Domestic Confinement, Ritual Purity, and Structural Patriarchy: A Critical Analysis of the movie The Great Indian Kitchen

Jeo Baby’s 2021 Malayalam film, The Great Indian Kitchen, provides a critique of institutionalized patriarchy and the pervasive domestic subjugation of women in contemporary Indian society. Through a nuanced narrative centered around an unnamed, educated female protagonist, the film exposes how everyday domestic labour and ritual purity taboos intersect to enforce female submission. Drawing upon Louis Althusser’s theory of the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) and psycho-social perspectives on patriarchal hegemony, this paper explores the mechanisms through which the institution of the family reproduces gender inequality. Furthermore, it examines the narrative manifestation of ancient Hindu menstrual taboos-rooted in mythological constructs such as the Rig Vedic myth of Indra and Vritra-and analyzes how ritualistic purity logic serves as an instrument of spatial and physical regulation. The paper concludes by examining the protagonist's subversion of domestic oppression as a radical rupture of generational intolerance.