The porntificators

KOCHI: She was playing alone at school, as her dad was late to pick her up. The school peon gestures to her to come closer, then makes the eight-year-old sit on his lap.
When she feels something hard beneath her thighs, she becomes curious.

“I didn't know if it was bone or flesh,“ says a young woman to the camera, recalling her first intimate moment many years ago, the budding of her sexuality . The peon touches the eightyear-old girl's vagina, gently. She gets wet, she's confused but she is also enjoying it.The man lets her go. The girl goes back home and tries what the molester did with her own fingers and enjoys it. The above scene, as described by a wife narrating her first sexual experience to her husband who is recording her with a camera, is the basic plot of the under 10-minute film screened recently at Bangalore Queer Film Festival. The film purports to examine the emergence of sexuality in a child and is narrated from a woman's point of view but popular response to the movie after it was posted on YouTube and went viral has been that it merely legitimises child abuse.

To be sure, the movie is provocative and transgressive but the question is whether, as even very liberalminded people are demanding, it be removed from public domain, if not banned.

The movie's director,

Shailaja Padindala

, says that the film is from the perspective of a camera that sees everything objectively, a machine's memories. In fact, it's been shot quite artfully, with the wife played by Kani Kusruti who ensures that the `confession' doesn't become coy. Right at the beginning, the male voiceover (of her husband who never directly enters the scene) asks her to stop “pretending to sleep“, as much a challenge to her to go beyond the politically correct as a wink and nod at the camera's (and by implication, the movie's) own limitations.

Later in the movie, as the woman peels an orange, the camera pans to a DVD cover of Nymphomaniac, von Treir's movie, lying on the bed, again a nod to the movie's deliberate transgressive character. On the other hand, the scene where Kusruti daintily removes her bra without removing her tee, apparently meant to be a bold feminist statement from the director, appears cliched and seeking to titillate.

Not everyone is however willing to concede that these finer points save the film from degenerating into, as noted writer N S

Madhavan

puts it,“pardoning paedophilia“. “Memories of a Machine is a short film directed by and acted in by sensitive souls, but YouTube should take it down as it pardons paedophilia. A YouTube viewer doesn't know about any underlying meaning in the movie. Besides, I doubt the intentions of the director who made the film in Malayalam because of the availability of the actress despite not knowing the language,“ Madhavan says. Actress and psychologist, Parvathi T, concurs. “The film is more like a visual depiction of a case study from a

Nancy Friday

book and it can be screened in a film festival.But on YouTube it is not right. Who are you talking to and who are listening are key factors when you're talking about such a subject,“ she cautions.

There is no doubt that the movie is not cut for an underage audience. Child abuse cases in the state have become so rampant that hardly a week goes by without at least one report. In many cases things are hushed up either because of involvement of parents or be cause parents themselves hush the kids for fear of public shaming.

But Padindala persists with the cause of artistic freedom. “The curiosity was there in the child's mind even before the peon incident. She became curious and touched `it'. Where is that sexuality coming from in the child? Shouldn't we be dissecting these aspects as well instead of getting offended about discussing a child's sexual behaviour,“ she argues.

Don't throw stones at the mirror. Ask questions but don't open pelt stones at us,“ she says “The movie exaggerates a theme, which is the director's artistic license. The protagonist is expressing pain in a different way. The ex hilaration and joy of orgasm is however over shadowing the pain and consequence of child abuse,“ says Dr Harish Shetty, a Mumbai-based psychiatrist. But he warns that, “child sex abuse can have many trajectories. In many cases, the child remains close to the abuser and gets repeatedly abused by the same person.There are kids who have been abused by their fathers for years. But it cannot be true for all children,“ adding that the movie, a good artistic creation, will be unhealthy for children.

Theatre artist Abhija Sivakala takes a more or less similar view. “There is need to encourage production of such films on topics, which are otherwise not discussed.However, there is a need for proper analysis and study on the topic before making such a film,“ she says.

`Don't say this to a paedophile'

Worried that the movie was inadvertently condoning paedophilia, the following bit was added to the movie after all hell broke loose:

Wife: No! He asked me if I got scared. He did not threaten me. Perhaps I wanted it to happen again and I kept it a secret.

Husband: So are you angry with him now? No?
F**k! Do you think whatever happened was wrong?

Wife: I don't know if it was right or wrong. At that point it was sexual exploration for me. I liked the way he touched me and he stopped when I did not want it. I'm not concluding it was right or even wrong for that matter. I don't think it is wrong, that's all.

Husband: Don't tell this to a paedophile. The camera then zooms in to the woman's face where she is possibly contemplating that she was indeed victimized and she could very well be in the hands of another abuser in the form of her husband with a camera. However, she snaps out of it immediately and continues to talk about her sexuality.


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