Meena: A Role-Model to Bearing Witness
Meena Cartoon is a South Asian children’s show featuring Meena, an inspirational 9-year-old girl from a small village. She is the face behind the Meena Communication Initiative (MCI), which began in 1991 and is a human rights campaign spreading information on issues of education, health and social inequality. Its aim is to bring about change on the severely disadvantaged situation of girls in South Asia through a multi-media entertainment education approach. By collaborating with its country offices in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and India, UNICEF produced 26 episodes in English, Bangla, Nepali, Urdu and Hindi, as well as further animated films, various comic books, posters and radio series (in collaboration with the BBC) that portrayed Meena’s adventures with her family and her village.
Although made for children, Meena Cartoon tackles serious topics such as the importance of immunization, proper sanitation, child marriage, and in the case of the episode “The Girls Came Back”, human trafficking and sexual exploitation. It may seem inappropriate to discuss such issues with children; unfortunately the statistics of close to 2 million children being forced into commercial sexual exploitation, with a large proportion of the statistic coming from Asia, shows the relevance of this topic. The Girls Came Back tells the story of two young girls who return to Meena’s village after two years of “working in the city”. Unbeknownst to their family or the villagers, the girls, who were taken to the city by two strangers with the promise of finding a job, were sold into sex slavery. Having suffered and even contracted a terminal illness during their time of forced prostitution, they are finally rescued by an NGO and are able to come home. After overcoming social stigma and being accepted back into the community with the help of Meena’s family, the episode once again shows the exploiters returning to the village in search for girls to traffic. However, this time, the community comes together, arrests the criminals and vows to forever protect their girls.
Filled with an abundance of themes to analyse, this episode is particularly valuable when looking at through the lens of testimonies and bearing witness. In his paper, Fuyuki Kurasawa describes bearing witness as a “globalizing mode of ethico-political labour”. Rather than giving importance to the juridical aspects, he believes in the works which put together people’s engagement with testimonial tasks that confront difficulties caused by situational or structural violence. He explains that bearing witness comprises of general testimonial practices structured around 5 points: Has the message reached out to people? Has it been understood correctly? Do people care about it? Will it be remembered? Will further suffering be prevented?
The Girls Came Back portrays answering all of these questions positively, showing the village as bearing witness to crimes of sexual exploitation of young girls. Firstly, the girls are encouraged to break their silence and share their story with Meena’s family, and as an extension with the audience. As the girls give their shocking testimony, the aesthetics and rhetoric of the show continues to cater to child viewers. Using a flashback sequence and a voiceover narrative of the young child, the story guides the viewers into the dark streets of a city’s nightlife, ensuring Kurasawa’s second point: correctly interpreting the message. The images continue through the innocent eyes of a child: women in questionable clothing inside crowded rooms, doors slamming, and men walking out from behind curtains. Moreover, although the implications are clear to adult viewers, the diction used ensures children only catch on to relevant information, such as being aware of strangers who made the girls do “bad work”, which made them feel shameful and sick. The understanding is further confirmed, and Kurasawa’s third point, evoking empathy, is demonstrated by Meena’s family showing their concern and support for the children, as well as encouraging them to share their story with the community. This in-turn gives room to accomplish the last two points, as spreading the word around the village allows for more people to remember the incident and prevent it from happening again. The final scenes demonstrate this taking place, when the criminals come back to lure more children into their trap. The village comes together, remembers, and prevents further suffering of others by arresting the perpetrators.
The episode ideally follows Kurasawa’s model of bearing witness as a way of positively impacting its audience and the wider South Asian communities. It clearly articulates the humanitarian policies of UNICEF and MCI’s agenda, as the show is driven by their goal to bring about knowledge, understanding and practices to people regarding the status, rights and treatment of girls. By demonstrating the testimonies of the two victims and the positive steps taken by the villagers in response to it, viewers are encouraged to assume a similar stance when dealing with issues of human trafficking. The episode particularly emphasizes Kurasawa’s last point, in hopes of urging the spectator to prevent further suffering of children due to sexual exploitation. In this sense UNICEF wants its audience to bear witness through means of a television show, which as explained in McCarthy’s book, is a powerful medium to construct civic identities and align individual and governance (be it the State or another regulating body) ideology due to its capacity to reach the mass and disperse ideas on a large scales, allowing viewer’s conduct and attitudes to be shaped. By choosing national channels such as Nepal TV or Bangladesh TV to broadcast Meena Cartoon, UNICEF is able to reach even the most remote areas of South Asia, where such issues are highly prevalent. Since her conception, Meena has become a household name and an icon of change, bringing the South Asia one step closer to successfully bearing witness to the inequalities it faces.