How Ranbir Kapoor’s ‘Animal’ effect has legitimised violence and rage in a year where anger manifested into Bollywood

It’s not an ideal time to be a 40 plus movie and streaming buff in our country. If one is a parent, it becomes worse.   What India Ranbir Kapoor watched in 2023, and what people across the world watched from India, is baffling. Ranbir Kapoor starrer Animal has broken perception and unspoken norms to burn through the box office, Shah Rukh Khan’s golden hearted vigilante, Jawan has set up eye popping numbers and ensnared a nation to his illogical fight tactics and victories. Be it the successes on OTT or on film, a sure shot formula emerges- rage is the instant hit making machine.  With just an exception of SRK’s Jawan, Being angry, rude, macho and generally obnoxious is quite easy to relate to for audiences. The year started on this note with the Netflix original series, Rana Naidu. Featuring Rana Daggubati and  Daggubati Venkatesh, it is the only Indian original piece of content that featured in the top 500 of Netflix’s massive viewer engagement report. It clocked 46.8 million hours worldwide. While the cast deliver convincing performances, the series is replete with expletives. Yet people watched it and given its consumption pattern, viewed it more than once. The fact that a father (Venkatesh) uses expletives to address his son or his family casually throughout this series, made little difference to viewers. The series adapts Ray Donovan, a qualitative story about a father-son conflict based in Los Angeles and its power circles. While its story and characters fit into the context of Mumbai’s slick and powerful, Rana Naidu lacks pace or a gripping narrative. It has anger and violence to fill in for a plot and in some parts, cliches about a privileged wife (Surveen Chawla) who would hanker after a prestigious school for her kids despite them going to a perfectly good one. But it worked. While the viewership figures of web series offers hope for in-depth storytelling and character akin to reality, films in India have become an island for escapism and voracious machismo. Shah Rukh Khan has made a (welcome) return to top form, retaining his natural charm, and adapting to changing times with fighting fit action. Both of his blockbusters, Pathaan and Atlee’s Jawan, play up patriotism while questioning the flaws in the ‘system’. Co-starring Deepika Padukone, Dimple Kapadia and John Abraham in gorgeous and impressive characters, Pathaan is a spy fighting to protect his country against a begrudged ex-colleague. Only this time, the villain is nebulous, a private super corporation that specialises in war mongering and total destruction. The computer game-like feel, where one is immersed in virtual reality, of its story is undeniable. Perhaps that is why audiences loved to soak in all the gravity defying fighting on screen. Atlee’s film tackles the regular villains of our society- politicians, corrupt government officials and a heinous arms dealer. The scale of vigilante activism is super-sized and programmed like a smooth PS 1 game again. There’s a metro hijack, thousands of crores seized from an evil arms dealer and given to poor farmers. Then there are instances of corruption and mistreatment targeted to make our blood boil- inadequate government hospitals, incompetent ministers and a vulnerable state that could even lose its voting rights to a manipulative Mr Moneybags (cue arms dealer). The plot is like a teenage fantasy of cleaning up the ‘system’ and setting things right. Rapidly paced and with a parallel father son story making things interesting, Jawan is very entertaining. But again, it pumps up patriotism. Only given its superstar, does it intelligently and charmingly. And in Shah Rukh Khan’s films, at least, the women are treated well. In fact, they are treated with respect and love. They are empowered to fight physically and mentally. Beyond his image of being India’s favourite example for a son-in-law, he doesn’t lord over women on screen. Women also don’t get treated poorly in Gadar 2, the Sunny Deol starrer that has returned to bring back audiences to single screens and worked its magic with audiences. But this film plays up jingoism, leaving no room to respect the enemy’s armed forces, even ridiculing their ability to fight back. Unlike the original Gadar (2001), this time around Sunny Deol is more than just superhuman. He is angry, violent and launching tirades against Pakistan where a milder reaction would suffice. This film counts on an anti- Pakistan sentiment to succeed, while its story and execution feel inadequate. But then, it broke box office records too. Setting the tone for aggression and anger, the movie business got a new landscape to explore with the mind boggling success of Animal. Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s film has earned the ire of women and feminists, as well as a lot of men. The film’s verbal and physical violence is deafening and mind-numbing, with an illogical blood fest playing out in a disjointed way at several points. Here the violence doesn’t tether itself to logic and reason. Instead it just pours out over unclear grudges against the hero’s father. Some this this makes sense but most of it is intimidating, for his anger has found applause and accolades from the Indian audience everywhere.  Besides the violence, it is the projection of its hero, Ranbir Kapoor, as an Alpha. He can lure a girl to marry him, make love to her onboard an aeroplane and risk their lives, father her children and drag her back to India when his family is at risk. Worse, he can get her to undress before the household helps to fulfil his desires, and he can cheat on her and then just confess. Most of what Kapoor does is infuriating in the film. Even more scathing, is the portrayal of the antagonist- almost a forced decision. Bobby Deol as Abrar Haque, is a Muslim man, who married thrice. He rapes his wife, and he doesn’t bother to wait for their consent before physical intercourse. Slight appearances that speak volumes of the film’s intent; besides, violence against a pregnant woman or those that the Alpha views as weak, is grating. But Animal has taken on cult proportions. It isn’t just a hit. It is an emotional reaction from some people. Videos of men saying they have watched it again and again, or that women should be treated like this, offers a disturbing insight of where the male versus female debate actually stands in real life. Perhaps the filmmaker didn’t intend to awaken misogyny. But his raw portrayal is directly against the empowerment of women. And people have loved it. At a forum recently, Anurag Kashyap stated an important fact- you will get to see the kind of films that you pay to watch. People fund the movies, and people eventually also find TV shows or web series. It is the audience that turns a film into a mega hit or a mega flop. That these films have done so well reflect two broad truths about Indian society today. There is a lot of repressed anger and aggression in our hearts. And the second, tapping into this aggression, by making raging, angry leading men, is a sure shot success formula. Make it crass and the chances of it succeeding rise further. Hopefully, the year will wrap up on a pleasant note with Dunki . Till then, as a parent, it’s best to turn to animation films or musicals for our kids this Christmas.