A trailer full of burkha-clad women who call themselves churails, out on a vigilante mission to teach a lesson to misbehaving men made me suspicious. Who needs another 'Lipstick Under My Burkha' or for that matter another film about angry vigilante feminism? But this Pakistani (and by no means only Pakistani) show manages to pull off something extraordinary with this template.
To begin with, yes, it is the story of four raging women across age and class brought together by circumstances, who have the imagination and the means to begin an underground business of helping out Karachi's frustrated women by spying on their menfolk-'Mard ko dard hoga'. I felt the guilty pleasure of enjoying the fairly conventional but immensely satisfying sequence of men caught cheating on and harassing women, as well as that of the rescue of a woman being forced into marriage, etc. The show could have remained with this story and come off as quite decent. It's stylish, well-written, has amazing female characters with incredibly sexy voices, transgendered and lesbian and smoking-drinking-cussing characters who are not flag-bearers of female empowerment, a couple of good male allies, female solidarity that does not subsume the identities of the individuals involved, and some very cathartic subversions of misogyny and gendered violence. And yet, it chooses to shift, quite early.
This shift comes with a case of vigilantism gone horribly wrong. Something happens that shows how misplaced the righteousness and power that comes alongwith this self-appointed saviourdom can be. How patriarchy is not a fixed, static field of oppressor-oppressed between men and women, but always intersectional, which can shift from one situation to another. How this righteousness can be a projection of our own insecurities and prejudices. And from hereon, the characters turn their spotlight inwards. For patriarchy is also deeply rooted within, and many a time we are in dire need of saving ourselves, from ourselves. And equally, what does feminism mean if we cannot look closer at the people in our own lives-our husbands, friends, brothers, uncles, fathers-and realise how we have, wittingly and unwittingly been party to the conspiracy of patriarchy all along? And how we can change. And the price we must pay for this.
The really big turn that the show takes midway is when it trains its eyes on the larger framework that holds our society together, something that explains the chronic betrayals of men as much as it explains the ambiguities that hold women back from confronting the truths of their lives and remain in denial. It achieves this by exposing patriarchy as a surreally twisted cult that conceals itself through elaborate charade. Literally. This is where the Churails let their vigilantism segue into investigative journalism launched at the upper echelons of refined society. Slowly a coherent picture of a very ill society emerges--where little boys are indoctrinated early on, encouraged to be masculine, which is to take for disposable anyone who is not male and of an equal social status. This plays out across various kinds of social stratification, and gets only more sinister as one climbs up the social ladder, for with power comes entitlement and impunity. Such a picture then complicates questions of consent and victimhood. What does consent mean in an equation of such skewed power dynamics between the genders? What does it mean when a woman participates in it, because she has made peace with the many compromises she has made to reach a stage where she can be known by her own name in a world run by men? When a woman does not want to be rescued?
And so, even though the show becomes a search for two missing women ostensibly, it is actually a search for the roots of this state of affairs where all non-male-cis-het people are repeatedly demeaned, suppressed, disciplined into obedience, exploited, gaslit, killed---i.e. the perpetrators, their intricate networks of power and the elaborate discourses they spin and spread to keep the status quo in place. In doing so, it lays bare an incredible range of interconnected discourses---sexual violence, capitalism, race, gender, eugenics, sex-trafficking, the bro code of chivalry (amongst others)---showing how these enter and are strengthened by the sophisticated vocabularies of intellect, pedagogy, science, socialisation. It puts into perspective so much of our daily violence that we so overlook-rating women, teaching them 'tameez', shaming them for the choices they take with their bodies and for being bad mothers and abandoning their children, making men out of little boys especially in all-male schooling environments, our fair-skin obsession, the discursive backlash against 'feminazis', the way the same man will treat different women differently...Here men are assured anonymity and protection to hunt women and value them only as trophies of various kinds; they get to decide who gets to live, and how. And the dilemma that a woman faces: to join them and maximise one's personal gains, or play by their rules and overturn the game on their own terms? Things do return to the vigilante mould, but there is some poetic justice in that as well. I keep getting convinced, each passing year, that the most important contribution of the MeToo movement is the cultural shift that has taken place, in terms of the stories we have begun to tell ourselves. 'Churails' is one of the best, if not the best, example I have come across yet.
Incredibly well-thought-out plot, some amazing goosebumps-inducing dialogue, wonderful music, surreal images that show us the subconscious of the narrative, some pitch-perfect performances, and some strikingly true scenes featuring minor characters. A film heroine recalling her fading career, a CEO recounting how she made it to the top and would be damned if she would see it all topple over and yet cannot help giving hints, a cop who is very turned on by an older, ex-convict, the most meaningfully romantic moments being between two same-sex couples, a climactic confrontation between a man and a woman where each dons their masks only to see each other more clearly than they ever did before, and most chillingly, a numb woman reciting nursery rhymes for her unborn child. If there is anything you watch this year, let it be this.
(Also, <3 from India! Also also, Asim Abbasi is the new Pakistani hearthrob in India. We keep getting asked to 'go to Pakistan': now I really do wanna :D )
To begin with, yes, it is the story of four raging women across age and class brought together by circumstances, who have the imagination and the means to begin an underground business of helping out Karachi's frustrated women by spying on their menfolk-'Mard ko dard hoga'. I felt the guilty pleasure of enjoying the fairly conventional but immensely satisfying sequence of men caught cheating on and harassing women, as well as that of the rescue of a woman being forced into marriage, etc. The show could have remained with this story and come off as quite decent. It's stylish, well-written, has amazing female characters with incredibly sexy voices, transgendered and lesbian and smoking-drinking-cussing characters who are not flag-bearers of female empowerment, a couple of good male allies, female solidarity that does not subsume the identities of the individuals involved, and some very cathartic subversions of misogyny and gendered violence. And yet, it chooses to shift, quite early.
This shift comes with a case of vigilantism gone horribly wrong. Something happens that shows how misplaced the righteousness and power that comes alongwith this self-appointed saviourdom can be. How patriarchy is not a fixed, static field of oppressor-oppressed between men and women, but always intersectional, which can shift from one situation to another. How this righteousness can be a projection of our own insecurities and prejudices. And from hereon, the characters turn their spotlight inwards. For patriarchy is also deeply rooted within, and many a time we are in dire need of saving ourselves, from ourselves. And equally, what does feminism mean if we cannot look closer at the people in our own lives-our husbands, friends, brothers, uncles, fathers-and realise how we have, wittingly and unwittingly been party to the conspiracy of patriarchy all along? And how we can change. And the price we must pay for this.
The really big turn that the show takes midway is when it trains its eyes on the larger framework that holds our society together, something that explains the chronic betrayals of men as much as it explains the ambiguities that hold women back from confronting the truths of their lives and remain in denial. It achieves this by exposing patriarchy as a surreally twisted cult that conceals itself through elaborate charade. Literally. This is where the Churails let their vigilantism segue into investigative journalism launched at the upper echelons of refined society. Slowly a coherent picture of a very ill society emerges--where little boys are indoctrinated early on, encouraged to be masculine, which is to take for disposable anyone who is not male and of an equal social status. This plays out across various kinds of social stratification, and gets only more sinister as one climbs up the social ladder, for with power comes entitlement and impunity. Such a picture then complicates questions of consent and victimhood. What does consent mean in an equation of such skewed power dynamics between the genders? What does it mean when a woman participates in it, because she has made peace with the many compromises she has made to reach a stage where she can be known by her own name in a world run by men? When a woman does not want to be rescued?
And so, even though the show becomes a search for two missing women ostensibly, it is actually a search for the roots of this state of affairs where all non-male-cis-het people are repeatedly demeaned, suppressed, disciplined into obedience, exploited, gaslit, killed---i.e. the perpetrators, their intricate networks of power and the elaborate discourses they spin and spread to keep the status quo in place. In doing so, it lays bare an incredible range of interconnected discourses---sexual violence, capitalism, race, gender, eugenics, sex-trafficking, the bro code of chivalry (amongst others)---showing how these enter and are strengthened by the sophisticated vocabularies of intellect, pedagogy, science, socialisation. It puts into perspective so much of our daily violence that we so overlook-rating women, teaching them 'tameez', shaming them for the choices they take with their bodies and for being bad mothers and abandoning their children, making men out of little boys especially in all-male schooling environments, our fair-skin obsession, the discursive backlash against 'feminazis', the way the same man will treat different women differently...Here men are assured anonymity and protection to hunt women and value them only as trophies of various kinds; they get to decide who gets to live, and how. And the dilemma that a woman faces: to join them and maximise one's personal gains, or play by their rules and overturn the game on their own terms? Things do return to the vigilante mould, but there is some poetic justice in that as well. I keep getting convinced, each passing year, that the most important contribution of the MeToo movement is the cultural shift that has taken place, in terms of the stories we have begun to tell ourselves. 'Churails' is one of the best, if not the best, example I have come across yet.
Incredibly well-thought-out plot, some amazing goosebumps-inducing dialogue, wonderful music, surreal images that show us the subconscious of the narrative, some pitch-perfect performances, and some strikingly true scenes featuring minor characters. A film heroine recalling her fading career, a CEO recounting how she made it to the top and would be damned if she would see it all topple over and yet cannot help giving hints, a cop who is very turned on by an older, ex-convict, the most meaningfully romantic moments being between two same-sex couples, a climactic confrontation between a man and a woman where each dons their masks only to see each other more clearly than they ever did before, and most chillingly, a numb woman reciting nursery rhymes for her unborn child. If there is anything you watch this year, let it be this.
(Also, <3 from India! Also also, Asim Abbasi is the new Pakistani hearthrob in India. We keep getting asked to 'go to Pakistan': now I really do wanna :D )
