Aamir Khan’s Dangal is on its way to earning over Rs 500 crore at the Chinese box-office. Dangal is a biopic based on the life of wrestler Mahavir Singh Phogat, who taught wrestling to his daughters Geeta and Babita.
The film is on to create huge milestones and achieve the impossible. But, the women in China, criticized the film saying that it reeks of patriarchy and is filled with male chauvinism.On the popular Chinese website Douban.com, hundreds of people submitted low ratings and bad reviews, according to Chinese media reports.As per one review,”The father’s values make me vomit, he forces his daughters to live a certain type of life with his dream, with money and becoming a champion. You think the movie is about breaking gender stereotypes, but actually it’s knee-deep in prejudice.”
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Another review says,” The movie reeks of patriarchy and male Chauvinism. The daughters didn’t have any freedom to choose and were raised ferociously by their father to be world champions.”Dangal was endorsed as a progressive film in China as it shows young women struggling against patriarchal ideas on their journey to become medal-winning wrestlers. But, some aspects of the film points a fierce online debate on whether the film could be seen as a feminist story or not.People said that Aamir’s character didn’t give his daughters a choice of their own at all. On the contrary he forced them to take up wrestling.
He made them cut their hair short and denied them their favourite food when they were training. Ultimately, the debate over the film had turned into discussion on Chinese feminism.