Bollywood gets better at portraying crimes against women, but still has miles to go

With the four men convicted of raping and murdering a young woman being hanged, one chapter in India's history of aggravated sexual assault has ended but the framework in which the violence took place still exists, albeit a little weaker -- and Bollywood, say experts, is a critical pillar of that structure.

A bewildering number of mainstream Hindi films, right from the 60s to the 90s, figured graphic portrayals of rape with lascivious villains and helpless heroines.

And while things have changed with films such as Pink", "Thappad" and the post #MeToo-set "Guilty" that deal with consent, domestic violence and society's treatment of rape survivors, sexual violence against women is still used as a tool to forward the story of the protagonist, mostly male, in films as recent as "Kaabil" and "Simmba".

This concept is known as 'fridging' in cinema.

"Bollywood has normalised rape... Masculinity is an important narrative device in Bollywood cinema: strong masculinity and the threats to it," sociologist Sanjay Srivastava told PTI.

"There is a long history to this, particularly relating to the division between 'good' and 'bad' women where rape was frequently presented as an instrument of control. Bollywood has presented rape as a relationship between men: if a woman is raped, it is the men of the family who are insulted because (they feel) they have been unable to 'protect' the women of the family," he explained. I
The December 16, 2012 gangrape, which sparked nationwide protests and led to a change in India's rape laws, also inspired introspective documentaries and a Netflix series "Delhi Crime" focusing on the police investigation into the crime,
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