If we want to eliminate sexual assault in Myanmar, we need to start holding artists and institutions that promote rape culture to account, writes Aye Min Thant.
Rape culture is alive and well in Myanmar. Need proof? Look no further than the film Kyi Lay Kyi – a film directed by directed by Pyi Hein Thiha that is now playing in cinemas around the country.
Boiled down to its core, this is a “comedy” about attempted rape. The plot follows the romantic escapades of a group of villagers, focusing on two men, the corrupt village head and a miserly villager, and two women, an unemployed gossip and a spinster loan shark. The village head likes the gossip, the miser likes the loan shark, but their feelings are not reciprocated.
After some hijinks, the men confess their feelings to the wrong women, and in a surprising turn of events, the women respond positively. However, consent is apparently not sexy, so the two men keep trying to pursue the women who rejected them. The women, who still think they have found mutual love, plan their respective weddings.
The men of the village gather to discuss how to deal with this problem of being loved by the wrong women. The village head says something along the lines of: “If you can’t seduce the woman you actually want, just go up to her bedroom and hit her on the head. I’m the village head, and I’ll overlook whatever crime you commit.” The audience laughs.
https://youtu.be/eGa3daheSeY
The group of men decide that this rape plan is too rapey, and they settle on a slightly less rapey rape plan. The two men convince the women that like them to elope on the same night with a plan to switch women in the dark. The “punchline” of the movie is that the two would-be rapists don’t succeed due to a “hilarious” mix-up that occurred while they were literally attempting to kidnap, forcibly marry, and presumably rape the two women who had expressed nothing but disdain towards them for the last hour and forty-five minutes of the movie’s runtime.
“Unfortunately,” they marry the women who consent to marry them and are sad for the rest of their lives. Hilarious.
This movie premiered as the demands for justice for the rape and murder of two Kachin school teachers, Maran Lu Ra and Tangbau Hkawn Nan Tsin, stretches into its fourth year. It premiered as accusations of rape as a weapon of war being used against ethnic minority women in conflict areas reaches epidemic levels.
Take out the sound effects and puns, and it is not difficult to reimagine Kyi Lay Kyi as a tragic commentary on how corruption, abuse of power, and male entitlement can ruin the lives of rural women in Myanmar. The wants and desires of the women in the movie are incidental. They do not matter and are instead an obstacle for the male characters. In presenting the male characters as funny, charming, and ultimately sympathetic, the movie endorses sexual coercion and violation.
Despite the lighthearted tone and popularity of this movie, it is clear that Myanmar people are concerned about rape. Since returning to Myanmar from the US almost two weeks ago, I have received lectures from all my female relatives warning me about the dangers Yangon holds for a young woman like me. They warn me against riding the buses and taking taxis, for fear of strangers who may choose to be perverts. They tell me not to walk around in the evenings, lest someone see me and decide to make assumptions. They criticize my clothing choices, even the shirt and shorts I wear to bed, because “there are men around” who apparently cannot be trusted not to violently attack and assault me, even when those men are family.
Add some sound effects and puns, and we could make a comedy about a hapless American girl learning to be a proper Myanmar woman.
This makes me furious, but I do understand that they mean well. More than likely, they have been victims of sexual violence themselves, as it is almost impossible for a woman to be able to live her life completely free from sexual abuse. In Myanmar, the female response has been to wear fear and shame like an armor, so that not only are they an integral part of the lives of most Myanmar women, fear and shame are virtues to strive for.
But cultivating a system in which girls and women must take on the responsibility and consequences of preventing the choices of grown men is to invest in a system that is designed to fail.
The #MeToo movement that started in the US and has since spread is a testament to the failures of such a system. A single tweet telling survivors of sexual assault that they are not alone quickly ballooned into millions of tweets, many of them containing stories of sexual harassment and abuse. The sheer volume of the tweets, Facebook posts, and other declarations made it abundantly clear how pervasive this problem is in America. As a consequence, abusers have lost their jobs, schools and workplaces are rethinking their policies, and people beyond activist circles are having serious conversations about the need to change cultural norms.
A similar system is failing Myanmar women, but we have yet to have a widespread conversation about it.
It is unlikely a single person or article can spark such a large conversation, but I hope that anyone who watches Kyi Lay Kyi or reads this analysis will see how mass media continue to enforce rape culture in Myanmar society. Sexist movies, where women are seen as objects to be won by men who just need to be persistent enough, are a global problem, and they contribute to a world in which an estimated 1 in 3 women experience sexual violence in their lifetime.
It would be silly to say that movies cause rape – only the actions of rapists cause rape – but it seems just as silly to say that movies do not influence our views of right and wrong. If a major comedy with famous stars in it promotes a narrative that makes light of a form of sexual violence that is all too common in Myanmar, then some audience members will be influenced to believe that this form of assault is not that big a deal.
Kyi Lay Kyi is not unique. It is a cog Myanmar’s sexist movie machine. Myanmar people, especially girls and women, deserve better. If nothing else, I hope this review makes you feel less alone the next time you are the only one not laughing while watching a Myanmar comedy.
Aye Min Thant is a Yangon-based Myanmar studies scholar, activist, writer, and professional feminist killjoy. She writes about her experiences of returning to her hometown after almost 18 years abroad at burmeseforeigner.com.
