Power
Directed by Jeanny Gering (2014)
Film Review
Power is a disturbing documentary about a South African martial arts expert Debi Stevens and her efforts to fight India’s rape culture by teaching Indian girls to defend themselves. The film was produced following the 2012 gang rape and murder of a 23 year old physiotherapy intern on a Delhi bus.
In addition to showing excerpts from some of Stevens’s classes, Power provides disturbing insights into a cultural framework that makes it “okay” for 75% of India’s urban males population to sexually assault women. As in the Middle East, India’s extremely patriarchal and misogynist culture, combined with a large population of permanently unemployed males seems to set the stage for this kind of violence against women.
I found this film particularly instructive in view of recent publicity about migrants committing group sexual assaults in Cologne – in a variant of the Arab rape game Taharrush (see It’s an Arab rape game called Tarrarush).
Jyoti Singh‘s attackers were neither Arab nor Muslim but Hindu.
The Most Revolutionary Act 