Have We Reached The Peak Of Alpha Male Films In Indian Cinema?
Feat. the angry young men who defined masculinity, from Deewar to Toxic
Dhurandhar really changed something for all of us, didn't it? As the spy drama becomes the biggest Hindi movie of all time, it changed how we approach hypermasculinity in cinema.
Aditya Dhar has made a film so formally assured that even viewers who reject its politics can’t dismiss it as a run-of-the-mill propaganda film. In that sense, Dhurandhar is the epitome of what hypermasculinity in Indian cinema stands for: a man who embraces violence to stand up to the different anxieties that trouble Indian audiences today (terrorism in Dhurandhar, capitalism in KGF, corruption and government apathy in Jawan… you get the idea). These films personify these anxieties into impossibly powerful villains, then offer catharsis through a man overcomes them through said violence.
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In a way, it's not too far off from the Angry Young Man movies that made Amitabh Bachchan the legendary Bollywood figure he is today. The difference is that today’s alpha hero doesn’t need to want to be morally upright. Amitabh Bachchan’s rage came from the inevitability of his circumstances, and his use of violence was a tragedy that he couldn't separate himself from no matter how much he tried. In Deewar, Vijay the gangster had all the property, bank balance, bangla, gaadi, but him losing his Maa's love made him the loser in front of his police officer brother Ravi (Shashi Kapoor).
However, the "Mere paas maa hai" dialogue would not work today. The modern alpha male treats his violence as aesthetic. Ranbir Kapoor's Ranvijay starts from tragic circumstances just like Bacchan's Vijays, but him losing his family's respect is something to be stylised and cheered on by the audience of our time. After all, a true "man" is the one who endures and protects despite losing the very thing he protects, right?
This is why the genre so often collapses into what feels like a blood-soaked block party: machismo for confetti, dialoguebaazi for the DJ, and gore sold like disco lights calling everyone to the dance floor. It’s also why these films are easy to dismiss as indulgent, juvenile, or grotesque.
To counter that, Dhurandhar gives us a villain with so much aura, and a screenplay with such a measured dose of integrated real events that it's difficult to dismiss it as mindless male fantasy. After all, didn't it - or at least some of it - happen in real life? Hamza's bangla-gaadi-makaan equivalent is how well he infiltrates Lyari's underworld, and his maa counterpart is that all his intelligence still can't stop the deaths in 26/11. And this loss is exactly the point of the movie. Do you even love your nation if your blood didn't boil at that scene? Dhar asks.
But then, this article isn't just about Dhurandhar; it's the aftermath of the alpha male cinema in a post-Dhurandhar world that concerns us. Now that the spy drama is the biggest Hindi film ever, we're left asking: what happens to hypermasculine films now? You can't copy Dhurandhar. Turns out, you can also not rely on the things that made Animal a success.
Case in point: the film that is clashing with Dhurandhar 2. Another teaser to Geetu Mohandas’ Toxic: A Fairy Tail For Grown-Ups just dropped, and this time, the internet is divided in its reactions. This time, the Vanga-fied indulgence seems too much for the internet. In case you've missed it, the two minute fifty-two seconds long clip shows Yash, as Raya, blowing up a graveyard full of people all while having sex in his car. He then emerges from smoke with guns blazing and lit cigar, and announces, “Daddy’s home.” Could it get any more than this?
What further complicates the movie is the name attached to Toxic. This is a Geetu Mohandas film. For starters, this is the same filmmaker who made Liar’s Dice, a migrant road drama centred on a rural mother looking for her missing migrant worker husband. In Moothon, she explored queer identity in the fringes of Indian society through the lives of gay gangsters and intersex smugglers in Andaman Islands and Dharavi. Mohandas’ work has consistently approached violence, gender, and power through an unmistakably feminine gaze.
Which raises the question: is Toxic going to be 180-degree shift from her filmography? Would a filmmaker like her, who has never shied away from making movies Vanga and Dhar's audience would dismiss as "not being part of our culture", really change all that she has stood for? Or is Toxic, with all it's tacky excesses and over-the-top colour grading, a parody of the genre that we did not see coming? Will it be the film that opens our eyes to the violence we have become too comfortable with?
Either way, the audience that will sit in the theatre halls on March 19 is a different audience than the one that went to watch Animal in theatres a couple of years ago. It knows what to expect, what to ask for, and its standards for heroes on screen are higher than ever.