Is Conversation Around Female Emancipation And Women's Agency Changing In India Films?

Thappad and The Great Indian Kitchen: Is popular culture, through representations in films able to question the patriarchal conditioning? A look at  two films Thappad and The Great Indian Kitchen.

A young girl with big dreams rises above the odds to live a life of her dreams - this has been the template of several female-centric films. Though this narrative has been able to address the obvious, a take on deep-rooted patriarchal conditioning was hardly ever addressed. Thanks to movies like Thappad (Hindi, 2020) and The Great Indian Kitchen (Malayalam, 2021) for digging the very core of this patriarchal conditioning and providing a commentary on a culture that has been normalised for generations.

The women in both these films are not ambitious. Nor are they being physically abused by their spouses. They are just normal housewives who are thrown into the frenzy of household chores. But they are not ready to comprise their self-worth and self-respect in the shadow of "this is how it is for women, they need to compromise." Rather they make us think and reconsider this perspective.

Thappad and The Great Indian Kitchen take place in two different households, two different cultures, with one common entity uniting them – the normalised patriarchal paraphernalia.

Amrita from Thappad is a happy-go-lucky housewife, someone who finds solace and satisfaction in the household chores until one slap turns her life upside down. The mist of patriarchal conditioning fades away and she sees things the way she should have, several years ago.

However, is Amrita from Thappad an idealistic character? In a society where divorce even for reasons like domestic violence and extramarital affair is considered a taboo, women will seldom divorce citing irreconcilable difference like Amrita. It is a valid and sensible reason for divorce anywhere but in India.

The Great Indian Kitchen as the title indicates, is more specific to a household kitchen. Only this time, the preparations in the kitchen are not making us drool. Rather, it sends a low blow in the gut.

Thappad and The Great Indian Kitchen

Picture Credit: YouTube

The Great Indian Kitchen starts with the abruptness of an arranged marriage. The bride and the groom remain nameless, maybe to enhance our relatability with the characters (let’s just call her she). She enters the kitchen and joins her mother-in-law as the new kitchen-assistant. She, like Amrita finds happiness in the service of the men of the family. But when her mother-in-law leaves to take care of her pregnant daughter, the entire burden of household duty falls on her shoulder. The incessant toiling in the kitchen takes over her mundane routine. She is tasked with meeting specific food demands of the men, not just food but also other domestic chores. The immense load of work exhausts her yet she continues to be treated like a second class citizen.

She expresses her desire to work as a dance teacher only to be casually dismissed by the men in the family, because if she works, who will look after them!

The suffocation reaches the brim of her tolerance and she finally breaks down, walking away powerfully from that ‘kitchen’ and that home.

It is interesting to note how the film also does not have a background score other than the utensils clanging, and squelching and sloshing of wipe-cloths. That’s why the film feels so real because if a housewife had a background music it would be this!

In a particular scene in Thappad, Amrita spills her heart out and holds everyone accountable for what happened, her mother, her grandmother and the entire generation that has passed on this patriarchal notion and denied its toxicity. The similar can be interpreted from The Great Indian Kitchen where the camera pans through all the photos of the ancestors of the family hung on the wall. The background soundtrack is again of the clanging utensils and squelching and sloshing of wipe-clothes, indicating that it has been happening for generations.

Both these films bring out the horror in the ordinary. The women in these films value their worth and are not ready to confine themselves in the drudgery of household work where they are treated like second class citizens. They rise above the taboo surrounding them and create a world for themselves where they have a choice, where they have respect.

A world where women own themselves and stand-up against the smallest injustice is still in the making, I don’t know about you but I can’t wait to live in that world!

 Anjali Pillai is a 22 year old techie and part time movie blogger from Bangalore. The views expressed are the author's own.