2022: The Year of the Angry Woman on-screen

From ‘Pearl’ and ‘Bones And All’ to ‘Bad Sisters’ and ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies,’ female characters in cinema this year amplified the shared anxieties and anger of being a woman in the contemporary world in their own ways

After a gruelling couple of years lost to the pandemic, cinema made a comeback in 2022, and how! We saw the larger-than-life heroes return to the screens with jaw-dropping action sequences, and space was made for fables on imperfect parents and their misguided efforts at expressing love; we had the movies to turn to during our recovery for a good laugh.

But the anxieties and horrors of the economic slowdown, an impending climate crisis, and the questions of existentialism that the pandemic birthed still lurk in the dark crevices of our minds. Cinema has justifiably absorbed these sensibilities and reflected them on the screen for all of us to gaze at, while looking within ourselves. We had the  Jaws-inspired Jean Jacket monster in Nope that revels in feeding on people, and, in the process, swallowing the lives they’ve built for themselves. Then, we also were witness to the cruel monsters lurking underneath our smiles in Smile. But one thing the horror slashers and cathartic dark comedies this year had in common was the sheer number of women championing our anxieties.

While it is interesting and encouraging to see women occupy space on our screen, the reason they fit into the roles perfectly is a tad complicated. A  BBC analysis of the World Gallup Poll points to a widening rage gap. In 2012 both men and women reported anger and stress at similar levels; however, nine years later, women are angrier by a margin of six percentage points with the pandemic playing a very significant role. 

The pandemic was disproportionately cruel to women — they were driven out of the workforce and forced to tend to childcare duties and household responsibilities, putting a strain on their economic independence. A global study found that women did three times more childcare duties than men. 2022 also gave women a lot to be angry about: women in the United States of America lost their right to abortion with the overturning of  Roe v. Wade, the Taliban in Afghanistan banned women from universities and kept the corridors of learning out of their reach, and the regime in Iran lynched women for participating in the anti-regime protests triggered by the killing of Mahsa Amini.

Women in cinema are amplifying the shared anxieties and anger of being a woman in the contemporary world in their own ways.

Do you know a woman who has been asked to smile by a stranger on the street? Do you wish to silence that stranger? Maybe Smile is your best bet. Starring Sosie Bacon, this tale explores mental health and generational trauma that daughters inherit from their mothers, a theme Natasha Lyonne explored through the character of Nadia Vulvokov, another infamous grumpy female protagonist, in the second season of  Russian Doll.

Kith and kin united to shower rage over a misogynist man in  Apple TV+’s  Bad Sisters. The sisters plotted to kill their sister’s abusive husband and their imagination in all its gore and violence made its way to the screen, supplemented with dark comedy, pushed the audience to root for their erroneous antics.