Making rape ‘real’
What we need in the Indian news media are images that are representative and with a purpose
This is the second of a two-part series on the news media reportage on sexual violence in India. Read part 1.
There have been recent attempts to change the visual language of reportage on rape in India. In 2017, the civil society organisation Breakthrough India held an event with a number of national and international partners to bring together “a group of graphic designers, illustrators, artists, photographers, writers, activists, journalists, people working on gender issues” to re-imagine the visual language used to represent gender-based violence in India — to ‘redraw misogyny’ as they described it.
In her typology of visual imagery of rape, Mann takes into account the alternative visual depictions that came out of this crowd-sourcing exercise. Mann’s discussions of the images, the examples she includes in her article, and the examples that can be found on Breakthrough India’s Facebook page, show some small, subtle differences in the proposed imagery from the prevalent image types in news media. But they leave the question open as to really how different are the meaning of these images to those we already see in news reports.
These crowd-sourced illustrations and generic photographic imagery seem to draw from the same visual vernacular we are already used to seeing. Though Mann seems to draw a different conclusion, I argue that the agency of the women depicted — whether drawn or photographed — is still subsumed by the power of the male gaze and touch, and the discourse of a-matter-sub-judice, which are prevalent in Indian news. In any case, whatever impact on social awareness about gender-based violence that such crowdsourcing events may have, the impact they have had on the everyday image practices of Indian news media seems to be limited.
Follow the crowd
Perhaps the crowd — outside of coordinated events — can be the source of inspiration, if not a solution. Apart from the type of visual imagery that Mann describes, and those I have described above, images of crowds of organised female protesters decrying sexual violence also make up a portion the visuals used in Indian news media. However, as they are mostly used, signs held by the protesters make up almost all of the image, with particularly the faces of women who are protesting either left out or only partially shown. The rationale behind this convention of effacement of women protesters is hard to understand when the events being shown are different from the sexual assault or rape incident, and thus in no way giving away identifiable information about the incident that is under the legal publication ban.
Why do women’s public expressions of outrage against sexual violence need to be censored? If we see their protests as acts of reclamation, is there any logic to curtailing their physical visibility in the public sphere to the written words on the protest signs they are holding? Is it some deep-seated consciousness of our own complicity that makes us so afraid of the female gaze?
Representative with a purpose
Compare this photo of a protest in India used in Canadian media to report on the 2014 conviction of those who were found guilty of raping a photojournalist while on assignment in Mumbai with how an Indian newspaper visualised the news of the same judicial verdict with a ‘picture for representational purposes’.
The sense of outrage, of one act of violence against a woman being an act of violence against all women, I argue, is palpable in the first image, even while the caption makes it clear that the female person shown has no relation to the incident for which the conviction has been handed down on that day. In the visual representation that appeared in the Times of India, we are offered a non-photographic illustration that in spite of purporting to be directly about the event of the day, visually captures nothing of the wider public impact. At the same time, it undermines the sense of the real through its visual referencing of the fictional — a panel of a graphic novel at best.
VISUALLY PLACING PEOPLE AFFECTED BY CRISIS AT THE CENTRE OF REPRESENTING THAT CRISIS MAKES FOR FAR MORE PUBLIC IMPACT
Consider another example from the UK media where the photo accompanying the reportage captures the family’s pain and suffering following a young person’s suicide after being raped twice and bullied. The photograph is powerful enough to be the visual equivalent of a victim impact statement, a practice that is not part of Indian legal procedure. Showing the impact on the victims’ family is of course not always possible as it might allow victims to be identified. But what is inspirational is how real women exercising agency to publicly express their outrage and grief in these two examples are placed at the centre of the visual narrative. Both images tell us a seldom-shown side of the story of gender-based violence in India. These photographs show us female bodies resisting and reacting to such violence.
These two images I have used as exemplars to inspire us to visually reframe reportage of rape in Indian news media are not the be-all and end-all of the visual response we need to create as journalists and readers. But there is a growing understanding that visually placing people affected by crisis at the centre of representing that crisis makes for far more public impact — an evidence-based approach that The Guardian has decided to adopt for its visual reportage on the climate crisis.
It is also true that the examples I have chosen are from Western news media organisations. But look closer and my arguments will look less like an excuse for the imposition of Western standards on Indian journalism. The photojournalists who took the two photos are Adnan Abidi and Piyal Adhikary respectively. They both live and work in India and are Indians whose images show us how the pictorial conventions of rape reportage in Indian news media can, and should, change.
WHAT WE NEED ARE IMAGES THAT ARE REPRESENTATIVE AND WITH A PURPOSE: STOP COMMITTING THE SILENT, VISUAL OUTRAGES THAT WE SEE AND UN-SEE EVERY DAY WHEN REPORTING OR READING ABOUT RAPE IN INDIA
Even as we create a better visual response, what needs to change immediately is that journalists start becoming more considerate, more selective while searching out images to accompany news about gender-based violence. This might mean more time, but my hope is that by spending longer to look through photographic archives, they will chance upon more visual opportunities — and the narratives that they then create will linger that much longer in the public eye, letting viewers absorb the full horror and pain of rape and sexual assault.
We will do well to remember that the legal protection against being victimised a second time by not being identified in the news media has the potential to make us suspend our collective judgements: on the matter which is sub judice and most importantly, on the victims. How Indian news media visually interpret this protection most of the time in its reportage only serves to suspend public horror and any sense of shared pain. What we need are images that are representative and with a purpose. What we need, now, is for the news media to stop committing the silent, visual outrages that we see, and un-see, every day while reading about rape.
Saumava Mitra is Assistant Professor at the School of Communications of Dublin City University in Ireland. He researches and writes about news-images of crisis and conflicts.
