Catering or Creating? The Role of Media in Select Bollywood Horror Movies

Abstract

Horror movies are a very popular genre of media, which is greatly appreciated and enjoyed by our Indian audience. Horror is something that has been a subject of intriguing discussions from the ancient times. In literatures throughout the ages, authors have depicted women figures in horror themes. However, it has been repeatedly seen in numerous Bollywood horror movies that women are presented as the ‘damsel-in-distress’ and there is always a male ‘knight-in-shining-armour’ protagonist who comes to her rescue. This generally puts the role of gender into question as it puts women in the patriarchal categorisation of feminine roles. Although it is a fact that providing aesthetic pleasure is one of the role of a movie but creating a plot where women are always dependent upon the courage and valour of a man, fails another purpose of a movie, that is, to teach the audience. Often times it is seen that the female protagonist is objectified by the cinematographers, which instead of contributing to the theme, diverts the theme of horror and also mars the mood of the tasteful audience. A horror element should be presented in the proper manner, incorporating elements of uncanny, grotesque and fear. However, many popular movies in Bollywood has incorporated sexuality and female body ojectification as their content, which suppress the element of grotesque and uncanny. Examples of such movies are replete in Bollywood popular movie genre. For the sake of this paper, only Ragini MMS 2 will be considered as primary text. As popular movies, it is a well accepted fact that these movies will cater to the taste of the audience. But in some ways these movies by promoting female objectification has contributed in creating the taste among Indian audience. This paper shall discuss the role of media in popular genre with special focus on Bollywood horror movies.

DOI - https://doi.org/10.65525/SVUP.9788196793241.2025.17-22