far-right masculinity

I'm supremely happy to report Sandeep Reddy Vanga has shot himself in the foot crotch with Animal. It is a staggeringly poor film and the one line review of the film has to be what Dheeraj said yesterday, "Hope Vanga will not vangabettudu." Well, mate, he's done exactly that. For starters, I went in assuming that it was going to be problematic. But I kept telling Sravani, who was convinced that it was going to be a complete shit, that for all its faults Arjun Reddy was a very well-made film and that Animal was going to be the same too. I absolutely had no clue that the filmmaking would be as sub-par as this. Where do I start? 

Okay, broadly, there are three major problems: the story, the sex and the violence, and, ofcourse, the misogyny. 

The story is ostensibly of a son who loves his father so much that he's willing to burn the world for his attention and love, and does indeed kill and maul many in the film in a quest to protect and avenge. Which isn't a bad story to explore but there is so little focus or justification on that aspect that for long durations I couldn't really understand why he was wrecking all this havoc. Or like the father himself puts it towards the end, "You are a criminal and use this love for me as an excuse for indulging in those tendencies"; I think a bunch of us in the theatre realised that hours before he did (and with a running time of about 3 hours 21 minutes, I mean hours). The tone is all over the place, veering madly from scene to scene, and I was hard-pressed to understand what emotional register I was supposed to access this on. Its actually a fairly common Telugu film practice, which I find more reflective of incompetence than inspiration (the full meals excuse), and with the large number of Telugu directors making films in Bollywood over the past few years, I think its catching up there too. Ofcourse, it is not necessary that all characters behave in a 'realistic' way in a film, even if it can be precisely defined, but isn't it important that the filmmaker communicate the emotional contours of the film initially and then play within those rules? For instance, even if you are the son of the richest man in the country, can you get away with firing a gun in a college or killing "hundreds" of people in your hotel with a custom-made machine gun? Not one character's actions or reactions seem plausible, even within that context, and they convey nothing about the human condition. All they do is exist as stick characters for Vanga to give his hero an excuse to go behave as selfishly and recklessly as possible, and get away with it.

Towards the beginning of the film, the hero tells the heroine that in an earlier time Alpha males ruled the world and all the womenfolk chose to procreate with them. That made the other men jealous and so they invented poetry. I laughed at the gambit because I felt that it was a provacative statement that would lead onto interesting arcs. But Vanga has nothing interesting to say either about the alphas or the others. His alpha is such a juvenile creation that he can't think of anything except sex, guns or, in a couple of instances, fucking pubes (I never thought I'd have to write that word on this blog, damn!). Take the most alpha obsessed male animals in the entire kingdom, and they'd cringe at the cartoon depictions of sex and violence if you showed them this film. Even those bloody rams would go, "Bro, please, we're more than this". For a second forget the misogyny, this is misandry. He has reduced all men to the occassional fantasies of a 13-year old boy- sex, guns, fast cars, conquest. I found it instructive that the word empire was thrown around a couple of times in the film. I think the portrayal of males in the film is based on medieval myth. This is how I think Vanga believes, say, Genghis Khan's army behaved. With this level of bloodlust, impunity, absence of any morality or thought subtler than the basest of our instincts. Not even medieval fact but myth, because I think even 700 years ago, being a powerful, successful ruler (alpha!) had to be more than being physically strong or rich. Even from a filmmaking perspective, while I suppose he intended the violence to be shocking, it came across more as irritating. I mean you can lift the axe-corridor fight scene from Oldboy but without the commensurate depth in writing, it never goes beyond being a cool, stylistic choice. This is a film that's constantly shouting without having anything interesting to say, that's provacative without being subversive. 

Finally, let's get to the misogyny. Having seen his responses to the flak against Kabir Singh, I expected Vanga to double down on his initial forays towards portrayal of women. I was reluctant to call them his convictions because I didn't know if he genuinely thinks that about women, but after watching this film I'm fairly convinced that even if he thinks that way its not probably a thought-through position. He feels that this kind of characterisation provokes people, gives his film the attention and him the reputation of being an enfant terrible, and he's happy with that arrangement. What Srikanth Srinivasan said so perceptively about Kantara is applicable here; To treat this film "as the expression of a comprehensive worldview is to mischaracterize the work". All women are treated like second-class citizens, sex is conquest and only a reflection of the man's prowess, the patriarchy is unrelenting, there's a pervasive sense of "bros before hoes" and, worst of all, the women embrace and celebrate their position. There were a couple of instances in the film when Bhajji turned to me and laughingly said, "You should've brought Sravani yaar, she'd have loved this scene." Well, she'd have probably flung a slipper at the screen and her action would've been justified. For all this bravado posturing, at some level I think Vanga was quite intimidated by the angry response from feminists to Kabir Singh, because in Animal it is the heroine who slaps the hero, and elevates her husband for being with her in the labour room and subsequently acting as her "nurse, mother, father, gynaecologist.." Having said that though, the heroine, not to mention the hero's sisters or the second heroine or the villain's wives, is treated with such disdain and lack of any importance to her agency that I couldn't help but be repulsed by everyone involved in the making of the film. Like Bhajji, again, so strikingly asked, "What would the director's wife have said after seeing this?"

That's about the film. Now, let's talk about its social ramifications. Instructively, when I wrote about Arjun Reddy 5 years ago, I was keen to get away with the social questions first and trip on the film itself. It is a tribute to all my discussions with Sravani that I'm now capable of looking away from the 'art as art' lens, and see films in a wider context. For all its failings as a film, judging by the responses in the housefull theatre I saw it in, the film will become a hit. The target demographic for this film is 15-30 year old men, and I think they'll be impressed and energised, if not inspired, by a few strong scenes. And as much as I'd like for it to be left at the exit, atleast a few guys will carry some of these thoughts out into the world to act on. While I'm more or less a free speech absolutist, on this point though I must concur with Sravani that this filth is not good for our society and probably shouldn't have been made. Not because it makes arguments that I don't agree with but because it doesn't make particularly interesting or useful arguments. Infact, it doesn't make any arguments except seek to shock and excite at a very shallow level. For all the progress Bollywood has made towards portraying more modern and metrosexual men since the turn of the millennium (thank god for the Farooq Sheikhs and the Amol Palekars, among others, before that), the turn towards an older, toxic form of masculinity is back with us, and it is shameful to see it is being promulgated by Telugu directors. Setting the moral lament aside, I wonder if it is simply an entertainment cyclical trend, with one existing as the mainstream and the other as a sub-stratum, or if it is part of the wider sociocultural milieu in which we extole the "56-inch chest", valorise the hyper-masculinity of the army, or proudly endorse a certain kind of Jat/ Rajput/ Reddy pride. 

Discussing these points with Amma a few minutes ago, I've come to the conclusion that there is no excuse for making this film- not the market, not this is what the audience wants, not artistic freedom, not if not us someone else will. Everyone involved is culpable, including myself which I hope to atone a bit by writing this post, and I really hope there is social pushback. All I can do is end by quoting Ebert, "I hated hated hated this movie".