Prison Heat
Warning: This post contains content that may be found objectionable by some sensitive souls.
It was late 90’s. I was a grad student – and I had a car and the cable TV… HBO, Sundance, USA, Showtime, Comedy Central, and… hold your breath… Playboy.
During then, this one time, we (my gang and I) saw this movie called Prison Heat or something like that.
It’s about a group of innocent female travelers who go on a vacation to one of those police states, somewhere in the Middle East, play innocent mules to drug smugglers, get arrested by the corrupt army officials and get exploited by the prison guards – especially this angel faced babe named Lori Jo Hendrix (can never forget that name) who plays an uncorrupted american girl – she wears powder pink night gowns in the prison as a protection from evil wardens and their probing batons.
Now, you might be thinking… what the eff am I talking? (and if you aren’t thinking that it’s about time you did.)
Honestly, I forgot all about this movie until I read this appalling bit of news the other day.
The Supreme Court on Friday directed the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to restrain all television news channels, Zee News in particular, from telecasting purported nude photographs of actor Monica Bedi allegedly shot in bathroom when she was detained in Bhopal jail.
A three-Judge Bench comprising Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, Justices Tarun Chatterjee and R.V. Raveendran passed this interim order on an urgent petition filed by Monica Bedi to restrain the electronic media from telecasting or publishing her objectionable photographs, shot allegedly by a hidden camera in the jail bathroom when she was lodged in the prison in connection with a passport forgery case.
Pointing out that the petitioner had not listed the various news channels, the Bench asked the petitioner to implead the news channels concerned and gave liberty to file additional affidavits.
Senior counsel K.T.S. Tulsi mentioned the case before the Bench and said that the Zee News channel repeatedly telecast on August 23 purported photographs of the actor that was objectionable.
He contended that by telecasting the photographs, the channel had destroyed the petitioner’s modesty for all times to come. He said there were hundreds of news channels and she was afraid that the photograph might be telecast in other channels also. He said that these were not “pornographic channels” and they must have some sense of responsibility. These channels could not misuse press freedom like this, he said.
When the Bench wanted to know whether the petitioner had filed any complaint with the police or the Union Government, counsel said she had no time for this as the channel had been telecasting the photographs since Thursday and there was a possibility of other channels picking up them.
He said it was shocking that this (the alleged photographing) could happen when Monica Bedi was in jail. Contending that her right to life and liberty guaranteed under Article 21 had been violated, he sought a direction from the court to the Centre and the Madhya Pradesh Government to order a high-level inquiry into the entire incident.
The petitioner also sought a direction to Zee News to pay punitive damages to her for the loss of prestige, reputation, mental agony and trauma caused to her by the telecast of the objectionable photographs.
How low can you go Zee News? SHAME ON YOU!
And what’s the difference between the thurky prison wardens in that cheesy softcore Z grade movie I saw, and the honorable prison wardens manning the Madhya Pradesh Jails?
This whole TRP lusting media decadence reminds me of another movie – Tesis, where Alejandro Amenabar predicted and depicted exactly this!!
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
@wb… any chance ur frm RPI….??:-?
No Amit.
anything for news… even if it’s selling your soul… wait… they already have… money, wb… is the worshiped God of Tinseltown… and now of the media in general… I was watching “Headline News” and you should have seen to believe how groteseqely the camera of Headline news captured the blood and bones of those killed in Hyderabad… sponsorships and advertisements ke liye money bosses kuch bhi karega… I had to switch channels immediately because of the kind of visual coverage “Headline News” was giving to its viewers. Shock means Advertisements. Advertisements is money. Money is God. Full Stop.
Wb: Media is said as fourth and very strong column which supports Democrarcy but its very very sad that MEDIA has sold its soul in the market and now mostly its equally mad and insane and imature and polluted as minds of criminals. Criminals dont think twice how their actions will affect the other people in the society and all they care is their own greed/need/lust no matter what cost society pays for their bad actions.
MEDIA is doing same thing. Its sad these big Media houses have become driver/conductor of Delhi’s Blue line buses who are ignorant and busy in leaving other Blue buses behind so that they can bring maximum profit to owners of buses.
As a police man should be given severe punishment and more severe than a criminal should get because Police man is not supposed to do crime in same way MEDIA should be given harsh punishment because their responsibility is to generate awareness among people. They are busy in spreading message and that too graphically how a woman takes bath.
Its sad. very sad.
Thanks for covering it.
Morality is at stake and Media is biggest culprit. Its mis-using its power.
Horrible news broadcasting….i still think the Doordarshan news was “NEWS”…i would get snippet of eberything in those 30 mins and if i needed more…i would wait for the next day newspaper….but the problem is with this 24X7 news channels…how can you have “news” 24X7…and any stupidity is considered “news”. Almost all news channels news start with Bollywood and end with Bollywood. Retarded
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1?
Wb,i am sure you used honorable for Indian prison wards as a pun…Because Police in general under any garb and department is pits..At times i wonder what happens to the ideals of all those passing out of Civil Services Academy in Mussorie after joining the system..They don’t bow, they bend backwards they don’t stoop they start scraping..And the infection is picked up down the line..And this lack of leadership is one of the major bane of our administrative set-up..For that matter of other fields also..Media tomtoms of self-regulation and hates to be supervised or regulated by an external agency,especially government one..Fair enough..But what kind of self-regulation is this..Media is behaving as if it is on chemical high and willing to sell its mother also for an additional and incremental kick..And it has its own house in a shambles but is holding media-trials on regular basis..And who are those media planners who buy media space or TV time..Have they no conscience..Are those post-graduate,desi or foreign returned professionals so boneless as not to have guts to resist the onslaught or give new direction to the system? If not then what’s the use of cursing our predecessors for leaving us with such a corrupt and commercial legacy!We seriously need to stem the rot!Maybe a voice here, a protest there will somehow become a swell..Till then efforts like yours,howsoever miniscule(even in raising such an issue couched in cinematic backdrop)is commendable and a ray of hope to be followed.
Oz, RK, OM, Krysh // Thank you for your inputs. Appreciate it.
This particular bit of news bothered me to no end. Krysh is right – I needed time to articulate these thoughts but was impatient to wait to voice my unhappiness in a more structured manner. Allow me to do that now.
My opinion is that this issue is a monstrous chimera created out of more than one problem.
1. The power of media and its corruption
2. The unlawfulness of the lawkeepers
3. The invasion of personal privacy due to the advent of technology
Let’s ;look at them one thing at a time.
1. The power of media and its corruption
Media is a huge industry. The owners of newspapers, TV studios and production companies are among the biggest global companies competing for the last dollar. Demand for news is increasing exponentially, and conversely the window of news production time is becoming smaller, and smaller. Media is a product that is changing everyday. News is becoming entertainment – coverage is becoming *embedded*, journalists – driven by parochial agenda – are becoming insular. Morality is at stake and Media is the biggest culprit.
RK’s comments, as always, are bang on the money!
Just look at the way the equation has changed. On the one hand, the broadcast media has grown bigger, reaches further, reports faster and longer, and does all that with fewer constraints than it had during its print days. And on the other hand the government has become weak, its powers being distributed and shared with a so called coalition, and is not exactly what it had been before – before the dumbing down of MSM.
This is a unfortunate shift in the balance of power – from law makers to politicians to media barons. And the scales keep yoyoing back and forth. In lieu of self empowerment the only power that can keep Democracy alive is the public scepticism.
Easier said than done – we wake up with them on the radio, they are with us when we are in our cars, we spend our evenings with them, they are everywhere, no matter where you go, at office corridors, at coffee shops, hotel receptions, at airports, at train stations, at your home, on your TV, phone, internet. There’s no escaping the mind bending manipulation – the falsified, skewed, altered, adulterated, massaged, managed, orchestrated, dumbed down, and misinterpreted sound bytes doled out like mashed potatoes; images that are designed to numb, shock and scare you.
The news we consume is designed by a small group of people exercising great power (owners, editors and writers) over what is communicated to the rest of the world.
Sponsors influence what types of stories are presented, how they are presented and when they are presented. Powerful groups, especially governments and large corporations, shape the news in a range of ways, such as by providing selected information, offering access to stories in exchange for favorable coverage, spreading disinformation, and threatening reprisals.
ABC news will always promote the next Disney movie; CNN will always bring you the breaking news on Hollywood; Fox News will always slander democrats; the question is – who owns who?
CNN network, Time Magazine, AOL, Amazon, New Line Cinema, Warner Studios…. all owned by one entity that’s designed to appear like multiple entities. Ruprt Murdoch alone owns half of the global media.
What drives them? Oz said it – Money! Consumerism! Advertisements!
Given the corruptions of power, irresponsibility of the mass media, and the limitation of choice, how can we go about changing this?
By encouraging alternative media to judge the *verity* of information and by being skeptical of main stream media stories, by protesting in a nonviolent fashion to send the mass media the message… by writing letters, making complaints, opining on dial-in radio shows, demanding presentation of both sides on any issue, by advocating self-censorship, and by changing our news consumption patterns to unlearn our institutionalized thinking. That’s a start!
2. The unlawfulness of the lawkeepers
Now let’s see the legal side of this issue. Police *misusing* their power is nothing new. It happens in US, in UK, in Europe, and in India since the British days.
Krysh is right! Indian loacl police are by and large corrupt. The government of India, for obvious reasons, doesn’t acknowledge this, but the fact is that the majority of our police personnel are corrupt. Yes, we have a penal code, which, unfortunately depends on the same corrupt officials for its functional existence. A system is only as honest as the officials running it.
And, not counting the honesty of its keepers, just how dated is that legal system of ours?
The Police Act of IPC is a 1861 document, while the Prisons Act is dated 1894 – never amended. The Indian Penal Code itself was put in place by Lord Macaulay (who also takes the cake for effectively corrupting our education system) in the form of First Law Commission and came into force in 1862, and our legal and governance sentinels still rule by the same dated draconian laws created by an English man whose sole agenda was to rule our country by oppression and autocracy!!
The panacea to cure this ailment is for the government to take the initiative to acknowledge the inefficiency of this jurassic aged framework, address the problems faced by justice dispensation mechanisms in India, and devise tactical solutions which also have a strategic longevity. For example, 1) establishing specific procedures by which the autonomy of the local police is ensured, thereby eliminating political interference, 2) putting legal mechanisms in place that the wronged can approach to voice their complaints against the police atrocities and thereby initiate impartial inquiries conducted on those cases, 3) approving amendments to the IPC to legally criminalize custodial torture and ratifying the U.N. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT). Let’s srtat with that, lest we become a terminally lawlses state with our justice machinery, our constitutional rights, and our democracy being casualties of crime.
3. The invasion of personal privacy due to the advent of technology
Let’s first look at this from the a holistic perspective – the advances in technology, that is.
Thirty sub years ago, when I was born, my parents had no idea whether their baby’s a male or a female child. They haven’t heard of a thing called sonogram and were happy produce a *surprise* baby without exposing the fetus to any surveillance cameras. That’s not an option anymore – try questioning your doctor about the real necessity of sonography during pregnancy and s/he will classify you as a treehugging weirdo.
That’s just an example to show how intricately entwined are our lives with technological innovations.
Now the case in point – the act of *filming* (someone) to provide sexual arousal or personal gratification – when the person who is being filmed is not aware and/or does not consent, and the person being filmed is in a state of undress, and/or engaged in a private act, in which a reasonable person would expect to be afforded privacy – is not a crime as per Indian Penal Code.
As I know of, there exist no laws in IPC to specifically regulate personal privacy. Current laws and regulations do not cover the required grounds to make this act an offense. We don’t have remedies to penalize 1.) filming for indecent purposes, or 2.) installing a device to facilitate filming for indecent purposes.
Now, thanks to camera phones, a *new wave* of voyeurism is here. News media have uncovered camera phones being used to watch the unsuspecting undress or perhaps cauht in some compromising postion in cars, gyms, rest rooms, shopping mall dressing rooms, hotel rooms, guest houses, beauty parlors, and massage centers. And news media have also used them in uncovering scandals, some real, some fabricated. These pictures are often posted on the internet, and in almost all the cases, the pictures are used without the subject’s permission.
The issue, in fact, is two fold: Hidden cameras used for surviellance vs. misdemeanor. Overtness vs. covertness.
Where should be line drawn to delineate the acceptable versus unlawful intrusions and violations of privacy?
How we get the powers that be to notice this issue? One way perhaps is if someone famous, like say the first daughter, getting caught on such a *candid* camera act, while visiting say a rest room. When a picture of the first daughter appears in a tabloid newspaper, or a tabloid like new channel someting would at last be done about these hidden cameras in those rest rooms. Either they would be made illegal, or the bad publicity would cause people to speak up and protest against the lax of legal coverage, there by putting an end to the source of problem along with the ailing.
After that is done, assuming that nobody would deliberately violate the law henceforth, the next challenge is degunking the *gray* area where privacy, legality and doing the right thing sometimes bleed into each other, creating more chimeras.
Oh teri… itna luuuuuuuuuumba… comment… just kidding
yeah – how’s that for a change? :-)
Wb: thats best comment ever occured in comment section on PFC as far as structure is concerned. Normally in comment section, hardly anyone cares for such structured format. Comment itself covers wider area than the original post. Why not adding it in post, instead of leaving here in comment section?
Courtesy the additional long comment, I’d like to focus on the issue of the power of the media. I’ve always believed that the media is as strong as the peopole. Ab yeh media apne khud ke balboote pe thodi naa khadi hai. Ise chalaati hai public! Why is the news able to serve up all the crap, why is it able to get away with it? Because the people are willing to take it! Agreed that there are some people (i.e. some of us) who are willing to see through the crap. But my thinking is most people aren’t. So the idea should be talk to these people, make them see what is going on. And have them question the media more than anything else. Cynicism can be a virtue if used appropriately!
Now letting the news channels know through letters and radio calls that they’re not upto it is a good idea. But the thing is their content is in their control; they have the choice to decide what they can air. If there are enough people, then I’m pretty sure it’s possible. My solution has been quite simple: just ignore it, turn a blind eye to it and talk to other people so they can ignore it altogether. I want to see if these media can run on their own if the people turn a blind eye to it.