The Damsels in Distress Narrative In Indian Cinema

KAKALI DAS

The ‘damsel in distress’ is a woman in peril, who desperately needs a man to come and rescue her.

It refers to a young woman in trouble with implication that the woman needs to be rescued as by a prince in a fairy tale. There have been many damsels in distress throughout stories in history and mythology.

There isn’t really a male equivalent word in English for ‘damsels in distress’, because by definition it normally refers to women.

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Damsels in distress have been a part of films going way back to the old black-and-white silent films. The classic girl getting tied to a train track or captured by a giant monster or an evil villain snatching a girl away or the robbery hostage situations – there are a plenty of different scenarios for damsels in distress.

In Hindi cinema, she is a staple figure. Film posters often place her lying almost lifeless in the arms of macho hero. Scholars trace back the popularity of this trope to the influence of epics.

In Valmiki’s Ramayana, for instance, Sita’s agency is restricted to letting Ram know that she’s in danger. (It’s almost as if she is trying to glorify Ram through this whole process, and he will kill Ravan).

The Damsels in Distress Narrative In Indian Cinema

And in the Mahabharata, Draupadi is saved from humiliation by the divine powers of Krishna.

In the ‘70s and ‘80s, widespread corruption and unemployment led to disillusionment with the idea of an ideal India. This lead to the rise of a new genre of escapist masala cinema and the birth of a new working class hero – the angry young man.

The larger than life male lead needed a reason to beat up the bad guys and deliver crowd pleasing lines. So, thus, enters the damsel in distress. Her distress was often exaggerated by the threat of rape or molestation.

But the main character was rarely actually sexually assaulted. Actual sexual violence would challenge her ‘purity’ and therefore, would usually be reserved for ‘lesser’ damsels, such as the hero’s sister or a domestic worker. Their trauma would then be used to fuel the hero’s righteous desire for revenge.

But the ‘90s presented new threats. With Indian society fast opening up to the values of Western modernity and individualism, the nature of the damsel’s distress changed to the denial of freedom to love and marry the man of her choice. She would often fall for a man outside her own class, and her disapproving father would arrange her marriage to a groom better suited for her status.

It would then fall upon the knight in shining armour to heroically convince the damsel’s family to give him her hand and rescue the passive damsel from an unhappy marriage.

Since the 2000s, there’s been a noticeable shift. Though we still see the damsel in distress trope in a lot of action thrillers, newer box office hits also show women taking charge in times of distress.

And this is when Meera shows up. In the movie, NH10 (2015), the female protagonist, Meera was chased down by a group of men baying for her blood. She was alone and vulnerable in the dead of night. But Meera wasn’t a damsel in distress.

Initially Meera’s narrative follows the traditional damsel-protector dynamic. Clearly unsure about her self-sufficiency, she’s scared when she’s out alone at night, and only feels safe when her husband is with her.

But when the couple accidentally witnessed an honour killing, that dynamic changes. It’s his instinct to be the saviour that gets Meera’s husband fatally injured by goons.

And in that moment of crisis, the audience is made to see a crucial fact that the damsel in distress trope has always ignored, that in reality, when strange men attack a couple, a woman is not the only one who is vulnerable.

She may face the additional threat of sexual violence, but her husband too can be physically assaulted. And there is no guarantee that he will be there to save her.

The absence of any possible saviour pushes Meera’s helplessness to its absolute limit. Forced to take charge of her own fate, not only does she survive, but she also takes revenge.

Her decision to turn back and confront the goons becomes significant, because it shows that a situation of distress doesn’t just leave a woman powerless and desperate to be saved, but can even give her the drive to fight back.

And just like that, Meera’s character arc proves that a damsel is perfectly capable of finding her way out of distress on the strength of her own abilities. What holds her back is not her vulnerability but the social conditioning that makes her believe that she needs a man to swoop in and save the day.

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