The Great Indian Kitchen: Serving of an Unpalatable Tale of Male Chauvinism in Home

Abstract

The feminist movements played a vibrant role in enriching women for gaining self-sufficiency, which significantly influenced society. “With the advent of new feminist theories which reflects the varicoloured making of women’s cinema as the globalised society have adverse effects on women particularly in the developing countries” (Shalini & Alamelu, 2017). The opinions and visions of the movement are expressed through several works. They are also reflected in films as feminist films. The objective of feminist films is to portray the traditional and patriarchal society in which gender inequality, women’s subjectivity, toil and subjugation are expressed in varied forms. Mozhgan Sadat Marandi expounds that, “Filmmakers have opportunities to question, however subtly, the roles and relations of women in society” (Marandi, 2011). The selected film for the present research, The Great Indian Kitchen (2021), deals with traditional and patriarchal family notions and the never-ending tasks of women’s lives in the kitchen. The role played by the protagonist is confined to the kitchen doing her homely traditional duties as her family insisted on foregoing her desire for her career. The Great Indian Kitchen (2021) is a revolutionary movie made subtly to ensure that the audience empathises with the women’s experience in their families. The objective of the present research is to analyse the movie The Great Indian Kitchen (2021) through the lens of liberal feminism.