Behind the Glamour: How Bollywood’s ‘Empowered’ Female Characters Fall Short of Depth

Reema Kagti’s Superboys of Malegaon features a supportive wife, Shabeena (Muskkaan Jaferi), who is winking at the audience for her clarity and agency. You see her court a man, Nasir (Adarsh Gourav), considered a no-gooder initially, and has his heart on another beautiful woman whose family flings doubts upon his ability to move upwards, socio-economically. Inevitably, that relationship fails, and inevitably, he ends up with Shabeena. She tells Nasir that she plans to keep studying law and pursue her career once they are married. She also invests money in his movie, and in return, all she wants is credit as a producer. What is it about this representation, with its fidelity towards Shabeena (rightfully, perhaps) getting exactly what she wants, that is cloying?

The film is not about her, but should the presence feel this hollow? Texture, Shabeena has none. Or an arc. She is a category of a cool and empowered woman you see in glimpses. They think we are that easy to sway?

Of course they do. Look at the Stree franchise. Maddock has mounted a franchise upon this nod towards women, where this aesthetic of empowerment, where women are given enough agency to feel progressive, but rarely enough substance to feel real, is even more pronounced. The first part of Stree, which came out in 2018, was about the story of a courtesan who haunts the men in Chanderi, which means, in a flip, they are the ones who have to adhere to a curfew instead of women. They are comical insinuations that Stree wants to bed them (she also steals their clothes). Ultimately, we learn, what she wants is respect. This is a film that is energised by the discourse of the physical safety of women, yet, why is it shoehorning their lived experience in a universe where the stakes for men are not the same?

Shraddha Kapoor, unnamed through the first film, flits in and out of the story with her mysterious presence, lending love interest duties, fighting and research prowess where it is necessary. In the sequel, we see her take on Sarkata (Akshay Kumar), the main antagonist, through some impressive acquired skills, courtesy of Stree’s ponytail, which she cut to infuse her power into herself. Later, Stree herself appears later to bludgeon the point across.

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And so does Kriti Sanon. Not bludgeon, bite. A major spoiler: In Bhediya (2022), also a part of the same universe, it is Sanon’s character Dr. Anika who turns Varun Dhawan’s Bhaskar into a werewolf. Just like the unnamed woman, and Stree, she is the one in the know—about the moral corruption of the men around her, about the vast consequences of meddling with the ecological system. She is enlightened, but also curiously distant.

Dehumanised women

Is it that hard to allot a woman her inner life? Why do these stories vociferously insist on women’s foresight, only to never contextualise how they arrive at them? This chink, perhaps, is feeble against the guilt of well-intentioned men. The fact that these women are a mystery is built into the plot of the film, so that the reveals and twists feel that much buoyant. It cannot hide director Amar Kaushik’s inability to humanise them.

For Kaushik to sketch out the inner life of a courtesan and women who bear the painful burden of clarity, Hindi cinema could have been a vast resource. It would be unfair to bring in a Pakeezah (1972) and an Umrao Jaan (1981). Only because these iconic films are so few. The stories of these two women are mired in upper caste notions of sexual respectability. The courtesan culture’s later association with sex work would mean that these women would bear the brunt of that marginalisation, too.

Their infatuation with their respective paramours in the story presents an easy reading: redemption is in moving towards sexual exclusivity with that one “respectable” man. Yet, when we see their yearning, the vulnerability that characterises their life, what their reality exposes them to, do we only take away that this hierarchy based on sexual respectability is good?

Or do we think it is glorious that these men move beyond sexual prescriptiveness, to accept how love can cut through these corrosive hierarchies? It is complicated, of course, because it is not both? That is the nuance that underpins women’s desires. You are constantly straddling self-preservation and conformity. Self-preservation through conformity. You would not be able to glean this through our current spate of films.

Spectacle in place of nuance

Sexual propriety has evolved in Hindi cinema decades since these two movies were released. So, have the purgatorial box office demands. These modern action films have replaced nuance with spectacle. The result is somewhat distorted.

In Pathaan (2023), you see Rubai, an ISI agent, played by Deepika Padukone, dressed down to a frilly black bra in a hotel room she and Pathaan (Shah Rukh Khan), a RAW agent, are sharing. This sight of a woman as a winking seductress, and not as a vamp, but in a cheeky display that bolsters her desirability, is nothing new. We are charmed, but desensitised. In a previous scene, she had snapped necks to save his life, as he watched from a respectful distance. We are also privy to her past, how her father, a journalist, was tortured in the West Asia for speaking truth to power.

There is a wishful, escapist quality to these YRF spyverse films. For all their workings, they just replace superheroes with resourceful, hyper-competent men, who are a tad above the structures they are actually in service of. It is nice to see Rubai override the protocol to prevent mass murder along with Pathaan. She might have less screen time, but through her characterisation, at least we get a woman who is flesh and being and not a concept.

But, why does a Pakeezah feel more radical than a Pathaan?

The action genre is very much a male genre, one which plays with their imagination of justice, morality, and intimacy. It is not a genre that is remotely interested in being political, as much as it is in being commercial. Rubai might not be a lampshade role, but maybe the makers noted the needle around the discourse on women’s representation. Maybe feminist aesthetics can be co-opted for profitable ends.

This is a cynical stance, but it is worth asking, how far Pathaan is willing to go to make us uncomfortable with its convictions? There is something to be said about the fact that in our political environment of escalating fascism, where the BJP has tenaciously stoked anti-Pakistan sentiments, Pathaan proposes that an Indian man and a Pakistani woman can desire each other. That the people of an entire country need not be drawn in the same shade. But would we root for Rubai if she were not as sexy, not as glamorous? With the film’s values that is not nearly as interested in being political as much as it is humanistic, is it that hard to digest Rubai’s presence, when she is only trying to save the citizens of Delhi from mass murder?

When was the last time a commercial Hindi film made us uncomfortable?

Vasan Bala’s Jigra (2024) had the potential to espouse this discomfort. An action thriller, its proposal was simple: you have seen the Angry Young Man, now here is an Angry Young Woman. A woman in a male-dominated field, as the internet lingo goes. A commercial flop and a divided consensus amongst critics left the film on shaky ground in Alia Bhatt’s oeuvre. She played Satya, who rescued her brother from a prison in a foreign country that implements the death penalty for the possession of drugs. At one point, she pays homage to Amitabh Bachchan’s Angry Young Man era, by saying “Ab Bachchan Banna Hai”, (Now it’s time to be Bachchan).

Jigra does not shy from the physical and emotional toll of her pursuit, an ordinary citizen who has to perform the extraordinary task of prison-breaking her brother from a guarded institution. Her rage guides her, sustains her. Yet, it is surprising that the film ropes Bachchan so shamelessly. His characters were angry at the system, and those films provided a scathing commentary on the failed economic promises of the Indira Gandhi era. There is not that bite or resonance in Jigra, it is not like it would take it upon itself to question the Indian prison system, which is riddled with its own heartbreaking problems. There is only something singular and specific to an individual who is trying to prove she is exceptional in how far she is willing to go.

Bhatt’s Gangubai Kathiawadi (2022) suffered from the same problem of singularity. Amongst other sex workers in Kamathipura, Gangubai (Bhatt) is proven to be exceptional in how she can tussle with a cruel and exploitative brothel madam. She is a beacon of hope, whose gaze and lighting of the camera often elevate her at the expense of other women in the room.

Here, again, even though the conversation is about the rights of sex workers, it is shown that Gangubai is in a unique position to argue for them, that there is something innately endearing about her. To be fair, neither Bhatt nor Sanjay Leela Bhansali have aligned themselves with a strong political rights-based stance, as opposed to empathy for Gangubai, the real-life person on whom the story is based, and was etched in Hussain Zaidi and Jane Borges’ book.

There is a failure here, of intention, of courage and of moving away from power. You cannot fault these actors—if Bhatt has done a Jigra, she has also done a Raazi (2018), where this exceptionalism, this genius of being a good spy during war, and what it takes you towards, is questioned. If Padukone has done male-centric films like Fighter, Jawan, and Pathaan recently, where she has only a cameo or a side role, she has also done a Piku (2015), which portrays a complicated woman with an obligation to a father with hypochondria. Piku and Sehmat were aspirational in their commitment, in their loyalty, but they were also rooted in a life lived. There is nothing whimsical or fantastical about them.

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What is also curious is how Bollywood has swerved away from one of its profitable genres: romance. It used to be Hindi cinema’s bread and butter, with jokes abound that no matter what the genre, if it’s a Hindi film, it would be a love story. Nobody has said this in a while. The most successful romantic Hindi film was Karan Johar’s Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani (2023), starring Alia Bhatt and Ranveer Singh. It wore its feminism on its sleeve, and was also a drawing drama, which Johar always had the knack to create as larger than life.

The film made enough money for a romantic story, but also, it also only made enough money for a romantic story. This was a genre that was radical for its focus on a woman’s inner life, her desires, and now, no A-lister in Bollywood wants to stroll around it. We can only hope that Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s upcoming Love and War, a director who remains steadfastly committed to his own vision, whether it falls with the majoritarian view or not, is able to conjure something for it.

Ironically, one of the most moving female protagonists in a romantic film has come out of a film directed by a man who otherwise has an incel filmography. Luv Ranjan’s Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar (2023) had a woman, Tinni (Shraddha Kapoor), who was terrified of marriage and joint families, because she had witnessed her mother lose her identity within one. Her financial independence and living situation are not ambitions, as much as protest. When she is engaged to a man, Mickey (Ranbir Kapoor), with a big family, a liberal one, she is put off by how they are trying to infringe upon every aspect of her life. She tries to disengage. There is a limit to Ranjan’s empathy here, and she is vilified. What would she do then? She gets married. She succumbs.

There are a myriad of obvious reasons why we cannot sit through discomfort, which is a prerequisite to consuming anything that is radical. Our ecosystem has systematically, intentionally, and snakily moved towards a point where a narcissistic response masquerades as a rebellion, where wounded egos are conflated with injustice. Hindi cinema, a commercial industry, is not oblivious to a culture that has shifted towards Hindu male victimhood.

What this has resulted in is an industry with a serious crisis in imagination. A rot. Neither a wounded ego, or narcissism, are particularly susceptible to multitudes.

Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies was a gentle triumph. It did not make box office money, but then, what does these days? It did good numbers on Netflix, though. A feel-good story with two women at the centre of the narrative, it showed one of them escaping an abusive marriage so she can pursue her degree in agriculture, and another one expanding how she engages with the world. There is a sense of safety here, and comfort. The good kind.

Yet, let us remember that it was nominated for an Oscar instead of All We Imagine as Light, a film that was so subtly provocative, made by a director whose stance against the ruling government, and its injustice, is anything but. It was never going to represent a country that refuses to look inward.

J. Shruti is a cultural critic and editor. She has previously worked as Senior Editor at FilmCompanion and Associate Editor at Verve Magazine.