'Wives & Wives': Watch A Jetsons-Esque Animated Short By Pramod Pati & G.K. Gokhale
Long before Instagram was flooded with discourse on trad wives and material girls, Pramod Pati’s 'Wives and Wives' (1962) had already dissected the dilemma. Produced under the Films Division of India, this short film cleverly disguised a conversation about family planning within the seemingly light-hearted quest of a bachelor searching for the ‘ideal’ wife. But beneath the playful visuals and futuristic animation lay a deeper commentary on economic planning, gender roles, and the transactional nature of marriage.
Our protagonist arrives at a marriage bureau, scanning a wall of potential brides. The first choice? A baddie who glides through the city, effortlessly hopping from one shop to another. A material girl, if you will, decked out in the style of a fast-urbanizing India. She’s all about consumerism, her lifestyle mirroring the economic shifts of the time — where the idea of progress was tied to spending power.
The contender is a trad wife. She’s practical, self-sufficient, and embodies the virtues of a frugal household. She has a kitchen garden, she sews, she saves — literally making money stretch for the family. But most importantly, she proposes a radical idea (for the time): having fewer children so that both can receive a proper education. The narrative subtly pushes this as the more ‘rational’ choice, reinforcing the idea that economic well-being is tied to responsible family planning.
While Wives and Wives never explicitly talks about contraception, it operates on the assumption that marriage and reproduction must be strategically managed for economic progress. In classic Films Division style, the film presents marriage as a tool not just for companionship but for 'nation-building'. The ‘right’ wife, then being a home economist, and an unofficial policymaker within the household.
Visually, the film is a Jetsons-era fever dream. Created the same year as the iconic American cartoon, its animation is all sharp angles, futuristic cars, and streamlined aesthetics that capture India’s aspirations for modernity. This Googie-inspired visual language reflected an India hurtling toward industrialization while still grappling with traditional domestic structures.
Much of this artistic innovation came from Pramod Pati and animator G.K. Gokhale, both of whom trained under Clair Weeks, a Disney animator who introduced India to Western animation techniques. They joined the Films Division which was a ‘mass-media unit’ run by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting that produced and distributed newsreels, documentaries and other films required by the Government of India for public information, education and for instructional and cultural purposes. But Unlike the strictly didactic documentaries that preceded it, Wives and Wives injected humor, satire, and a dash of sci-fi aesthetics into a social awareness campaign.
Looking back, it’s wild to think that Wives and Wives predated today’s online conversations about gender roles, financial independence, and household economics by decades. It’s a cheeky yet sharp exploration of how economic realities shape family structures — without ever making it just about romance. Whether you side with the material girl or the trad wife, one thing’s for sure: Pramod Pati saw the debate coming way before the internet did.
Watch the film at the top of the page.
