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Tonight sees the premiere of The People vs Patriarchy on MTV (DStv channel 130) at 9.15pm. A follow-up to The People vs The Rainbow Nation doccie, which was also directed by young filmmaker Lebogang Rasethaba, the film is an incendiary look at gendered violence in South Africa, and it sets out to respond to the #MenAreTrash hashtag.
Once again, the director – along with producer Jasmyn Asvat – took a group of outspoken young people and filmed them as they explored the issue among themselves. Though the film is activist instead of journalistic in nature, with few voices of dissent, it’s a good conversation starter and can be used as an introduction to feminism.
Watch the trailer here:
We managed to catch up with Asvat after the media screening last week, and picked her mind on misogyny in music, premiering on MTV, and being “woke.”
Grethe: You touched briefly on misogyny in music in the film and this is a question I’ve really struggled with as a woman. Why is it that we are okay with, and endorse, and enjoy misogynist music? And it’s not just hip-hop, it’s across the board ... in dance, rock. Why do we like it?
Jasmyn: I don’t have the answer for that, I actually do not have the answer to why we love and consume it. We consume media, all media, it’s not even just music. We consume films, commercials, advertising and everything within media that actually perpetuates violence, misogyny, sexual objectification. We don’t actually as women ever stand up and say anything about it, but I do think that an awareness is being sparked, and I think that there is a massive shift especially with young women. The young women that I spoke to in this film were all like “I will never listen to R Kelly”, “Michael Jackson – sis!” You hear me? There’s been these young voices saying: “I would never listen to these people. Like Robin Thicke who sings about putting molly in our drinks and date raping us.”
So there’s already been a shift. But I dunno why we like it, maybe it’s the tunes, I dunno.
Grethe: I mean, we do call them out when we hear they’ve assaulted women – like in the case of R Kelly and Okmaloomkoolkat. But I’m talking about accepting misogyny in lyrics, even from our “idols”. I mean Drake’s Hotline Bling was complete trash, it was basically about his ego being bruised that a woman wasn’t his booty call anymore.
Jasmyn: But this is the thing, the more we actually have the media calling this out and the people on social media calling these things out, then we start making people aware of it. Children sing along to this stuff, we just keep singing along, but if we stop and go “hey guys this is not cool”, then we can make a change.
Grethe: I get you. And it’s weird because you also don’t want to be that puritanical person who’s like clutching their pearls and going “look at the females dancing!”, but it just seems like something that isn’t being tackled.
Jasmyn: It was also a big thing when we did People vs The Patriarchy for MTV. We had this thing where we’re doing a film for a media channel that basically shows music videos that are shocking. It’s a media broadcaster that does perpetuate a lot of that stuff.
Grethe: So did you speak about that?
Jasmyn: It was something that was raised initially, and then we were like: “Well, if there’s any channel that has to show a film like this it would be an MTV, because that would be the audience you would want to get to watch it, to understand it.” So yeah the is this weird contradiction.
Grethe: So, I’m a bit worried because Monde Twala (vice-president of Viacom Africa) said in his speech before the preview that they didn’t make the film for ratings. I do believe that to an extent, but I do think that “wokeness” has become quite fashionable and I do think that these two documentaries kind of play into that. They know that that’s what the youth is talking. Did you ever feel a bit conflicted that you’re only getting to make these films because now all of a sudden “being woke” is cool?
Jasmyn: So yes, there’s this level of people feeling that being woke is “cool”. But what’s wrong with that? F*ck, we should be woke. We should aspire to be woke and understanding. We all should be Afrotastics. We all should understand poetry to some degree. You know, what is wrong with that? Otherwise what are we saying? That we should aspire to be, you know, closed off, not mindful, not present human beings? I had this massive debate around feminism, and how when a whole bunch of black women speak about it, it becomes “woke feminism”, whereas when a group of white women talk about it, people are like “oh the academics of feminism are talking.” And we need that black African voice. We need the African global voice to be talking around feminism – and I’m talking about men and women.
Grethe: You’re so right ... that’s actually cleared it up for me. I mean for a very long time that’s what feminists wanted. We were always like “I wish it could be cool to be feminist.” And now it is. So I guess we’ve kind of won in a way?
Jasmyn: We have. We’re winning the war slowly. We just have to still be sceptical of men. There are too many allies out there. *laughs*
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