Shraddha Kapoor and Rajkummar Rao’s movie ‘Strey 2’ has created a sensation in the theatres. In more than half of the months this year, the theaters have not seen the kind of crowd that many films gathered last year.
Last year, action films like ‘Pathan’, ‘Jawan’, ‘Jaanur’ and ‘Gadar 2’ saw huge crowds in theatres. This year, without Bollywood stars, ‘Stree 2’, a horror-comedy film, has been a big surprise even to experts who understand the intricacies of the film business.
Speaking of crowds, crowds are the most common thing seen in pictures these days, from TV to social media. Recently, a huge crowd was seen at Badlapur railway station in Maharashtra, demanding justice for the rape of girls. done
Images associated with these cases show a crowd protesting for women’s dignity and justice. On the other hand, there is a crowd that is so happy to see horror comedies in theaters that the bank accounts of the filmmakers are filling up. But this movie ‘Strey 2’ also has a very important message related to the condition of women in our society.
Did you see this message while being part of the movie theater crowd? This message targets the mindset that is often at the root of a heinous crime like rape. Not only men but also women suffer from this thinking.
Every time, whenever the X-ray Rape incidents are debated, someone promoting this idea is easily found in the middle. When a movie like ‘Story 2’ comes out, people return from the theaters with a 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 ‘Story 2’
In 2018, Shraddha Kapoor and Rajkummar Rao’s movie ‘Satri’ had a message hidden in the plot of the story. In the story, there was a witch who kidnapped men who went out at night, a beautiful prostitute before she died. But when the prostitute fell in love, she became the victim of men who came to her to satisfy their unfulfilled desires and was killed.
In the anger of unrequited love, the spirit of this prostitute became a witch and started persecuting the men who wronged her. She calms down when Rajkummar Rao’s character ‘Bakky’ treats her with affection. But here comes a twist in the story, which takes the story of the second part forward. This was the patch – the ‘woman’s’ braid. Making ‘Bhutani’ powerless by cutting off her braid was an image that was a big satire on society. How? Remember the news to understand this.
You will find various reports from across the country where if a woman is caught having an affair, her hair is first cut and she is humiliated in the whole village. She was subjected to violence, abuse and at many places men crossed the line of cruelty. The story of ‘Stree 2’ begins here. This time the problem of the story is ‘Sarkate Ki Terror’.
The ghost of ‘Stree 2’ and the ego of men
Ghost stories are found all over the country and there are also stories of wandering ghosts. The character of Sarkate Bhoot is known as ‘Maan Kapiya’ in Konkani folk tales. In this ‘Maan’ means head and ‘Kapiya’ means cut off. The real game here is ‘respect’ because the head is not only a part of the human body, but also a symbol of pride and ego. And symbolically, ‘Sarkta’ is a ghost who has been dishonoured.
You will find that the state of contempt is colloquially referred to as ‘head bowing’. And it is no coincidence that the walking ghosts found in Bengali and Marathi folk tales are often seriously injured by their insults.
So is the walking ghost of ‘Stree 2’. The story of the film features the ghost of Raja Chandrabhan of Chandri who believed that women were created only to serve men. Chandrabhan and the other men with him could not bear that a beautiful prostitute would fall in love with him and marry him of his own free will. Chandrabhan felt this was an insult, his ego was hurt and he killed the prostitutes. And when this prostitute became a ghost after her death, she first killed Chandrabhan.
What does Sarkata want?
Chandrabhan, humiliated by a prostitute, became a ‘Sarkata’ ghost. As long as ‘Satri’ was in Chandra, she kept the men under control and protected the women. But at the end of the first film, ‘Satri’ was kicked out of Chanderi, paving the way for Sarkate’s arrival. And this curler preys on women who are, according to him, ‘modern’. Seeing such women hurts his ego and he takes them away. This snake from the underworld makes these women bald and keeps them imprisoned.
His first victim is a girl who smokes cigarettes in a t-shirt and shorts after leaving home at night. You further learn that the girls Sarkita took were a bit more modern as per Chandri’s milieu. Some worked outside, some wore skimpy clothes, some became social media influencers by dressing glamorously, some were very friendly with boys, etc.
There is a sequence in the film when men under the influence of Sarkate literally go blind and start behaving like Sarkate. Girls are taken away from their mobile phones, they are stopped from studying, they are confined at home. Married women have to cover themselves completely and service to men becomes their religion. This is the real terror of Sarkate. In the climax of ‘Strey 2’, the same peak, which was cut in the first film, plays a major role in killing Circuite (aka Chandrabhan’s ghost). Here’s ‘Stree 2’ ahead of the 2018 debut in delivering a message.
‘Governmental’ patriarchy and rape culture
Now let us come to the ongoing debate regarding the protection of women. In such debates you will always hear a side that feels that the biggest mistake in protecting women is to live their own lives. And this is not surprising because there are still many men in our own families who consider it an affront to their masculinity, their culture and society if the women in their family become ‘modern’.
There is ample evidence that this thinking leads to many crimes against women. The statements of the convicts in Delhi’s famous Nirbhaya rape case were heart-wrenching.
In the BBC documentary ‘India’s Daughter’, Nirbhaya rapist Mukesh said, ‘You can’t clap with one hand. No decent girl will wander out of the house at nine o’clock at night. In this situation, the girl is more responsible for the rape than the boy. Boys and girls cannot be equal. Housework and staying at home is a girl’s job. How can they go to bars and discos at night? They do wrong by wearing ugly clothes. Only 20% of girls are good.
There is a lot of similarity between Sarkate Pret’s thinking and Mukesh’s statement of ‘Stree 2’. Rape or sexual violence may appear sexual, but its nature is very political. The perpetrator of such incidents wants to break the woman’s self-respect through sexual assault. Wants to destroy his dignity and make him feel crushed. And it starts with the same thinking that is found in the Nirbhaya case convict Mukesh and the ‘Strey 2’ villain Sarkate.
This thinking itself creates a ‘rape culture’, i.e. a social system in which the girl child is convicted of rape and sexual offences. She should be shamed and objectified for her clothes and ‘open’ attitude. Perhaps that’s why a survey report by Thomson Reuters in 2018 named India as the ‘world’s most dangerous country for women’.
In this survey, 550 experts selected the world’s most dangerous countries on 6 different parameters regarding women’s safety. In which India was described as the ‘most dangerous’ in terms of ‘cultural traditions’, ‘sexual violence’ and ‘human trafficking’. However, the credibility of the survey was questioned by the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare, Government of India, and there was much controversy surrounding its findings.
But does the ground reality of our society regarding the protection of women look very different from this? Probably not! It is a shame that our society, which is so proud of its culture, still suffers from a dangerous patriarchal mindset that promotes ‘rape culture’.
Sarata is all around us.
Our country’s culture certainly has a lot to be proud of. But the current situation of women’s safety cannot be counted among them. This is what the daily morning newspaper reports from Calcutta Medical College, Badlapur or any village girls’ school say.
You don’t even need to read the news to see how the mindset that promotes such crimes dominates people’s minds. Pick up your mobile and read the comments on social media on the picture of any actress, model or any ordinary girl living in the city, it will seem that Sarkata of ‘Strey 2’ is not a movie but a fictional character. There is no man around us. In today’s era, seeing a girl even in normal clothes, they call her a ‘culture spoiler’ and question her character.
‘Story 2’ is a popular Bollywood movie that provides two and a half hours worth of entertainment in theatres. There are also flaws in the film’s treatment of women on screen, which can be easily noticed. But the way the film’s release coincides with a nationwide outcry over women’s protection makes the film’s message very important.
Its value increases even more because the public is watching the film which is attracting huge crowds and is going to watch it now. In such a case, when ‘Story 2’ ends with Circuitte’s ghost, the question must arise that Circuitte is gone in the film, but is he still in us?!
(Tags to Translate)Story 2 Review
