Deconstructing Domestic Violence in Bollywood:

Feminist Reflections on Darlings (2022)

Abstract

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.