NON-FICTION previous injustice. Though romance is tangential in these films, what relations the hero has with women besides his mother are predominantly sexual and only sometimes incidentally emotional. This way of including romance in the narrative serves to only enhance the masculinity of the angry young man in movies such as Deewaar. In this film, Bachchan’s character pays attention to women when they are dancing in minimal clothing or aggressively pursuing him in a bar. This is a clear break from the wholesome romantic interests of Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar. Though he is linked romantically to only one woman throughout Deewaar, Bachchan is portrayed as having sex with her soon after meeting her—he is seen in bed with her shirtless—and as impregnating her out of wedlock. Romance within the film is nothing more than an additional vehicle for demonstrating aspects of his masculinity—his virility in sleeping with a woman, his male form in his appearance in bed with her, and his potency in impregnating her.
Bachchan’s characters set a paradigm within Hindi cinema of ultimate masculinity—a joining of Eastern and Western constructions of ideal male behavior into an unabashedly celebrated hyper-masculine being. Since Bachchan faded from lead roles and the political climate became so tense that Bollywood was no longer willing to reference it through vigilante films, fewer hyper-masculine characters have been seen in Hindi popular cinema. However, when they do appear, they follow at least part of Bachchan’s prototype of a virile, violent male. In the film Hey Ram, released in both Hindi and Tamil in 2000, the main character Sanket Ram (played by Kamalahasan) endures a personal injustice early in the film when his wife is raped and murdered, after which he is transformed into a militant, hyper-sexualized being. In addition to his violent plot to kill Mahatma Gandhi, the new sexuality of Kamalahasan’s character is emphasized: early in the movie his is shown as being playfully and gently sensual with his wife, a woman for whom he
“Manliness as conveyed through violence and sexuality was rarely present in Hindi cinema prior to Bachchan’s ascension to fame, but since the birth of the ‘angry young man’ genre, these characteristics have become the primary mode of masculinity in Bollywood.” The anti-heroes he played represent the strongest of the “martial” genre of Hindi cinema— those that focus on male heroism, power, social obligation, and revenge. Bachchan’s masculinity is unambivalent—it is proactive and productive in the face of injustice. Beyond a desire for justice and a general disinterest in romance, the masculinity of these characters is enhanced by Bachchan’s seemingly superhuman fighting skills—in fact, fight choreographers were added to the staff of Hindi movies for the first time in these films—as well as the fact that the protagonist’s father is often killed early in the film, a narrative element that allows the angry son to be the central, and sole emblem of masculinity throughout much of the film. In “Blood, Sweat and Tears: Amitabh Bachchan, Urban Demi-God,” Ashwani Sharma explains that Bachchan’s characters were based on an assimilation of the tension between morality, justice, and family loyalty present within the Mahabharata as well as the rebel heroes of other national cinemas: Clint Eastwood of Hollywood and Bruce Lee of Hong Kong Kung Fu films. As such,
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cares for deeply, but when he is forced to remarry he is virtually emotionless toward his new wife, and when they have sex the violent, phallic imagery of a gun flashes onscreen. Karen Gabriel, a scholar of women’s development in India, writes in “The Importance of Being Gandhi” that this movie reveals “the orthodoxy of the relations that are usually forged between gender, sexuality, power and religious and national identity.” The same violent thirst for vengeance and emotionless sexuality, “Playing Krishna” in a sense, of Bachchan’s films is replicated to create Kamalahasan’s idealized, hyper-masculine protagonist. In even more recent films, top Hindi film stars employ parts Bachchan’s model of masculinity in such movies as Jodhaa Akbar and Ghajini (both released in 2008) to assert their own masculinity. In Jodhaa Akbar, though, romance between the main characters is central to the narrative. Akbar (played by Hrithik Roshan) maintains his duties and focus beyond his love for Jodhaa—he is not incapacitated by an emotional relationship with a woman. Additionally, as they do not consummate their marriage until