About

The Medium

We Are Angry was produced by Digital Fables, a multimedia production house interested in making compelling stories with a wide range of media to add context and depth.

There has been a surge in multimedia storytelling in reportage and memoirs from both mainstream media like the New York Times and independent initiatives like Cowbird and CDS. The Electronic Literature Organization and others have long been fostering transmedia/transliteracy/new media/hypertext narrative fusions of video, art and games. Yet rarely is the wealth of media available - photographs, video, soundbites, soundscapes, good old fashioned writing, background facts and editorials, statistics, graphics, cartoons, animation, and more - all used in fiction. Nor are other realms of art - visual art, performance art, music - very often fused with text to create a new storytelling experience that technology now enables.

Why? We are living in mixed media times and yet rarely do we find the media coalescing in a truly integrated and artistic way, a way that could take storytelling - especially issue-based storytelling - to another level, not replacing books or the linear text experience, but offering another construct.

We Are Angry is an attempt, a humble first attempt, at doing this: creating 360 degree digital fiction.

The Message

Digital Fables is spearheaded by Lyndee Prickitt, an American woman who has lived in India for nine years. As a woman, a mother of a daughter and a multimedia journalist, the message of We Are Angry is as important as the medium, digital fiction.

After the upsettingly brutal December 16, 2012 gang-rape in New Delhi people in India, and beyond, felt a need to express their anger, fears and deliberations about why this was happening. Women and men took to the streets to put a voice to their anger. Social media swelled with introspection and pontification. Anonymous mourners created real life and online commemorations. Movie stars satirized and campaigned. Artists painted street walls and canvasses. Actors staged plays in local parks and international cultural festivals. Screenwriters wrote movies. Singers sang.

The conversation across the nation changed. Women and their rights was not just a matter for earnest do-gooders and NGOs to beat on about, but the topic du jour and the inspiration for a panoply of expression for weeks and months. And then the din quietened. People tired of talking about how women, at home and abroad, have been and should be treated.

We Are Angry is an effort to keep the conversation alive - fusing traditional fictional text storytelling with other media, bolstered by real news content and annotations, and showcasing a range of art and expression from a team of people who want to harness their anger and work creatively for change.

Table Of Contents

JAW DROPPING ENLIGHTENMENT

Some of India's less progressive minds tackle
the problem of rape

"It is sometimes right and sometimes wrong." -
Babulal Gaur, Home Minister Madhya Pradesh
"Boys will be boys, they make mistakes... Will you hang them for rape?" -
Mulayam Singh Yadav, Samajwadi Party chief
"Just because India achieved freedom at midnight does not mean that women can venture out after dark." -
Botsa Satyanarayan, INC legislature from state assembly of Andhra Pradesh
"Rapes take place also because of a woman's clothes, her behavior and her presence at inappropriate places." -
Asha Mirje, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and a member of the Maharashtra Women's Commission
"I have not seen a single incident or example of rape with a respected lady." -
Manohar Lal Sharma, defense lawyer in Delhi Dec 16, 2012 gang rape case

For more read:

Short skirts, bad stars and chow mein: why India's women get raped - Reuters

Political potshots: Why me, asks modern woman - Times of India

Shut up, please! - Newslaundry.com

C R Y I N G   W O L F

P R O S T I T U T E

A T T E N T I O N
S E E K E R

J I L T E D
F I A N C E

V E N D E T T A

M E N D A C I T Y

F I R E D
M A I D

D I S A P P R O V I N G
P A R E N T S

X
Click the words for more

The tyranny of tradition

"What drives otherwise-decent people to suffocate or drown newborn girls? Simply put, girls are often an unbearable burden. The practice of giving dowry for marriage is entrenched in all strata of society, and dowry demands can financially cripple poor families. In some parts of India, ancient property laws mean that only sons can inherit land. Through this cultural lens, sons are inevitably viewed as a form of family insurance. Sex-determination techniques mean that parents don't even need to wait for their girls to be born before killing them." (The Lancet 2/2011).
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TO BE USED

Click on the pictures for more.

Artist: Siddharth Sarathi

"Nirbhaya" is one of the many nicknames given to the Dec 16 rape victim as it's illegal to publicise a rape victim's real name. Other nicknames were, Damini (lightning), Jagruti (awareness), Amanat (treasure).

child_marraige Form Video Sexual Abuse cradle_to_grave HITTING FETUS RIP

The tyranny of tradition

"In countries like India, female infanticide is perpetuated by a fierce social pressure that favours boys. But what drives otherwise-decent people to suffocate or drown newborn girls? Simply put, girls are often an unbearable burden."
(The Lancet 2/2011)
Read More

Women in India are routinely asked to give their husband or father's name on forms and applications - whether it be official tax forms, bank applications, a doctor's office registration, even resident association membership forms - underlining the inference that women are not individuals of equal status to men, but the possession or wards of men.
Read more

CRADLE TO GRAVE

Many Indian women are trapped in the
dark ages

"It's a miracle a woman survives in India. Even before she is born, she is at risk of being aborted. As a child, she faces abuse, rape and early marriage and even when she marries, she is killed for dowry. If she survives all of this, as a widow she is discriminated against and given no rights over inheritance or property." Read more