What are your thoughts on the Parvathy Menon-Kasaba issue?

Parvathy harassed for comments on Mammootty's Kasaba: Another example of how misogynistic show business is

by Sharanya Gopinathan

Have you been seeing the amazing hashtags #FeminichiSpeaking, #OMKV and #StandUpStars on your Twitter feeds this week and wondered what on earth is going on? It all began with a case of what in school we would have gleefully called "guilty conscience.

Close on the heels of winning Best Actress at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Malayalam actor and all-round rockstar Parvathy was speaking at an open forum at the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) on Sunday. She discussed misogyny in movies, the need for more women to get into filmmaking, and the urgent and obvious need for the film industry to create better working conditions for women.

She referenced a film she had the "bad luck to watch recently, and said that, "with all respect to the makers, the film disappointed [her], as it featured a great actor spitting totally misogynistic dialogues.

Now, note that Parvathy didn't even mention the movie, Kasaba, or the star, Mammootty, by name until she was encouraged to do so by filmmaker Geethu Mohandas, even though she would have been perfectly within her rights to scream this from the rooftops right from the get-go. She did take the time to mention that she gives the filmmakers "all respect, but this lone, highly justified comment about Kasaba was enough to bring all the creeps crawling out of the woodworks, and boy, were they in a hurry to out themselves.

Self-aware fans immediately came to Mammootty's defence, and trolled her viciously in response. Kasabahad faced flak from several quarters back when it was released in July 2016, because it depicted superstar Mammootty verbally abusing various woman characters, including grabbing a policewoman by the belt and threatening to punch her so severely that it would apparently result in immediate menstruation.

And unlike when Tamil superstar Vijay recently stepped in and asked his fans to stop trolling The News Minute founder Dhanya Rajendran after she said she didn't like his movie Sura, Mammootty has remained stonily silent and appears to have nothing to say to his clearly loyal and toxic fans.

Maybe it's because it wasn't just anonymous online trolls who attacked Parvathy in the week since she made her excellent comments, but also several notable and even hitherto respected Malayalam film industry insiders.

Kasaba director Nithin Renji Panicker took to the film's official Facebook page to say that this was Parvathy's attempt to become popular by shaking a big tree. But it's fairly clear, from her cool body of work, independent rise in the industry and the fact that she became the first Malayalam actor to ever win a silver peacock at IFFI where she bagged the Best Actress award just this November, that she needs to shake no trees to get famous or be recognised for her talent.

The movie's producer, Joby George, said with all the creativity of troll commenters on feminist websites, If Geethu aunty and Parvathy aunty tell me the dates of their birthday, I will show Kasaba in full house as my birthday gift."

Then there was film director Jude Anthany Joseph respected by nobody ever since he was comically arrested earlier this year for abusing Soumini Jain, the mayor of Kochi. On Monday, Joseph tried his hand at veiled insults without naming names, but it became fairly clear to the public and the media that he was referring to Parvathy as he began speaking about "circus monkeys who worked in industries that they now cry exploited them, and that they should have just stayed in the forest the whole time.

Veteran actor Siddique attempted an elegant neither-here-nor-there on Facebook on Monday, but ended up very firmly there amongst the misogynists and trolls. He announced that it was clear that those trolling Parvathy were on the wrong side of the debate, but that "it is Parvathy who paved the way for this situation, so the responsibility to control them or react to them is also on her.

Victim blaming 101, basically.

It's so strange to hear an actual adult saying that the statement "I watched a sexist movie recently is an invitation to be brutally harassed and trolled. He also decided to play the Self-Effacing Senior card, unnecessarily admitting that he doesn't have Parvathy's talent or English-speaking abilities, but that he still requests her as a veteran actor to look at the film industry as "us and not them. "I don't know English as well as you by the way, is a polite way of saying "you are a snobbish upstart and I'm the real deal in Kerala.