The Dark Secret of the Malayalam Film Industry: Widespread Exploitation

Eighty percent of women from the Malayalam film industry who spoke to the committee said this was a routine occurrence. In fact, some women said they were scared and terrified that their hotel doors would break down due to the incessant knocking.

Demands for “compromise and accommodation” were the euphemisms, accompanied by threats that women who refused would be blacklisted by the “mafia” that controls the Malayalam film industry. The Hema Commission found that women working in the industry were not given contracts and were paid far less than men.

The exploitation was so systematic that men kept ‘mementos’ of their actions to further blackmail the women if they refused to give in, forcing them to sleep with others from the ‘mafia’.

Get exclusive content with Gulf News WhatsApp channel

Women were shown videos of successful actors and told that this was the only way to succeed in the industry. The Hema committee also found that women working in Malayalam films faced terrible conditions.

Unfortunately, the bigger picture of women under attack in the glamour industry is probably even worse in Bollywood. After the outrage of the MeToo movement, which led to criminal investigations and prosecutions in Hollywood and the jailing of powerful producer Harvey Weinstein, the Hindi film industry, also known as Bollywood, quietly rehabilitated all the accused men.

None of the people who were called out have faced any consequences, either from the legal system or professionally. They have literally gotten away with serial sexual misconduct, and if I were to mention their names here, I could be sued. The irony is great, but the victims are extremely bitter.

Two well-known directors who were publicly accused are as celebrated and loved as they were before the allegations. One of the victims told me, “I have become an outcast for speaking out. I am now living on my parents’ financial support, having earned enough to buy a flat in Lokhandwala. The flat was the first asset I had to sell to be able to eat and live in Mumbai. After that, my bank account was drained. These two men have made me a ghost, a non-person. No one picks my calls, not directors, not casting directors, not even my co-actors. It’s like I don’t exist. And when I mindlessly scroll through Instagram from my parents’ house in Pune, I see my assailants being celebrated, praised for their creativity and treated as authority figures. Just thinking about the pain it would cause my parents is enough to stop me.”

What do you say to a woman in her early thirties who is gripped by so much fear? But then, this is the story of Bollywood, which looks beautiful on the outside but is so dirty on the inside.

Another victim who outed a music director during the MeToo movement has predictably not gotten any work as a singer since. She says, “Not only did he expect to exploit me, but he also wanted me to star with another director for whom he wanted to compose music. It was like a package deal. If he got the film, the director could exploit me too. It was almost as if his actions were invisible or normal.”

The music director has not faced any professional consequences and continues to do his job. This in effect confirms the guilt of the entire Hindi film industry in the grotesque business of sexual harassment and exploitation. Why the collective silence? Why the lack of outrage and anger? And worst of all, why the silent rehabilitation of the perpetrators? How can powerless victims speak when the powerful collectively remain silent?

Another young actor who has left the industry and moved to try and get technical work in the OTT space says, “Unless you are a fake baby who calls all the big shots ‘uncle’, you are an honest target with no protection. We need a Hema committee for Bollywood and then we will see what comes out of it.”

To put the situation in perspective, a widely respected director says, “Look, eventually the reckoning came to Hollywood. It took time, but it came. It will come to Bollywood too, maybe not in my lifetime, but it will come. You have a situation where very young actors are looking for a breakthrough. They have no resources except their good looks. It’s a completely unequal power imbalance and they’re taking advantage of that. And everyone is complicit because they know it’s happening and they just look away.”