Male gaze: Pop cinema's biggest crutch?

With male directors repeatedly reimagining the same brooding masculine hero, mainstream movies desperately need more women directors, writes Swaroop Kodur

A film poster readily betrays the personality of mainstream Indian cinema today: a deep, dark colour palette; a strong dash of blood-red hue; a weapon such as a gun or a machete; the swirl of cigarette smoke; and all of it (and much more) orbiting a brooding, masculine figure.

In recent years, cinema has realised its ultra-capitalistic prowess, and in this pursuit, it has begun to imitate and repeat itself over and over again. Its male protagonists have become indistinguishable, its tone has taken on a deafening shrillness, and its purview has grown increasingly narrow and risk-averse.

While the issue may appear to be the obvious lazy, trite approach, one cannot help but notice the glaring lack of representation behind the camera. In an ecosystem that has historically over-accommodated male directors, there is a consistent oversight when it comes to the deserving inclusion of women directors in the mainstream. The same system forgets that representation breeds newer and better perspectives, and perhaps there has never been a better time than now for gender diversity to steer things into control.

From the very beginning, cinema designed for mass consumption has hinged on the male lead, and this trend is not going to change overnight. At the same time, there are enough historical instances of the same archetype being reimagined through a woman’s lens and projected with the right mix of nuance and appeal.

It was Elaine May who cast John Cassavetes and Peter Falk — two emblematic American men — in the feverish mob-crime drama ‘Mikey and Nicky’ (1976) to explore complex themes of male vanity and loyalty. It was Sai Paranjpye who cryptically underlined male entitlement in her breezy, now cult-classic comedy-drama ‘Chashme Baddoor’ (1981), which features three young men and a woman as its principal cast.

The two films might not fit the conventional definition of popular cinema, but they nevertheless serve as compelling precedents for how women directors can imagine male characters as leads without unnecessarily eulogising them.

If one were to still stick to that definition, filmmakers like Kathryn Bigelow and Greta Gerwig come to mind immediately. The former, a two-time Oscar winner, has often tackled commercial genres that overtly carry nationalistic interests, but films such as ‘Strange Days’ (1995) and ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ (2011) reflect her ability to position women firmly within male-dominated worlds, creating narratives where men and women operate as equals rather than foils. In stark yet endearing contrast, Greta Gerwig’s most recent achievement, ‘Barbie’, revealed a rather unique touch in its engagement with femininity, perfection, and patriarchy, as it went on to gross over 1.45 billion USD at the global box office.

In India’s own context, the likes of Farah Khan and Zoya Akhtar have proven, winningly, that female directors are more than capable of handling big budgets as well as the biggest male superstars in the business. Farah Khan’s collaborations with Shah Rukh Khan are etched forever into Hindi cinema’s pop-cultural history, and she has carved out a distinctive place for herself in the realm of blockbuster directors. Zoya Akhtar, on the other hand, brought three popular leading men together in ‘Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’ and relayed a story of friendship that is sensitive, contemporary, entertaining, and highly box office friendly.

South Indian cinema has a vast vacuum to fill in terms of representation and fair opportunities for female directors. Noteworthy names such as Sudha Kongara (‘Soorarai Pottru’), Anjali Menon (‘Bangalore Days’),
B V Nandini Reddy (‘Ala Modalaindi’, ‘Oh! Baby’), and a few others crop up in this discussion. Yet, in a region where popular cinema continues to reinforce gender conventions, there is an urgent need for many more women storytellers to emerge. Geetu Mohandas’s ‘Toxic’, in this vein, becomes a film to watch out for, given that it is a collaboration between the discerning director behind ‘Liar’s Dice’ and ‘Moothon’ and superstar Yash, set in a masculinist terrain of gangsters and killers.

It is equally important to discuss on-screen representation, especially in the context of historical narratives. In recent years, the Indian mainstream has developed a great lust for stories of the past, both recent and bygone. But here, too, history feels encroached upon by and for the male perspective, which positions men as the spearheads of time and change while relegating women to the roles of bystanders and obeyers.

But if one lets factual reality and didacticism aside for a moment, historical or period filmmaking can be vibrantly employed to reclaim identities. Céline Sciamma uses a remote island in 18th-century France in ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ to tell an intimate tale of desire between two women and the erasure of female artists from art history. In ‘Priscilla’ (2023), Sofia Coppola reimagines the Elvis Presley story through his wife’s eyes, never letting Elvis dominate his own mythology. With ‘Qala’, lyricist-turned-filmmaker Anvita Dutt Guptan steps into the 1940s, where a female singer’s ambition collides with emotional deprivation within a mother-daughter relationship.

Cinema remains one of the most powerful channels of expression, and its collective consciousness is in dire need of a revamp today. For that, diverse authorship, particularly through women filmmakers, must be backed financially and intellectually.

The stellar results of such progress are aplenty: Julie Ducournau, the Palme d’Or winner for ‘Titane’ (2021), is arguably the most dazzling and brutal voice working today; Coralie Fargeat took on ageism in Hollywood like few others with her visceral body-horror film ‘The Substance’, winning Best Screenplay at Cannes in 2024; Kiran Rao went against the mainstream tide with her sophomore film ‘Laapataa Ladies’ (2024) and delivered an enduring box office hit featuring an ensemble of newcomers.

In Indian cinema, the thematic possibilities that already exist should be tapped into — it is now well past time that we gave women directors the licence to reshape the discourse.