Sarees on Screen

Trigger Warning: Discussions of sexual assault, r*pe, victim shaming, honor killing, and other forms of sexual violence and abuse. For anyone who may find these topics unsettling, we recommend prioritizing your mental health and not engaging with the following content. In this Saucy Deep Dive, we tackle Shoaib Mansoor's Verna, a controversial release from Pakistan dealing with themes of r*pe and sexual violence. Verna tells the story of a woman navigating societal and institutional hurdles as she attempts to seek justice as a victim of sexual violence. When both her family and the justice system fails her - she has to take matters into her own hand. When a recent study from Pakistan showed that movies depicting r*pe will almost always kill off the victims of sexual violence, it is no surprise that Verna drew so much uproar. This is a story of a survivor. Survivors in South Asia often have no institutional or social support available to them. Neither do their cinematic counterparts. Verna does an amazing job of exploring these challenges with an empathetic lens. It also highlights the anger that society feels towards survivors who have the audacity to seek justice. It is truly a grueling watch. In this episode, we discuss the limitations of movies depicting r*pe revenge fantasies, the recurring issue of ableism in South Asian films, and the lack of intersectionality in discussions about sexual violence. While it is absolutely an accomplishment that this movie even exists, it is also important to ask how well it presents the issues it hopes to shed a light on. To know more about our thoughts and see how Verna fared on the Sauce Meter (our in-house feminist film rating system), check out the extended show notes on our website. More available on SareesOnScreen.com - - - [Music Prod. By LuKremBo] Advisory Advisory

Trigger Warning: Discussions of sexual assault, r*pe, victim shaming, honor killing, and other forms of sexual violence and abuse. For anyone who may find these topics unsettling, we recommend prioritizing your mental health and not engaging with the following content. This episode continues our conversation on South Asian r*pe culture, picking up from where we left off. Nonconsent in the media is often an unpleasant and inescapable staple, but this doesn't occur in a vacuum. It is often a reflection of a reality far worse. In this conversation, we explored the idea of purity culture and how it often goes hand in hand with r*pe culture in perpetuating this culture of control and violence. We also talked about the disparity in the consequences of purity/r*pe culture, the idea of model victims, and the failures of both "conservative" and "liberal" talking points on this matter. For this episode, it was important for us to explore documentaries instead of fictional media (not that documentaries can't come without their own biases!) In choosing to do so, we came across some great (and free!) documentaries on the topic that helped to frame our discussion. We watched A Crime Unpunished in Bangladesh, Rape is Consensual: Inside Haryana’s R*pe Culture, Outlawed in Pakistan, and Boys who like Girls. If you can, we recommend you watch all of the documentaries linked here (some of them are pretty short too.) These movies spanning across South Asia, highlight the horrible repercussions of prioritizing purity and honor over the lives and wellbeing of women and marginalized people. Our next episode is a Saucy Deep Dive on Verna. More available on SareesOnScreen.com - - - [Music Prod. By LuKremBo] Advisory Advisory

On our very first “behind-the-screen” bonus episode, we talk movies, podcasting, and how we became friends in the first place despite hating almost everything at first sight. Jokes aside, we really did want to take a chance to reflect on our podcasting journey so far, re-introduce ourselves to our audience as well as dig into why we started this podcast and its origins. As two queer brown feminists from different South Asian countries, we hoped to bring an intersectional lens to our critique and discussion of our media. If Keeping Up With The Kardashians can help us understand Baudrillard, then why can’t Kuch Kuch Hota Hain help us learn some queer theory? This podcast is the culmination of years of conversations that we’ve had. It is our attempt to create a framework through which to analyze our media and recognize its roles in our own ideas and those of people around us. Our podcast has definitely been a labor of love and learning throughout this journey and we’ve both been thankful to have this space to grow and evolve as we try to bring our idea to life. This was us! Stay tuned for our next episode, out in two weeks! More available on SareesOnScreen.com - - - [Music Prod. By LuKremBo] Advisory

For our latest Saucy Deep Dive, we chose the early 2000s classic Mohabbatein starring Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. In Mohabbatein, Shahrukh Khan comes to Gurukul to teach music and bring “love” into Amitabh Bachchan’s overly strict and bizarrely religious school...college...university? It's never really made clear. Shah Rukh Khan’s plan to bring love to the school revolves around teaching three students - played by Uday Chopra, Jimmy Shergill, and Jugal Hansraj to fight for their love. Which ala Bollywood includes eve-teasing, relentless stalking, and coercive behavior disguised as romance. This fan-favorite has not aged well and actively perpetuated problematic ideas about romance, love, and consent. It objectified the women on screen and robbed them of their agencies. Was it just a product of its time or did it have a much more adverse and continuing effect on the cultural and media landscape of South Asia? To know more about our discussion and to find out how Mohabbatein fared on the Sauce Meter (our in-house feminist film rating system), read the extended show notes on our website with additional resources and content! More available on SareesOnScreen.com - - - [Music Prod. By LuKremBo] Advisory

Trigger warning: In this episode, we will be discussing issues such as stalking, voyeurism, r*pe, sexual harassment, assault, self-harm, and Islamophobia. For anyone who may find these topics unsettling, we recommend prioritizing your mental health and not engaging with the following content. Our latest topic-based episode is tackling collective ideas of consent in South Asia, as well as the glorification of non-consent in our media. We knew that a feminist analysis of South Asian cinema would not be complete without an episode dedicated to the media’s role in perpetuating the r*pe culture in South Asia. We are all familiar with these narratives that often disregard women’s autonomy and their agency as fully-fleshed human beings. Consent and the overarching media landscape around it were vital to this analysis. So this will be the first of a two-part conversation on r*pe and purity culture. Beyond discussing the movies in our lineup, Sitara, LOEV, and Raanjhanaa, we decided to take on a more general discussion on film culture in South Asia. We particularly address the ubiquitous "item numbers," which have been a staple in problematic media portrayals of women and the disheartening normalization of voyeuristic shots in our films. These movies served as a frame of reference to discuss the collective narratives about romance, sexuality, agency, and (non)consent that our media normalizes. This glorification of violations of consent make such behavior easier to get away with in reality. We hope that collectively critiquing these portrayals in our media and around us can help to start discussions around consent and r*pe culture, as well as lead to more well-rounded and humanized portrayals of women and marginalized characters in our cinema. To know more about our discussion, read the extended show notes on our website with additional resources and content! More available on SareesOnScreen.com - - - [Music Prod. By LuKremBo] Advisory

For our latest Saucy Deep Dive, we picked Funny Boy, a movie adapted by Deepa Mehta (an Indo-Canadian director) based on Shyam Selvadurai's 1994 novel of the same name. Funny Boy is a coming-of-age story about a boy called Arjie from an affluent Sri Lankan Tamil family. It chronicles his journey from childhood to adolescence and early adulthood amidst the ethnic tensions and the divisive Sri Lankan Civil War. While we loved the queer coming-of-age aspect of this movie, Arjie's exploration and queerness often felt like an afterthought to the plot. We also felt that as a movie intended for non-Sri Lankan audiences, it could have done a much better job of contextualizing the conflict and presenting it as a whole. In its current form, the movie left us perplexed about whether it was a historical queer movie or a historical movie with a queer character? We also talked about how it fared on our very own film rating system - the Sauce Meter. To know more about our discussion, read the extended show notes on our website with additional resources and content! More available on SareesOnScreen.com - - - [Music Prod. By LuKremBo] Advisory

It’s been really encouraging to see increasing representations of queerness in our mainstream media. As grateful as we are as queer folk to have queer stories in our own languages, it's important to admit that some stories have been told with more consideration than others. As queerness becomes more marketable, it becomes even more necessary to not just celebrate the movies that come out but also question them. Is it a culturally sensitive portrayal? Is it a nuanced representation? Is it simply queerbaiting? For this episode, we decided to take on movies that show the diversity of queer identities such as Margarita with a Straw, Geeli Pucchi, and Naanu Avanalla Avalu (I am She..not He). We also decided to watch some recent Bollywood hits such as Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhaan and Ek Ladki ko Dekha toh Aisa Laga. There are some great examples of queer joy in the cinemas above. And almost all of these movies attempt to depict unique queer experiences, unfortunately, some of them still fall prey to perpetuating homophobic stereotypes about the queer community. Through this episode, we hope to talk about not just how our media represents queerness, but also how this media impacts queer and trans communities as a whole. To know more about our discussion, read the extended show notes on our website with additional resources and content! More available on SareesOnScreen.com - - - [Music Prod. By LuKremBo] Advisory

In this episode, we are thrilled to be watching and discussing a Bangladeshi favorite Third Person Singular Number made by Mostofa Sarwar Farooki - one of the most famous contemporary directors from Bangladesh. We’ve also had the pleasure of having Raidah of raidahcal on this episode. She does wonderful work addressing contemporary feminist issues in Dhaka, Bangladesh. While we all had different takes on the movie, it was wonderful to have Raidah’s unique insights and perspectives. The movie is centered around Ruba – shown to be struggling with harassment, housing insecurity, and unemployment in the aftermath of her partner’s conviction. Though starting off on a dark note, the movie is conceptualized as a fairytale and to some degree, even a romance. Ruba is an independent and determined character. And the movie was remarkable in its use of the feminine gaze as well as modernist means of storytelling – employing devices such as an unreliable narrator and Freud-inspired depictions of internal psychological conflict. Read the full show notes to find out how it fared on our Sauce Meter! For more on the episodes, check out the extended Show Notes for additional reading material, explanations, and videos. More available on SareesOnScreen.com - - - [Music Prod. By LuKremBo] Advisory

Open conversations around sex and sexuality continue to be taboo in our society, but it’s been great to see a segment of people start to chip away at that reluctance to talk about such a fundamental part of all our lives. While we absolutely value the importance of sharing lived experiences, in this episode, we specifically looked at the media we consume - how it portrays sex and sexualities of women and marginalized people, and how it shapes the greater societal conversations around these issues. Something we hoped to highlight in our analysis was that sex and sexuality is experienced very differently by everyone. The specific socio-economic and cultural locations that shape our identities empower and disempower us in different ways, thus also changing how we engage with sex and our sexualities. Even in a lot of the more “progressive” feminist portrayals of sex and sexuality in South Asia, there is often a general disconnect about the material realities of women and marginalized people. Despite being less objectifying and dehumanizing, a lot of feminist portrayals still fall short in their ability to present realistic portrayals of marginalized people due to their upholding of the upper caste, upper class, and capitalistic gaze. In this episode, we look into Lust Stories, Parched, and Rajkahini. Each of these movies claim to have progressive and positive portrayals of women, sexuality, and sex work. While beautiful cinematically and made by some of the most notable directors in India today, have these movies pushed the boundaries of healthier portrayals of sex and sexuality in our media? Listen to find out. Our next episode is a Saucy Deep Dive on Third Person Singular Number. - - - For more on the episodes, check out the extended Show Notes for additional reading material, explanations, and videos. More available on SareesOnScreen.com - - - [Music Prod. By LuKremBo] Advisory

For this episode, we watched Khabi Khushi Khabie Gham, the iconic Karan Johar movie that shaped Y2K culture in South Asia. It has a special place in our hearts, but how does it fare on an intersectional feminist film rating system? Listen to find out. - - - Once every month, we host our “Saucy Deep Dive” episodes. On these, we do a more casual breakdown of classics we all love and love-to-hate. And sometimes we’ll have guests join in on the fun. Our framework for these discussions is based on the Sauce Meter, discussed in Episode 1 (For more details check out our blog https://bit.ly/3iNnKaT). The questions we ask ourselves address patriarchal, classist, casteist, and ableist structures (and more) in South Asian culture. While still not comprehensive by any means, it sets up the base for a more critical examination of the popular movies we all know. Our next episode will examine: Sex and Sexuality in South Asian Media - - - For more on the episodes, check out the extended Show Notes for additional reading material, explanations, and videos. More available on SareesOnScreen.com - - - [Music Prod. By LuKremBo] Advisory

In our first ever episode, we tackle how pop culture and mainstream media in Bollywood portray women and marginalized characters. To contextualize our discussion, we took note of the male and feminine gazes in cinema and art, and how they uphold (or subvert) traditional ideas of gender roles, social and power dynamics, and other forms of identity privilege. For this episode, we specifically chose some recent films and shows coming out of Bollywood that marketed themselves as feminist works. Our watchlist included blockbusters like Veere di Wedding and Four More Shots Please! as well as critically acclaimed media like Lipstick Under My Burkha, Sir, Bulbbul, and Made in Heaven. Our next episode is a Saucy Deep Dive on Khabi Khushi Khabie Gham. - - - For more on the episodes, check out the extended Show Notes for additional reading material, explanations, and videos. More available on SareesOnScreen.com - - - [Music Prod. By LuKremBo] Advisory

Discussions about social issues in South Asia are often limited by stigmatization and the lack of accessible vocabulary, especially, when tackling prominent feminist topics. This forced us to think about the media we consume and how it is succeeding (or failing) to help further conversations around patriarchy, class, caste, and capitalism in our countries. Join us as we bring queer brown feminist perspectives to all of our favorite films and shows to tackle these difficult topics. - - - Check out our website SareesOnScreen.com for expanded show notes and additional content. [Music Prod. by LuKremBo]