Posted:
Hello everyone.
I've recently got into this show, and the first thing I do now is read yesterday's update and watch the episode. Today morning, the Live Update (thanks Shamrouz for that) made me hesitate. I wasn't sure whether to actually watch the episode or not. I'm not a fan of molestation scenes, and I finally decided to watch the episode more or less because I thought that I would switch it off if it got too disturbing, and let me see it at first before forming an opinion on it. After watching the episodes, a few things kept playing in my mind, which resulted in this, my first proper post on this forum.
1. I'm so glad that there are so many people on this forum who have pointed out that a) molestation scenes are unnecessary b) they are the worst possible way to redeem your hero and c) such scenes do not send a good message out to the community per se. Kudos to all of you. This sort of awareness, this sort of criticism is what is going to change our films and TV shows for the better.
2. Having said that, what I felt was very different about this scene was that it was not meant to titillate. I am not sure about molestation scenes in tv, but in a lot of films, especially in the 90s, the rape scenes were meant to excite the audience. Thus, if you look at the camera angles, it was always about sex rather than power, focusing on the woman's body as it was gradually exposed. The disrobing was always long drawn out, and the camera often focussed on specific body parts of the woman. In yesterday's episode, the scene was about power, this one man who wants to overpower this particular woman to teach her a lesson and is inciting the other guy to do the same, and how the girl is fighting back with all her strength and ingenuity. In that, I would really like to credit the director, DOP and creative team for the way in which they did not lose focus of what the scene was actually about.
3. Mehak does not actually break down until Shaurya comes and stops them. It is when he wraps the dupatta around her that she actually shows her fear and how panicked she has been. I think that scene was actually better than the post-stabbing scenes.
4. Finally, while I agree that they did not need a molestation scene to redeem Shaurya, I do think that her near-death situation is different. I think the first time that Shaurya lost Mehak was when she left him, and that was a big shock to his system, and something more than that. That is why he badgered her, meeting her everyday under some pretext or the other, trying to get reactions out of her through the MOU papers, following her interviews and moves and so on. He would have been content with her running the food truck and romancing her regularly, but when Kanta Chachi started the marriage process he could not take it. Even with all that, even when he comes to Mathura only to talk to Mehak on her own without being interrupted by anyone else from the family, his one stated goal is to stop her marriage. But losing her to death is another sort of losing altogether, and the sort of losing that he in his arrogance has never taken into account or thought of as a possibility. Now he has to think of the possibility of that happening, be brought to his knees by the fact that he may lose her more permanently than in any other way, and that may help him formulate for the first time, that he does care for her, that he is sorry for the way he treated her during the marriage fiasco, and that he has been treating her badly since then. In the last conversation he had with Mehak, she told him that he is feeling insecure only because he thinks he is losing her to someone else and that he does not even think of leaving her at the mandap as a mistake even now. Perhaps those words will come back to haunt him.
Sorry this post got really long. Do tell me what you all think. 😊
Anupamaa
Hindi TV Shows
