Last week, Louis Theroux’s documentary Inside the Manosphere dropped on Netflix and it’s been one uncomfortable and triggering revelation after another. A world of toxic male influencers, the red-pill rhetoric, hyper-masculine lifestyles, and casual misogyny worn like a badge of honour came to the fore frame after frame. And we are left grappling with what any of this actually means for women or if it changes anything at all.
The instances are everywhere around us. Take for instance, Renuka Shahane’s internationally acclaimed animated short Loop Line, which traces the life of a middle-aged homemaker caught in the loop of domestic labour. Her only escape? Vivid, unruly fantasies that end when her husband returns home with his casually sexist friends. Then there’s Tribeny Rai’s directorial debut, Shape of Momo, which follows Bishu, who returns to her hometown in Sikkim after quitting her job in Delhi. Awaiting her is a patriarchal household and rigid societal expectations amidst which her pursuit of self-actualisation continues.
With economies and geopolitics failing us time and again, one day it may seem we are inching towards harsher, more regressive times, and on another we are just a tad optimistic to make this a better, more inclusive world.
PS: Mumbai peeps can catch Loop Line and Shape of Momo today at PVR Lido, Juhu, as part of MAMI Independent, a new year-round programme showing independent films on a weekly basis
