thinking of the ghost Sarkate in ‘Stree 2’ and the statement of Mukesh! Sexual violence of rape may appear sexual, but its nature is very political; the perpetrator of such incidents wants to break the self-respect of the woman through sexual attack. He wants to destroy her dignity and make her feel crushed. And it starts with the same thinking that is found in Mukesh, the culprit of the Nirbhaya case, and Sarkate, the villain of ‘Stree 2’.
This thinking itself creates ‘rape culture’, i.e. a social system in which the girl is blamed for rape and sexual crime. She is shamed and objectified for her clothes and ‘open’ behaviour. This is the result of which in a survey report by Thomson Reuters in 2018, India was declared ‘the most dangerous country in the world for women’.
In this survey, 550 experts chose the world’s most dangerous countries in terms of women’s safety on 6 different parameters. In which India was voted ‘most dangerous’ in ‘cultural traditions’, ‘sexual violence’ and ‘human trafficking’. However, the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare of the Government of India had questioned the credibility of this survey and there were many debates about its results.
But does the ground reality of our society regarding women’s safety look very different from this? Probably not! It is a matter of shame that our society, which takes immense pride in its culture, is still a victim of a dangerous patriarchal thinking that promotes ‘rape culture’ to such an extent.
The slide is all around us
There is certainly a lot to be proud of in our country’s culture. But the state of women’s safety in today’s times cannot be counted among them. The news coming in the newspaper every morning from Kolkata’s medical college, the girls’ school in Badlapur or any village says the same thing.
There is no need to read news to understand how much the thinking that encourages such crime dominates people’s minds. Pick up your mobile and read the comments on social media on the picture of any actress-model or a common girl living in the city, it will seem that Sarkata of ‘Stree 2’ is not a fictional character of any film, but a man around us. Who, on seeing a girl even in normal clothes of today’s time, declares her as ‘a destroyer of culture’ and questions her character.
‘Stree 2’ is a popular Bollywood film that offers value for money entertainment for two and a half hours in theatres. This film also has some shortcomings in terms of treating women on screen, which can be easily noticed. But the way the release of this film coincides with the anger of the people about women’s safety across the country, the message of the film becomes very important.
Its value increases even more because this film, which is attracting huge crowds, is being watched by the public and is going to watch it more. In such a situation, when ‘Stree 2’ ends with the killing of the Sarkate ghost, then this question must arise that the Sarkate is gone in the film, but is it still alive in us?