Violence, Patriarchy, and Gender in Cinema: Anthropological Perspectives on Film Interpretation

Cinema is never just entertainment. Every frame carries a point of view, and that point of view usually decides who gets to act and who exists to be looked at. Visual anthropology takes this seriously, treating films as cultural texts that reveal how societies think about gender, power, and violence. Nowhere is this clearer than in the way mainstream cinema, particularly Bollywood, has handled patriarchy and the representation of women.

Why anthropologists take cinema seriously 🔗

Films reach audiences at a scale few other cultural forms manage. As media consumption has grown more diverse and globalized, its capacity to shape and contest ideas about identity has grown alongside it. Women now make up a significant share of media consumers, and filmmakers have responded by engaging more directly with patriarchy and gender-based violence, even if the treatment of these themes remains uneven. A global study backed by UN Women and the Geena Davis Institute found that women made up less than a third of all speaking characters across popular films from major film industries, India included, confirming that on-screen imbalance mirrors deeper social patterns rather than simply reflecting them.

For visual anthropologists, this matters because film does not just depict culture; it actively shapes how viewers understand their own social roles. A cinema screen becomes a site where cultural, social, and political values are rehearsed and reinforced, which is exactly why questions of representation deserve close, methodical attention rather than casual viewing.

The feminist lens: questions anthropologists ask of film 🔗

Feminist scholarship on cinema grew out of a straightforward concern: women were being under-represented and misrepresented on screen. This concern translates into specific questions that guide anthropological analysis. How are women depicted visually and narratively? Are women’s issues addressed honestly, or reduced to subplots? What does a feminist perspective look like when it actually reaches the screen? How do female characters relate to male ones, and do they exist independently of that relationship? What role do women writers and directors play in shaping these portrayals?

Answering these questions requires more than watching a film once. It requires critical examination, close inspection, and a willingness to question what feels normal. Anthropologists studying gender in cinema typically look for four recurring patterns: objectification, where women exist primarily as visual or sexual spectacle; exclusion, where women’s perspectives are absent from key narrative decisions; silence, where female characters have little agency in their own storylines; and stereotyping, where women are reduced to fixed types rather than complex individuals.

The male gaze: how the camera centres men 🔗

Scopophilia and the spectacle of women 🔗

Much of this analysis traces back to film theorist Laura Mulvey, whose 1975 essay introduced the idea of the male gaze. Mulvey argued that mainstream cinema is built around a masculine viewpoint: male characters drive the plot and control the action, while the camera frames female characters as visual spectacle for both the characters on screen and the audience watching. As a retrospective on the theory explains, this pattern is built into the grammar of filmmaking itself, from how shots are composed to how scenes are edited, embedding patriarchal assumptions into what feels like ordinary storytelling.

Half a century later, the pattern still holds in many mainstream productions. Male characters get interior lives, ambitions, and arcs. Female characters often exist to be rescued, admired, or desired, their presence measured by how much they visually interrupt or support the male protagonist’s journey.

The male gaze in Hindi cinema 🔗

This dynamic is easy to spot across Bollywood genres. Women in mainstream Hindi films have rarely been given independent journeys; their arcs are typically defined in relation to a male lead. Dialogue often does the stereotyping directly. A line from 2 States (2014) generalizes all women as inherently melodramatic. Ra.One (2011) frames its hero as a literal saviour cradling the heroine. Mard (1985) ties masculinity to physical stoicism through lines insisting that a real man does not feel pain. None of these moments are accidental; they are small, repeated signals that train audiences to see strength as male and vulnerability as female.

Stereotypes that outlast genres 🔗

Across nearly every genre, Bollywood has historically depicted women as both physically and cognitively weaker than men, rarely granting them the same credit for intelligence or decision-making. Research on Bollywood’s recurring character types describes a persistent split between the virtuous heroine and the punished “other” woman, often called the Madonna-Whore binary, in which the “good” woman is held up as an aspirational model while any woman who deviates is treated as a cautionary figure. This binary does more than entertain; it quietly instructs audiences on what kind of femininity is acceptable and what kind gets punished.

Common lines reinforce the same message across films: men do not cry, women are emotionally unstable, and male characters exist to rescue female ones. A broader review of research on gender in media confirms that these patterns are not unique to Indian cinema, noting that stereotyping, objectification, and sexualization in media are widespread and consistently linked to harmful real-world effects, from distorted body image expectations to normalized attitudes about who holds power in relationships. For visual anthropologists, this is where film analysis moves from academic interest to social consequence: repeated on-screen patterns can shape how audiences interpret gender roles, consent, and violence off-screen.

When cinema pushes back: alternative narratives 🔗

Confronting patriarchy directly 🔗

Not all filmmaking follows this script. A growing body of work confronts patriarchal violence head-on rather than treating it as background texture. Documentary filmmakers have used cinema to expose honor-based violence and the threats it poses to women’s physical safety, while other films have examined how women navigate religious and legal systems that deny them equal standing. These works are notable for what they refuse to do: they do not soften state failure to protect women, and they do not pretend women are simply passive victims of patriarchal systems. Instead, they sit with the uncomfortable reality that oppressive structures often persist because they are woven into everyday institutions, not because of a single villain.

Rituparno Ghosh and the women-centred narrative 🔗

Within Indian cinema specifically, filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh offers one of the clearest counter-examples to Bollywood’s male-centric formula. Working largely in Bengali cinema, Ghosh built entire films around women’s inner lives rather than treating them as accessories to a male lead. His early work took on subjects considered taboo in mainstream middle-class narratives, including domestic violence and marital rape, and did so without offering easy resolutions. A look at his filmography notes how his films emerged as a powerful counternarrative in a landscape where women were long confined to self-sacrificing or objectified roles. Rather than rescuing his female characters, Ghosh let them carry contradiction, desire, and flawed decision-making, treating them as full people rather than moral symbols.

This shift is not isolated. Broader studies tracing Bollywood’s history show a gradual, uneven movement from women as passive, submissive figures in earlier decades toward more complex and occasionally empowered characters in contemporary films, even as older stereotypes persist alongside these newer portrayals.

Why this critical examination matters 🔗

Reading films critically is not about disliking cinema. It is about recognizing that visual storytelling carries assumptions about who matters, who acts, and who simply appears. Anthropologists who study objectification, exclusion, silence, and stereotyping are not just building academic arguments; they are tracing how mainstream entertainment can normalize gender hierarchies that carry real consequences for women’s safety and status.

This is also why the emergence of filmmakers who reject the old formula matters so much. Every film that gives a woman an independent arc, or that refuses to resolve patriarchal violence with a rescue scene, chips away at a visual language that has dominated cinema for decades. Visual anthropology’s job is to notice both the pattern and the exceptions, and to ask what each one reveals about the society producing it.

What do you think? Think of a recent film you watched. Did the female characters have goals and decisions that existed independently of the male lead, or were they defined mainly through their relationships with men?

References

1. https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2014/9/geena-davis-study-press-release
2. https://theconversation.com/half-a-century-of-the-male-gaze-why-laura-mulveys-pioneering-theory-still-resonates-today-256875
3. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sociology/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2025.1694300/full
4. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10218532/
5. https://www.thedailystar.net/entertainment/tv-film/news/queer-gaze-how-rituparno-ghosh-flipped-the-script-female-characters-3691061
6. https://www.hilarispublisher.com/open-access/analyzing-portrayal-of-women-in-bollywood-cinema.pdf