Dear filmmakers, jokes and punchlines on rape are not okay. Period.

Kartik Aaryan, Bhumi Pednekar and Ananya Panday’s Pati Patni Aur Woh (PPAW) trailer released earlier this week. It’s not surprising that the two-minute-45-second video is about a man who is married but is in love with another woman, considering it’s a remake of the 1978 film of the same name and similar storyline.
I have not watched the original film, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me it is just as sexist and problematic as the new one. While there are many issues with dialogues and the trailer, Aaryan’s monologue — once again talking about how males suffer because of the opposite gender — is what needs to be talked about seriously. The actor gained popularity for his monologue in Pyaar Ka Punchnama 1 (yes, there’s a second part to this crass comedy). This time, however, he’s seen talking about sex in PPAW.
The dialogue in the trailer is: “Biwi se sex maang lein toh hum bikhaari. Biwi ko sex na de toh hum atyachaari. Aur kisi tarah jugaad karke usse sex hassil kar lena toh balaatkari bhi hum hai.”
The last line roughly translates to: “If we somehow manage to convince our wives and get sex, then we’re rapists.”
This comes after a long (ongoing) fight by so many women in the film industry and outside against other male artistes in the #MeToo movement. It’s 2019 and even a movement like #MeToo doesn’t seem to have made filmmakers and actors like those in PPAW feel responsible for the kind of art they make. The dialogue makes men seem like victims of rape! Like really? How is it okay for a commercial film to promote or support rapists or the rape culture? Of course, this is not the first time a film has used rape jokes as dialogues or lyrics in songs, but that doesn’t make it any better, does it?
The discussion of marital rape is so rare in the Indian society that the government or judiciary don’t even think it needs to be categorised as a criminal offence. Former Chief Justice of India Dipak Mishra said, “I don’t think that marital rape should be regarded as an offence in India, because it will create absolute anarchy in families and our country is sustaining itself because of the family platform which upholds family values.”
In 2017, the Centre while responding to petitions seeking the declaration of Section 375 (offence of rape) of the IPC as unconstitutional on the ground that it discriminated against married women, said ‘making marital rape a criminal offence would destabilise the institution of marriage’. “What may appear to be marital rape to an individual wife, it may not appear so to others. As to what constitutes marital rape and what would constitute marital non-rape needs to be defined precisely before a view on its criminalisation is taken,” it said.
If you’re of the idea that ‘film needs to be treated like a film’, please dump it in a dustbin. Please Google ‘influence of cinema in India’.
Also, if you think ‘So many women don’t have a problem, so why do you care’, please dump that in a dustbin too. The result of this male entitlement is women thinking it’s their ‘duty’ to agree to a man’s sexual desires, whether they like it or not — which is the problem. Movies like PPAW only encourage marital rape and sexual harassment, making it even tougher for victims to speak up.
For generations now, society has treated women as ‘pure’ and someone with no sexual desires. The understanding of consent hardly exists — even more if she’s your wife. ‘If she’s married to you, isn’t she bound to have sex with you?’ NO, YOU MORON!
Let’s make it clear: sex isn’t something you acquire (hassil) or trick someone into (juggad), because that makes it nonconsensual. If sex isn’t consensual, it’s rape and that’s a crime — doesn’t matter if it’s your girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband, prostitute or anybody.
(Views expressed here are personal.)
