Deconstructing Domestic Violence in Bollywood

• Published in: Crossings Vol. 15; no. 1
• Main Author: Rohini Zakaria Oishee
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: ULAB Press 01.12.2024
• Subjects: Bollywood; domestic violence; feminist criticism; marginalization; patriarchy
• ISSN: 2071-1107; 2958-3179
• DOI: 10.59817/cjes.v15i1.584

Instances of domestic violence against women persist globally, particularly prevalent in various forms across South Asia. It is a topic that has gained attention in various forms of media, including Bollywood movies. One of the recent Bollywood productions, Darlings (2022), directed by Jasmeet K. Reen, addresses this issue differently than its predecessors. A grim subject like domestic violence which is rarely material for humor has been presented through a dark comedic lens while bringing back the Muslim social genre. This paper seeks to assert by referring to western and non-western feminist discourse that, despite successfully subverting the popular representation of women in feminist revenge narratives and emphasizing the perpetuating maltreatment of women in South Asian patriarchal households, the film could not liberate itself from the two oppositional representations of women – “angel” and “madwoman” (in case of Darlings, it is murderer), popularized by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar in The Madwoman in the Attic. Concurrently, while correlating Simone de Beauvoir’s positioning of women in her influential text, The Second Sex with Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s postcolonial alignment in “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” the paper will also argue that, in spite of raising awareness about violence against women and deconstructing the stereotypical portrayal of domestic violence in Bollywood, the film inadvertently normalizes intimate partner violence (IPV) and potentially undermines the seriousness of this critical social issue.