There is something rather revealing about the controversy surrounding Janhvi Kapoor and Peddi. The conversation that has followed her admission on Koffee with Karan that she should have spoken out about the sexualisation of her character isn’t about accountability, but rather about where and to whom it belongs.
Kapoor expressed regret over the way her character, Achiyamma, was portrayed, acknowledging that the film’s narrative risked normalising problematic ideas about women and sexual assault. She has also said that she should have used her privilege to challenge the scenes. She is after all, Sridevi and Boney Kapoor’s daughter.
It is an important admission. But it also raises an uncomfortable question: Why does the apology, once again, seem to rest on the woman?
Think about it. An actor does not decide how a scene is framed, where the frame lingers, which angles make it to the final cut, what music accompanies or how a character is presented to the audience. These are the creative decisions made by an entire filmmaking apparatus: the director, a cinematographer, editor, writer and the production team. Yet when the representation becomes questionable, it is the woman on screen who is expected to explain herself. Why did she not know better?
The camera has a gaze, but the woman in front of it doesn’t necessarily control its direction.
And this is where the conversation around Buchi Babu Sana’s Peddi becomes more complicated than a debate about one actor’s choices. It exposes a familiar pattern in how we discuss the objectification of women in cinema and society. We scrutinise the women objectified far more than the people doing the objectifying.
Did she agree to the scene? Why did she wear that? Why didn’t she object? Why didn’t she walk out? Why is she speaking about it now? The questions keep circling back to her, as though she were the primary architect of the controversy.
But what about the men whose brainchild it was in the first place?
Also Read: Peddi is a shame Janhvi Kapoor says she will ‘always carry’
Searching for accountability
There is a peculiar gendered burden of accountability at play here. Women are expected to anticipate the social consequences of their portrayal and in turn protect the audiences from problematic narratives and eventually apologise for participating in them. Meanwhile, the creative decisions often made by a man that shaped the narrative become a mere footnote.
Of course Jahnvi Kapoor is not without agency. She is an established actor and comes from a position of considerable privilege in the industry, a privilege she could have exercised more assertively. A mistake she is all too aware of.
Actors should be able to question scripts, challenge uncomfortable scenes, and demand more responsible representation. But that being said, agency and accountability are not interchangeable.
A woman’s ability to object does not automatically make her responsible for every decision she failed to challenge. Nor should her willingness to introspect become a convenient way for everyone else to escape scrutiny.
There is also the uncomfortable reality of power on film sets. Theoretically, an actor can refuse a scene. In practice, that refusal depends on a lot of things: their standing in the industry, their relationship with the filmmaker, and the imminent consequence of being labelled difficult, especially for a woman.
For every established star who might have the leverage to negotiate, there are countless women who may not or others still, such as Kapoor, who might feel intimidated by the prospect.
What makes this conversation particularly frustrating is that it is nothing new. Indian cinema has a long history of treating women’s bodies as a visual spectacle while giving their characters very little agency. The camera can turn the woman into an object of desire, a plot device, a reward for the male protagonist and then expect the actor playing her to defend the choices made around her.
We have become so accustomed to asking women to take responsibility for the male gaze that we rarely stop to question the gaze itself.
We have seen it play out over the years, with skimpy costumes, waterfall scenes and item songs that don’t move the plot forward. All featuring a woman but always catering to the male gaze.
Janhvi Kapoor can own her regret. But she should not have to carry the collective guilt of an industry that continues to confuse a woman’s visibility with her agency. The woman on screen may be the face of the controversy, but she is not the author of it.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)