In the context of social change, cinematic representations play a pertinent role in challenging existing knowledge systems, disrupting societal norms, and provoking critical reflections among audiences. The paper’s primary objective is to highlight the gendered burden upon women in India regarding the contraception narrative and its significance in ensuring reproductive justice. By analyzing two recent Hindi films, Janhit Mein Jaari [Issued in Public Interest] (2022) and Chhatriwali [Woman with Umbrella] (2023), the paper further aims to shed light on how these movies incite an epistemic rupture by challenging deeply ingrained beliefs and norms surrounding contraception. This research delves into how these films create an epistemic rupture by highlighting the socio-cultural nuances related to proper contraceptive awareness and the importance of comprehensive sexual education in achieving reproductive justice. Additionally, it highlights the power of visual storytelling to challenge systemic norms, encourage critical reflection, and pave the way for more inclusive and progressive attitudes toward contraception and reproductive health.

Representation, particularly mediated forms such as cinema, has always been a powerful tool to enable social change. On the one hand, cinema functions as an instrument that reinstates hegemonic patriarchy, but on the other, it also becomes “a tool for political resistance and subversion” (Lauret, 1991, p. 66). Recently, South Asian cinema and, more specifically, the corpora of Malayalam cinema1 has emerged as an empowering platform that addresses structural and institutionalised inequalities of gender. Broadly, the paper discusses the shift in the representational praxis of gender-based violence in Malayalam cinema, more specifically, the female protagonists’ responses to violence. Specifically, the paper focuses on two recent Malayalam films, Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey (2022) and The Teacher (2022). The films present vigilantism as a means of female empowerment, offering an alternative narrative to traditional portrayals of victimhood, and how it can resist feelings of powerlessness in the face of gender-based violence. Therefore, anchoring on Laura Mattoon D’Amore’s theoretical framework of vigilante feminism (2017), the study examines the intersection of vigilantism, gender-based violence, and cinematic representation, in an attempt to locate both the covert and overt forms and responses surrounding violence against women.

Academic research on fandom has sometimes stereotyped female fans, potentially influenced by the gendered dichotomy in fan studies. In the context of Indian fan discourses, there has been insufficient academic engagement with gender which poses a significant gap that requires attention. This article explores the intersection of gender, specifically focusing on women, in Indian fan studies. Through a feminist lens, the article undertakes a textual analysis of Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Guddi (‘The Doll’, 1971), possibly the first Hindi film to diegetically represent a female fan. The study examines how the film portrays female fandom and yet acknowledges that it falls short in successfully dismantling the pathologising stereotypes associated with femininity. Nevertheless, the film successfully initiates a dialogue on the presence and importance of female fan practices in India. It explores how the film acts as a catalyst for a narrative that highlights the agentic potential of fandom. Additionally, the article delves into the broader implications of the film within Indian fan studies, including its capacity to challenge gender norms and inspire further research on female fan practices in the context of Indian cinema.

As a relatively new category in academia, discourses on Indian Fan culture, both digital and non-digital, are filled with apprehensive perforations. Rapid globalization and the digitization of media have enabled western fan practices as well as a scholarship to permeate into Indian culture but with a twist of patriarchy fused into it. Despite the involvement of female fans in the first wave of western fan practices, feminist cultural studies rarely found a place within fan studies. This article analyses two films Fan (2016) and Mohanlal (2018), set against the backdrop of culturally diverse regional fandoms to critique the gendered heterogeneity within Indian fandom. While the films selected for analysis ostensibly seem to celebrate the rich culture of media fans in India, nonetheless, they also serve as controlling images that reinstate the hermeneutical injustice perpetrated on female fans, thus marginalizing them. This article aims to tease out the epistemic injustice embedded in the gendered space of Indian fandom and calls attention to the need of establishing a feminist standpoint in the discourse.