LAW AND LANGUAGE

Film Review (type of project – eg. Newspaper discovery, Film

Review, Reading a Primary Source, etc)

AN ANALYSIS OF PATRIARCHY IN THE GREAT INDIAN

KITCHEN

SUBMITTED TO
Prof. Manohar Reddy (Faculty, Law and Language)

SUBMITTED BY:
Aaron K James (2022-5LLB-03)
Year I
Semester I

NALSAR UNIVERSITY OF LAW, HYDERABAD

 Analyzing The Great Indian Kitchen

Having had a late exposure to the horrors of the patriarchal system, and how it seeks to
enslave the innermost sanctuaries of the spirit of womankind, I was deeply anxious to explore
the horrid social landscape of India in all its feudal residues and anachronistic cultural
practices. It was in this state of yearning to see the true nature of India that I was presented
with a project exploring the themes of any recent movie in my mother-tongue. This,
happening to be a curious task in itself, not least because I had never seen a movie in
Malayalam before, allowed me to continue my research with twofold vigour. Thus, I set out
to use this medium as a means of exploring what I had initially aimed: to dive into the heart
of the patriarchal system; to see with direct eyes what we have had before our eyes our entire
lives—but could not see because of the clouds of inurement obscuring our too-habituated
gaze.

The movie I found in this exploration was The Great Indian Kitchen, and it will be the object
of this essay to analyze the portrayals of patriarchy in this film while referring to its critical
reception to yield further insights that the light of my lenses may have missed.

The movie opens with the familiar sight of a man and a young lady having their marriage
arranged for them while they themselves remain near-strangers to each other. The fact that
the sight is familiar must be dwelt upon because that is where the spirit of the movie lies, and
where its greatest artistic heights are reached. Nearly every scene is meticulously crafted so
as to inspire the viewer with a feeling of domestic belongingness—to demonstrate to the
viewer that what is portrayed has been seen and lived by the audience too.11 But the point of
departure from the familiar arises when the camera lingers a little too long upon the fetid
wastes of the kitchen, or the culinary refuse left by men. In this subtle shifting of the focal

1
Vetticad, Anna MM. “The Great Indian Kitchen movie review: Startling, scathing, stunning take-down of
patriarchy and its eternal sidekick.” Firstpost, 18 January 2021, https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/the-
great-indian-kitchen-movie-review-startling-scathing-stunning-take-down-of-patriarchy-and-its-eternal-
sidekick-religion-9213131.html.
point, the domestic practices with which the viewer may have lived all their lives suddenly
lose their warm colour and take on the existentialist mood of the absurd. 2

In researching the critical reception of the film, one accusation which I expected, but did not
find leveled, was that the director, Jeo Baby, is a man who seeks to convey a feminist
message through the daily lives of women—a matter of which he cannot be too acquainted.
However, reflecting upon the movie, it must become evident why no one brought that charge
against him. Throughout the film, we are shown the sinister ways by which men enmeshed in
the patriarchal structure impose their will upon the women through polite smiles and
suggestions.3 Jeo Baby’s consciousness of these forces playing upon the subject he portrays is
remarkable and exhibits his powers of empathetic observation. One who is not the object of
oppression can scarce feel its invisible strings guiding their hands. Therefore, to accuse him
of misrepresenting the problem of womankind would be to silence the most capable of men
from trying their best to ally themselves with the feminist cause.

After all, dismissing a work of art because of the artist’s political identity (that is, his gender)
is a reactionary response that drives to the extreme a heuristic that loses its vitality when
stretched beyond the confines of rationality. And in counter-reaction, it may very easily be
said that The Author Is Dead4 and that, no matter who the auteur of a film may be, the content
remains the same, detached and transcendent of all identifications that may rest on the
extraneous being who happened to produce it. To synthesize both these views, let us concede
that authorial identity does have an effect on the content and reception of art, since the
cultural hemisphere that a man inhabits is fundamentally different from that of a woman, who
would craft the scenes through a different light. Therefore, it is important to understand the
artist’s identity and biases, but solely as a means of piercing through the distortions of
politics.

2
Camus, Albert. “Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus.” University of Hawaii System,
https://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil360/16.%20Myth%20of%20Sisyphus.pdf. p. 10
3
C, Alamelu, and Lourdes Antoinette Shalini. “The Great Indian Kitchen: Serving of an Unpalatable
Tale of Male Chauvinism in Home.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies, vol. 12, no. 4, 2022, p.
705. https://tpls.academypublication.com/index.php/tpls/article/view/2808/2306.
4
Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” 1967.
https://sites.tufts.edu/english292b/files/2012/01/Barthes-The-Death-of-the-Author.pdf.
Returning to the film, the fact that the men orchestrating the oppression do not use harsh and
violent means is an interesting phenomenon which will also be relevant later. Patriarchy is
not practised solely by virtue of the physical greatness of those who profit by it, nor by the
vehemence of wrath which obliges submission. It is not the individual who says ‘Don’t get a
job yet. Let us first think about it’, who is powerful. Nothing in those words coerces the
listener to make a material choice regarding their employment. It is rather the structure which
both the subject and object inhabit that allows these gentle reproaches to take on the character
of an imperial ordinance. The patriarchal system, which spreads from the day of one’s birth
through the incessant bombardment of patriarchal values and cultural practices, uses the
shared assumptions of masculine superiority to prop up commands that violate the autonomy
of women.

“One is not born, but rather becomes a woman. No biological, psychological or

economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is
civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and
eunuch, which is described as feminine.”5

It is in that ecosystem of patriarchal memes (understood in the sense of meme theory) 6 that
oppression can thrive. Jeo Baby portrays this perfectly.

Where he falls catastrophically short, however, is in the alternative he presents to the

patriarchal system. If patriarchy is an experience that subsists upon cultural values, feminism
to him is a performance that is far removed from any such supporting ecosystem. He depicts
the underlying structure of patriarchy and how it results in oppressive action with the
brilliance of an insightful artist, but fails to see that the feminism he propounds is a hollow
superstructure of a foundation which doesn’t exist. Liberation, as experienced by the lead
female, culminates merely in a dance performance where feminist themes are sung. Her
dramatic walk from her house is a single action; and, to a certain extent, so is her new
profession as a dance teacher. There is no shot in the film that shows her new life as lived in
the monotony of menial tasks and chores. It is in those events that real liberation occurs, not
in the revolutionary proclamations of liberty on a stage or in the act of escaping from her
marital house. The liberated female life is coloured by feminism and is guided by its
assumptions in every action; thus, it would have been the very banality that subsisted
5
Beauvoir, S. (1949). The Second Sex. London: Oxford Press, 97, quoted in supra note 3
6
Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. OUP Oxford, 2006. pp. 189-201.
 
throughout the movie, when shown in a new and liberated manner, that would have driven
home the fact that she is, indeed, free.

On a similar note, critics7 have also levelled the charge that feminism, in this film, is
portrayed as an action falling starkly outside the norm. There is no way to change the system
itself; one seems only to be able to make performances outside it. And those who do can only
do so by running away and discarding all their old ways of life in the process. At no point
does the film show that the everyday man and the everyday woman may have their lives
transformed by the slow injection of feminist assumptions into their throught processes.
Everything outside of the patriarchal structure is shown as flamboyant and revolutionary; yet
it is, as we have discussed earlier, in the unexceptional circumstances of life that change is
actually substantial.

In summary, the best way to describe Jeo Baby’s approach to this film may be through Alvin
Gouldner’s biting remark upon the renowned sociologist, Talcott Parson, who, having written
extensively on the prevailing social structure, failed to make use of his instruments in
analyzing social change:

“Indeed, the extent to which Parsons’ efforts at theoretical and empirical analysis of
change suddenly lead him to enlist a body of Marxist concepts and assumptions is
nothing less than bewildering . . . It almost seems as if two sets of books were being
kept, one for the analysis of equilibrium and another for the investigation of
change.”8

Such may be the case made against the director of this film, with the word Marxist being
replaced by radical and performative feminism.

7
“Film review: 'The Great Indian Kitchen' discusses gender issues and patriarchal values in
relationships.” Frontline, 26 February 2021,
https://frontline.thehindu.com/arts-and-culture/cinema/malayalam-indian-movie-the-great-indian-
kitchen-film-review-kerala/article33765965.ece.
8
Quoted in Mills, C. W. (2000). The sociological imagination. Oxford [England: Oxford University
Press, taken from Alvin W. Gouldner, 'Some observations on Systematic Theory, 1945-55,' Sociology
in the United States of America, Paris, UNESCO,1956, p. 40.