The historical event I have chosen to discuss in my documentary is the 2012 gang-rape in New Delhi. This was a pivotal moment in my life because, as a girl who was only 12 years old at the time, it was the first time I was exposed to the horrific reality what it means to be a woman in some parts of the world. Below is my planning for the documentary, as well as the draft of my proposal and treatment for it:
Documentary Type Inspiration:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1ufdoV5vYY – Alexandra Hohner’s documentary win ME/CFS
Outline:
| Description of what happened Dec 16 – 17 2012 |
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| Interviews: Lawyers (and Criminals?) |
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| Interviews: Effect it had on different Indian women in my life |
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| Personal Effect |
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| Effect on my art – show art |
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| Impact of open discussion of rape culture |
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Proposal
Many documentaries have been made to shed light on individual cases of sexual and gender-based violences around the world, however, despite these publications, the topic still seems to be taboo in many societies – a problem that needs to be solved in order to abolish sexual violence within these societies. Breaking the Silence will stress the need to open up a dialogue about rape culture and why it is necessary to do so.
On the night of December 16th, 2012, a 23-year-old medical student named Jyoti Singh (dubbed Nirbhaya, meaning “the fearless one”, by the media), and her male friend stepped onto a bus with six men claiming they were driving in the direction of her house. Upon climbing aboard, her friend was badly beaten, pinned down at the front of the bus, and spent the rest of the night drifting in and out of consciousness. Nirbhaya, on the other hand, was forcefully dragged to the back of the bus, where she was gangraped and assaulted with an iron rod. The men showed no mercy in their physical abuse on her as by the end of the night she had multiple injuries, including bite marks and intestines hanging outside of her body, and both her and her friend were left naked an unconscious on the side of a street. Their bodies were found two hours later and taken to a hospital. The rapists, meanwhile, cleaned the blood from their bus and returned to their lives.
The next morning, December 16th, 2012, the events of the night before had been broadcasted by the media and immediately after, riots ensued. Thousands of men and women took to the streets of New Delhi, and other cities in India, expressing their rage over the lack of security and respect women were given in India. Their anger was only elevated by the shocking response from men in power in the Indian political and legal systems who claimed that Nirbhaya got what she deserved as no young woman should be out of her house that late at night – especially not with a male friend. This stirred an important conversation about the backwards way women’s roles were viewed in society.
Nirbhaya died on December 29th, 2012.
What happened to Nirbhaya was an important moment in history for Indian women all around the world as it accelerated the feminist movement in India rapidly. Personally, this event was a pivotal moment in my life. I clearly remember sitting at a hotel breakfast on a family vacation in Egypt, watching the story of Nirbhaya being broadcasted on the television. Only 12 years old at the time, I was unable to comprehend what had happened. Taking the liberty to read further into it, the event became my first insight into the horrors of what it means to be a woman in some parts of the world.
I had always been interested in art, and I was always talented at it. But for a long time it was just reproducing what I saw in real life onto paper. However, after December 2012, my art gained meaning. It became the way that I expressed my viewpoint on feminism and other social justice issues that resonated with me and that I felt needed more recognition. It became my goal to reveal the injustices of socio-political issues around the world and open up a dialogue about them.
I will interview other Indian women in my life, including my mother and friends, to inquire how the event affected them and why they think it’s important for these issues to be spoken about more openly.
I will also include a description on how India has changed since the 2012 gangrape and how it has affected rape culture and people’s views on it since, to demonstrate the importance of speaking up about these issues.
Breaking the Silence is an important announcement that uses personal and historical anecdotes to stress the importance of openly discussing rape culture in order for society to advance towards a solution that includes educating the youth and elders on equality and ethics regarding women and their role in society. Therefore, the approximately five minute documentary is targeted towards an audience of young adults with the intention to encourage them to become more engaged in this socio-political issue by freely discussing it and bringing awareness to it, therefore abolishing the taboo on rape culture.
Treatment
Breaking the Silence is a historical and personal documentary that tells the story of a tragic victim of rape culture, who has since transformed into a symbol of courage, and the ways in which it drastically altered the lives of many Indian women. Using the research I have conducted, my documentary will use anecdotes of personal experiences, interviews of Indian women in my life such as my mother and my friend, and news articles and statistics that provide evidence for the change that the events of December 2012 has brought upon India. I will also include clips from the interviews of the rapists’ defense lawyers from Leslie Udwin’s documentary India’s Daughter, which shows the direct impact the event had on both the families of the people involved and on Indian society as a whole, to shed light on the misogyny that still exists in India and therefore prevents social progression.
My documentary will be approximately five minutes in length. It will use a mixture of animation a photography, and begins with my voiceover narration of what happened to Nirbhaya – highlighting the careless brutality of how she was treated – and how the country reacted to her injustice. The animations take inspiration from Alexandra Hohner’s short animated documentary on ME/CFS and will consist of simple white line-drawings over a red cloth background – alluding to a powerful and significant colour in the life of an Indian woman – and will transition into and out of real photographs to provide a visual narrative that helps the viewers experience of understanding the story, while also demonstrating the affiliation my art has to the event.
Next will be an insight into how the event affected me personally, describing the changes it brought to the meaning and direction of my artwork, and I will feature images of my artwork that addresses feminist issues, and possibly some that address other social justice issues. The large scale effect of the event will be complemented by interviews with Indian women in my life who, like me live outside of India, including my mother and my friends.
I will then transition into the overarching objective of my documentary, which is to emphasise the importance of openly discussing rape culture to bring awareness and encourage education about the mistreatment towards women in order to help prevent these issue from arising. Using the viewpoints of activists and lawyers who integrated themselves deeply in studying and advocating for the event, accompanied with statistics and personal and historical anecdotes, I will prompt the viewers to evaluate their own perspectives on this issue and how they can discuss it in their lives to bring more awareness and understanding.
Most of the research has already been completed, and the so has most of the script. The storyboard is presently being worked on and I have also begun to experiment with some of the linework, frames and transitions for the animation. I will continue to look for more reference images for my animations and images to include in my documentary, which my animations can transition into and out of. I am also currently working on organising the interviews with my mother and my friend, after which I will be able to extract the most important parts to effectively integrate into my documentary to help build my argument.
To help me organise how I want to use my research and what exactly I want to animate, I created a script for my documentary’s voiceover:
On the night of December 16th, 2012, a 23-year-old medical student named Jyoti Singh (dubbed Nirbhaya, meaning “the fearless one”, by the media), and her male friend stepped onto a bus with six men claiming they were driving in the direction of her house. Upon climbing aboard, her friend was badly beaten, pinned down at the front of the bus, and spent the rest of the night drifting in and out of consciousness. Nirbhaya, on the other hand, was forcefully dragged to the back of the bus, where she was gangraped and assaulted with an iron rod. The men showed no mercy in their physical abuse on her as by the end of the night she had multiple injuries, including bite marks and intestines hanging outside of her body, and both her and her friend were left naked an unconscious on the side of a street. Their bodies were found two hours later and taken to a hospital. The rapists, meanwhile, cleaned the blood from their bus and returned to their lives.
The next morning, December 16th, 2012, the events of the night before had been broadcasted by the media and immediately after, riots ensued. Thousands of men and women took to the streets of New Delhi, and other cities in India, expressing their rage over the lack of security and respect women were given in India. Their anger was only elevated by the shocking response from men in power in the Indian political and legal systems.
*Clips from interviews of the rapists’ defence lawyers.*
This stirred an important conversation about the backwards way women’s roles were viewed in society.
Nirbhaya died on December 29th, 2012.
What happened to Nirbhaya was an important moment in history for Indian women all around the world as it accelerated the feminist movement in India rapidly. Personally, this event was a pivotal moment in my life. I clearly remember sitting at a hotel breakfast on a family vacation in Egypt, watching the story of Nirbhaya being broadcasted on the television. Only 12 years old at the time, I was unable to comprehend what had happened. Taking the liberty to read further into it, the event became my first insight into the horrors of what it means to be a woman in some parts of the world.
I had always been interested in art, and I was always talented at it, but for a long time it it was just reproducing what I saw in real life onto paper. However, after December 2012, my art gained new meaning. It became the way that I expressed my feelings on feminism and other social justice issues that resonated with me and that I felt needed more recognition. It became my goal to reveal the injustices of socio-political issues around the world and open up a dialogue about them. What happened to Nirbhaya showed me the importance using open discussion of these event as a catalyst for change.
Similarly to me, many other Indian girls and women outside of the nation were affected by Nirbhaya’s story.
* Interview with my mum and my friend:
- What were your first thoughts when you heard Nirbhaya’s story?
- Why do you think it is important to break the silence on rape culture in India?*
To quote Indian activist Kavita Krishnan, “One really encouraging development after the Delhi incident is that I see a lot of young people – school and college students, communities – getting interested with issues around discrimination against women.” She further states that “A number of talks on the subject have been held in schools and colleges. Students are reading about and debating the history of women’s movements. There’s deep introspection about how we end up sustaining violence and discrimination against women.”
This is evidence towards the impact that open discussion on Nirbhaya’s story has had. More young women are engaging in education and action towards change in society just because they were exposed to the conversations surrounding the mistreatment towards her and many other women in India.
According to lawyer Karuna Nundy, who currently practices at the Supreme Court of India, “Delhi police data show 1,036 cases of rape were reported until 15 August, 2013 – as against 433 cases reported over the same period last year. This is likely to be in some part due to increased reporting, which would point to a greater sense of entitlement and more societal support for survivors.”
With more people engaging in open conversation about the injustices of rape culture, survivors of rape are given encouragement and support to report their cases and be brought justice. Additionally, american social psychologist Dr James Pennebaker’s research suggests that “not discussing a traumatic event, or confiding it to another person can be more damaging than the actual event. When people shared their stories and experiences, their physical health improved, their doctor’s visits decreased and they showed significant decreases in their stress hormones”.
While the story of Nirbhaya has helped change many people’s views on rape culture in India, this nation, like many others, is still yet to make drastic changes to their law and enforcement systems to ensure the safety of women in their societies.
By normalising the conversation on rape culture and its solutions, we can empower survivors and to help abolish the ability for rapists to hide and get away with their crimes and instill better values in future generations through education. We may have a long way to go, but a joint effort in opening up this dialogue can make a difference.
Below is an annotated bibliography I made for the sources of my research:
Chaudhury, Shoma. “The Girl Who Fired an Outcry in India.” Newsweek, March 29, 2013, 1. Academic OneFile http://link.galegroup.com.libproxy.newschool.edu/apps/doc/A324514039/AONE?u=nysl_me_newsch&sid=AONE&xid=c857baad.
This Newsweek magazine article provides a detailed description of both the event on the night of December 16th in New Delhi, India, and the nation’s response to it in the following couple of weeks. It also discusses how Nirbhaya (the fearless one) has become a national symbol against gender violence in the country and empowers women to stand up against this behaviour – a symbol of courage rather than tragedy. The latter part of the article focuses on the lives of each of the individuals involved in the event – the past, present and future of the victims, rapists, and their families – to shed light on where the issue may have stemmed from.
Lodhia, Sharmila. “From “living corpse” to India’s daughter: Exploring the social, political and legal landscape of the 2012 Delhi gang rape.” Women’s Studies International Forum Volume 50 (2015): 89-101 https://www-sciencedirect-com.libproxy.newschool.edu/science/article/pii/S0277539515000667
Lodhia’s article thoroughly discusses the progression of events on the day of and and the days after the December 2012 gangrape in New Delhi, India. Lodhia looks at the issue from different social, political and legal perspectives to dissect all the viewpoints, while also emphasising the the unique strength of the nation’s relation to this particular event. She discusses the different methods that different social groups used to respond to the event and demonstrate their support towards the safety of women in India, and the urgent need for improved security and litigation regarding gender based violence in India.
Natarajan, Nalini. The Unsafe Sex: The Female Binary and Public Violence against Women. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 2016. 37-54.
This book looks at the problem of sexual violence and the different factors that affect gender based crimes in India, for example literacy, media and the role of women in society. Chapter 2 Militarisation and Mutiny analyses the types of hidden gender based violence such as the killing of female infants, acid attacks, dowry deaths, sati and more. Natarajan looks at the idea of ‘safe spaces’ for women, concluding that their vulnerability has no limits regarding space, as many of the hidden gender based crimes often occur not only on the streets, but also within their own homes. This issue is mainly analysed from the perspective of poorer, illiterate communities, and Natarajan ties this to the 2012 gangrape by connecting these ideas to the rapists’ upbringing in the slums of India and the ideologies of female inferiority within these areas.
Chattopadhyay, Sujit Kumar. Fighting Gender Inequality: A tribute to Nirbhaya. Kolkata, India: K P Bagchi & Company, 2015. 11-41.
This book, inspired by the events of Nirbhaya, looks into the causes and consequences of gender inequality, as well as the barriers to solving it. Chapter II, Gender Socialisation and the Role of Religion and Culture, specifically dissects the way Indian societies operate on the basis of gender and how culture and religion impacts this. While digging for these causes, Chattopadhyay continuously returns to the point that women are seen as inferior in society – something he justifiably expresses clear disdain for. It emphasises the differences in the way males and females are expected to look and behave in Indian societies, and explore reasons for this that include power, stratification of society and allocation of roles in society.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-24012424
1st draft field recordings:
Below is a very rough animation I made to experiment how I plan to use the combination of simple line drawings on a textural background and photographic images.
