REWRITING WOMANHOOD: FEMINIST NEGOTIATIONS OF FEMALE SUBJECTIVITY IN CONTEMPORARY HINDI WEB SERIES

The rapid expansion of over-the-top (OTT) streaming platforms has
transformed India’s visual media landscape, reshaping storytelling prac
tices, viewing habits, and modes of cultural participation. Within this
evolving terrain, web series have emerged as important sites for the
reconfiguration of gendered identities and social relations. This study
examines the representation and negotiation of female subjectivity
in three Hindi web series: Four More Shots Please!, Bombay Begums, and
Aarya, which occupy a prominent position within India’s contempo
rary OTT ecosystem. Adopting a qualitative feminist research frame
work, the study employs close textual and critical discourse analysis to
explore how these narratives engage with questions of agency, desire,
labour, morality, motherhood, and selfhood. The analysis is informed
by significant interventions in cultural and feminist theory, including
1997 Stuart Hall’s theorisation of representation; 1990 Judith Butler’s
concept of gender performativity; feminist visual culture viz., Mulvey,
Gill, McRobbie, 1989 Crenshaw’s framework of intersectionality, and
debates surrounding audience participation and meaning-making. By
situating them within broader socio-cultural contexts, it investigates the
ways in which gendered identities are produced, contested, and circulat
ed through digital media. It further considers how platform economies,
narrative flexibility, and audience engagement shape the articulation of
women’s experiences on screen and positions them as complex cultural
spaces that actively reshapes contemporary discourses of femininity,
power, and gender politics.