Standing the provincial ground: Childhood and parental authority in Dangal (2016)

Abstract

In the sales pitch for the 2016 blockbuster film Dangal, the gender question was heavily foregrounded to hail the sports biopic of a commonwealth gold medallist from rural Haryana. However, the film was also criticized for the patriarchal control of the desires of the wrestler-daughters, who gradually take cognizance of their potential. This article argues that we need to address a different trajectory to make full sense of the film, in spite of its marketing strategy. Taking its cues from sports biopics, figurations of obstinate provincial masculinity and neoliberal childhood, Dangal revisits much-maligned parental authority to foreground the question of moral resourcefulness. The state and nation in Dangal, I would argue, are decoupled from a provincial vantage point. Standing apart from generic biopics, Dangal’s heroes are in a standoff with the state’s essentially colonial character and its metropolitan kernel. Their public insubordination deserves a robust analysis of the antecedents from within film history, to reassemble Dangal’s urgent critique.