Streaming the Gaze: Feminist Spectatorship and Gender Fluidity in Indian OTT Narratives

Streaming the Gaze: Feminist Spectatorship and Gender Fluidity in Indian OTT Narratives
Chitra Jha

Abstract

The article critically examines how the Indian over-the-top (OTT) streaming platforms reinforce gender, spectatorship, and visual politics within the dynamics of postmodern media culture. The OTT movies shift out of the parameters of normative cinema to provide an approximation of a free space that is relatively uncensored to develop feminist and queer subjectivities. Paying special attention to Made in Heaven, Delhi Crime, and Kota Factory, the article will discuss how these shows violate representational conventions by challenging the supremacy of the male gaze and pre-empting plural, fluid, and intersectional identities. Drawing on Laura Mulvey’s gaze theory, Judith Butler’s gender performativity, the oppositional gaze of Bell Hooks, and Henry Jenkins’s participatory culture, the article argues that Indian streaming media enables a shift from objectification to agency and from passive spectatorship to engagement. Not only do these stories poke holes into the normative positioning of women and queers as an ambiguous subject, but they also upset the normative formations of masculinity, power, and desire. Furthermore, this article highlights the role of digital audiences in changing the face of feminist discourse through participatory acts, such as online critique, fan cultures, and social media engagement. By locating OTT platforms within a postmodern and transnational media ecology, the study shows how streaming culture disseminates impurity in fixed formations of identity and opens new horizons for thinking and imagining gender and representation. Ultimately, the article presents the platforms of Indian OTT as dynamic sites of feminist negotiation, where visual pleasure, power, and identity are constantly fought over and redefined. Keywords: Digital spectatorship, Feminism, Gender performativity, Indian web series, Male gaze, OTT platforms, Postmodern media, Queer representation.