
{"id":3131,"date":"2020-03-17T11:06:50","date_gmt":"2020-03-17T11:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the-edict.in\/?p=3131"},"modified":"2021-04-29T18:03:41","modified_gmt":"2021-04-29T18:03:41","slug":"guilty-poster-child-of-indias-metoo-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/2020\/03\/17\/guilty-poster-child-of-indias-metoo-movement\/","title":{"rendered":"Guilty: Poster Child of India\u2019s #MeToo movement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">By Isa Ayidh, Undergraduate Batch of 2022<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>True to its title, Dharmatic&#8217;s \u2013 the digital arm of Karan Johar&#8217;s Dharma Productions \u2013 first production makes the viewer guilty of their conditioning.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Guilty, <\/em>an addition to India&#8217;s scarce #MeToo narratives, attempts to tackle rape culture in a college St Martins situated in Delhi, the rape capital. The movie begins with an ample dose of slut-shaming the victim \u2013 Tanu Kumar (played by Akansha Ranjan Kapoor) \u2013 by the accused Vijay \u201cVJ\u201d Pratap Singh&#8217;s (Gurfateh Singh Pirzada) friend. A non-linear narrative, <em>Guilty<\/em>&#8216;s protagonists are VJ&#8217;s girlfriend, Nanki Dutta (Kiara Advani) a punk-rock song-writer murmuring Virginia Woolf with a joint in hand, and his lawyer, Danish Ali Baig (Taher Shabbir).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Advani&#8217;s character resonates with the dilemma of a rape victim, a woman and a girlfriend, as she finds herself stranded between her trust in her boyfriend and the rape accusation on him. The form of this accusation, a tweet, sets a stage for the &#8216;he said, she said&#8217; mode of conversation. Privilege clothes the discussion, and sex, class, and region, accessorize it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"271\" height=\"390\" src=\"http:\/\/the-edict.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Screenshot-2020-03-20-at-4.39.43-PM.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3132\"\/><figcaption>Series Poster <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Writers Atika Chohan, Kanika Dhillon, Ruchi Narain \u2013 also the director \u2013 do not chart Tanu as the primary point of view. Instead, the viewers wear Nanki&#8217;s boots and watch Tanu as an attention-seeking woman, who speaks lewdly, dresses to &#8216;ask for it&#8217; \u2013 a shameless wannabe who wants to steal her man. Tanu Kumar isn&#8217;t a survivor who hides behind a pallu. Instead, she will tweet, hold a rally, answer back, continue to dress the way she does and slap her rapist.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the first half of the movie, the viewer believes that Tanu is exactly what VJ and his friends claim her to be \u2013 a slut \u2013 on a <em>Gone Girl <\/em>mission. However, Nanki&#8217;s idea of Tanu falls apart quickly, and she, like Danish, raises the deceptively simple question: Is VJ lying? Was it consensual?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Narain plays with the digital platform, ensures to shred Johar&#8217;s usual SOTY-style college narrative, situating DU within the tangents of sexuality, drugs and classism, and borrows the sequential style of American TV shows like <em>13<\/em> <em>Reasons<\/em> <em>Why<\/em> and <em>Riverdale<\/em>. The movie, however, skims through its portrayal of rape culture. Although it touches the nuances of the problem at hand \u2013 unsolicited masturbation, harassment and cat-calling \u2013 <em>Guilty <\/em>fails to prompt one to seek the truth.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Advani&#8217;s monologue, which features one of the most spectacular lines of the movie: &#8220;I\u2019m ready to speak up now, but is anyone ready to listen?&#8221;, does not bridge with her character. The sloppy portrayal of her mental health suggests that it plays the role of spackle to fix a possible plot hole. Furthermore, Danish&#8217;s consistent belief that his client is guilty appears to have no precedence and makes his character unrealistic.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although <em>Guilty<\/em> does not grasp the reality of the #MeToo movement, it raises one important question why Tanu&#8217;s clothes determine whether she&#8217;s a victim or not. The end of the movie leaves one unnerved about their perception and asks if they are a guilty participant of rape culture.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Isa Ayidh, Undergraduate Batch of 2022 True to its title, Dharmatic&#8217;s \u2013 the digital arm of Karan Johar&#8217;s Dharma Productions \u2013 first production makes the viewer guilty of their conditioning.&nbsp; Guilty, an addition to India&#8217;s scarce #MeToo narratives, attempts to tackle rape culture in a college St Martins situated in Delhi, the rape capital.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[27,94],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3131"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3131"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5045,"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3131\/revisions\/5045"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}