A Look At Netflix’s Qala’s Approach To Mental Health And Sexism In Music
Netflix’s Qala follows the journey of a famous singer battling inner demons. Tripti Dimri, Babil Khan, Swastika Mukherjee, and Varun Grover star in the film. A strained relationship with her mother and a dark past have made success sting for Qala, the leftover pieces of the love she never gets. This Anvitaa Dutt film is filled with both tenderness and violence.
“Why do you look so sad?” a mother sings to her young daughter in the film. The daughter responds that her dreams have been stolen by a peacock singing in the forest. The mother says, “We’ll get a gun and kill the peacock.” No, we can’t, the girl says, we’ll just silence it and confine it in a cage.
It’s about mother-daughter relationships, trauma, sexism, and mental health problems. Audiences have praised the film for its realistic depiction of having an emotionally abusive parent as well as its psychosocial feminism.
We first meet Qala, who appears as a beam of light reflected off her gold record. It appears to be the pinnacle of her success and dreams, but reality soon sets in. Because of her gender, the press is only interested in a successful playback singer’s dating life.
The audience witnesses ignorance about women’s mental health from the start. Qala clutches her arm skin away from the press’s prying eyes, speaking of her mother and “brother.” Urmila’s first discovery about her daughter is that she absorbed her twin brother’s nutrition in the womb. It gives the audience hope that she might not have been as distant and pathologically demanding otherwise. Urmila is a mother out of obligation, not love.
Even Urmila’s demands stem from a lack of mental health awareness and sexism. Male musicians are referred to as ‘Pandits,’ while female counterparts are referred to as ‘Bai’ (courtesans, as if this is a bad thing). As a result, Qala’s gender becomes an impediment. Qala’s mother’s grandfather was a famous thumri singer, which forced her to give up her dreams because it was considered unacceptable for a woman to carry the legacy. She raises Qala in a gothic mansion with little affection to become the voice of her Gharana.

The haunting visuals of Qala depict the protagonist’s cry for mental assistance. As her mental state deteriorates, apparitions appear in mirrors. It is difficult to tell the difference between reality and hallucination. Before an unfortunate event, a party transforms into phantasmagoric, Black Swan-esque wings. A bug flies into a person’s eye. A silver ball of mercury rhymes with a water droplet, which turns into shining drops, which turn into sleeping pills. There is a transition from Qala standing in a spotlight in the snow to her first recording in the studio. At the peak of her breakdown, she imagines the studio filling with snow during a later recording.
Jagan is everything she aspires to be in order to win her mother’s love. In comparison to his, her failure haunts her. Qala is a feminist psychodrama about women’s prescribed roles and limitations.
Qala is discouraged from becoming the gharaana’s torchbearer. Her mother forbids her from singing in movies or in front of filmmakers because “good” women do not. Naseeban Apa is a music composer who is gossiped about and slut-shamed. She has to fight to be paid the same as the male singer after becoming a golden record holder. Qala hires a woman as her secretary after an argument with a man. Women make Qala feel safe and understood. She invites a female reporter and photographer to interview and photograph her.
Except for Jagan, the men she chooses or is forced to accept continue to exploit her. The producers exploit and demean her, and Majrooh, the decent lyricist, ignores the exploitation. In one telling scene, a doctor is summoned to check on Qala after she has a nervous breakdown. He dismisses it as a ‘ladies’ issue,’ a case of acute artistic sensitivity.
In the twentieth century, hysteria was a common diagnosis given to women. Because if she isn’t feeling mentally well, she is most likely ‘crazy’ as a result of ‘hormones.’ Medicine is also a sexist field toward women. Medical research is biassed and frequently ignores women; medicines and diagnoses are geared toward men while ignoring women. She requests that he write her a prescription for sleeping pills. “Aap sochna band kijiye (stop thinking),” he says.
The film, on the other hand, sensitively explores mental health without creating villains. While Qala is consumed by childhood trauma, her mother is unable to break the patriarchal cycle. A young Jagan is also seen struggling with his mental health, which worsens after he loses his voice.
In one of the most disturbing scenes, Jagan expresses his fear to Qala after losing his voice. “Andar kuch toot gaya hai,” he says as he points to his heart, before adding, “Kal sab kuch theek ho jaayega.” Qala represents a ray of hope that mental health narratives are changing.
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