Some Spoilers Ahead;
TW: Mentions Sexual Assault
Satyaprem Ki Katha is a film that explores important themes such as consent, gender-based violence, and the impact of date rape. However, despite its ambitious intentions, the movie failed to address these issues effectively.
Exploring The Film’s Narrative
The film sets the stage for exploring the relationship between the male character Satyaprem and the female character Katha.
Kartik Aryan played the role of Satyaprem, who is unemployed. He grew up in a middle-class family where he helped his father with breakfast while his mother and sister managed the finances. He is attracted to a woman named Katha.
Kiara Advani played the role of Katha, who loves to dance and grew up in a wealthy family. Katha’s ex-partner had sexually assaulted her, and she underwent an abortion. Katha is a rape survivor, and the movie attempts to show her struggle.
The Issue Of Consent: A Major Flaw In The Film Lies In How It Portrays
In a social event, when Satyaprem meets Katha’s family and learns she is alone at home, he rushes to their bungalow to meet her.
Katha and Satyaprem are strangers at this point, and they just met once a year ago. The act of trespassing and stalking is romanticized, just like in other Bollywood movies.
When the security guard denied Satyaprem entry, he jumped and went inside. Satyaprem got excited and went close to her. When he saw there was no reaction from Katha, he then noticed she had cut her vein. He immediately then takes her to the hospital.
The movie portrayed a stranger Satya, a male character, as a savior. As Satya had saved Katha when she attempted to end her life, he earned brownie points in the view of Katha’s family.
Watching Satya’s interest in Katha, Katha’s father emotionally blackmailed her to marry Satya.
While Satya was interested in Katha, she did not share the same feelings or desires as Satya.
The issue of consent begins here. The family’s coercion into marrying Satyaprem, against the will of Katha, reinforces that in big decisions like marriage, a woman doesn’t have a say.
Katha, a survivor, had attempted to end her life showing unbearable emotional pain, and was now forcefully married to a stranger. The disregard for her choice continues.
Marriage ≠ Consenting To Sex
On the first night after the wedding, Satya expects sexual intimacy as something which is like a ritual and is bound to happen.
“Main apne aap ko apni baidi (wife) ke liye bacha ke rakha hai,” said Satya to Katha on the first night after marriage.
One of the movie’s significant flaws lies in how it portrays Satya as entitled to have sex simply because he is legally wedded to Katha.
This problematic depiction undermines the importance of consent. It fails to recognize that marriage does not automatically grant entitlement to sexual intimacy.
The fact that he refrained from engaging in sexual intimacy before marriage also links marriage as a means to fulfill the sexual desire.
Katha refused to get sexually close, which led Satyaprem to frustration. She tells him that she is asexual, and Satya is shown feeling angry.
He goes around and seeks sympathy from people. He told Katha’s father, “Your daughter doesn’t want to have sex. She will never have sex.”
There are two very serious problems with this single storyline. To begin with, the concept of asexuality is completely looked down upon, and his character’s message to the viewer is, “I am a male, I am married to a woman, and I deserve to have sex with her. It does not matter if she wants to have sex, but by virtue of marriage we must have sex”.
In an attempt to show Katha’s reluctance towards sex, a response to past trauma, the movie failed to emphasize the fundamental message that consent to marriage should never be equated with consent to engage in sexual activity.
By doing so, the film perpetuates the harmful notion that a husband has the right to expect sex from his spouse without explicit consent.
The movie reminded me of conversations with women while researching sexual abuse in a marriage.
The conversations and research suggested how largely society viewed consent to sex as implied in marriage. It was found that husbands forced women to engage in unwanted sexual activities.
Later in the movie, Satya learns that Katha is a rape survivor. Due to past trauma, she expressed a lack of sexual desire. He felt sympathetic, and then the reason not to have sex made sense to him.
The realization that she was not asexual and that there was a possibility of sexual intimacy relieved him. This is nothing but an insensitivity towards women, asexual women, and those who have experienced violence.
The movie showed Satyaprem’s family questioning Katha for not sharing a bed with him; his father indirectly advised Katha to engage in sexual acts with Satyaprem.
This again reinforces, “you have to have sex,” and such forceful messages lead to marital rape and not sex.
These mindsets portrayed in the movie inadvertently reinforce the misconception that marriage automatically implies consent to engage in sexual acts, disregarding the importance of clear communication and a woman’s right to control her body.
Final Thoughts: Refusing Sex In Marriage Needs No Justification
In the context of gender-based violence, particularly marital rape, Satyaprem Ki Katha fails to convey a powerful and meaningful message.
Such representations are barriers to the movement against gender-based violence. India is struggling to criminalize sexual offense in marriage. As a general mindset, rape in marriage is not perceived as rape under marriage.
While I acknowledge that the movie attempted to talk about sexual abuse that occurs in intimate relationships and goes unrecognized, despite its intentions to shed light on consent, gender-based violence, and asexuality, the film failed to do justice to these subjects.
The film’s treatment of asexuality lacked depth, and it only briefly introduced the topic. By doing so, the movie misses an opportunity to raise awareness about asexual identities and the challenges individuals may face.
In the end, the movie ended by presenting NCRB data on sexual violence and stating most of these cases are committed by those who are known, and unfortunately, it conveyed a message that consent holds no importance within a marriage.