A welcome counterweight to the worrying trend of toxic masculinity in our films, popular culture and the mind of today’s youth seems to be emerging in the form of teachable masculinity. These films and books tend to feature fit, cocky, young simpletons, the apple of their mother’s eyes, entitled, high-self-esteemed, who’ve never questioned traditional gender roles simply because the status quo serves them so well. But when they come in contact with a young woman (obviously beautiful) who awakens them to the many ways in which society is unfair to women, they can’t unsee it, and have the chill, the empathy, and the lack of insecurity to change their man-child ways.
Feminist young women may jump in at this point and protest that it isn’t their job to re-train men into being better version of themselves, and that men should come pre-trained and sensitised into the dating market, just like girls traditionally do, but that ain’t happening anytime soon and we’re all works-in-progress, and should all be willing to both give and receive feedback. After all, even the eternally lustworthy and much venerated OG, Fitzwilliam Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, was open enough to listen carefully to Elizabeth Bennet when she took him down with a remarkably well-articulated rant after he condescendingly asked for her hand in marriage. What makes Mr Darcy every girl’s dream man is the fact that he was so teachable, that he listened so carefully while Lizzie excoriated him, that he took her feedback constructively, and that by the end of the book he had either entirely changed, or satisfactorily explained his vexing behaviour.
Karan Johar seems to have read this book often and thoroughly, because it is from the stable of Dharma Productions that we are receiving a steady stream of teachable, loveable man-children who grow into better men by the end of the movie. Most recently we’ve had large-hearted west Delhi Punjabi dudes—Akhil Chaddha and Rocky Randhawa—played by Vicky Kaushal and Ranveer Singh, respectively. Earlier, Varun Dhawan’s Badri from Badrinath ki Dulhania got hit with bad reviews and accusations of toxicity, but audiences loved how, once he saw the error of his ways, he was quick to apologise and had nothing but admiration for his hard-working, ambitious and intelligent wife. But my favourite large-hearted, simple-minded macho dude from the twenty-teens has been Salman Khan as Bajrangi Bhaijaan, a staunch patriot and devout Hanuman-bhakt, who is horrified to find himself in sole charge of a non-vegetarian Pakistani child, yet, after a short, stinging lecture on secularism and humanity by his fiery girlfriend, immediately sees the error of his ways. These characters are all antithesis of the Sandeep Reddy Vanga model, a man so hyper-masculine that he is always in control, always the best person in the room, always emotionally correct, already knows everything, and is therefore unteachable.
Unteachable people have no character arc—they end the film as they started it—without any comeuppance or introspection or admittance of wrongdoing. The closest Johar came to writing a character so unbending was the Raichand patriarch played by Amitabh Bachchan in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, and even he had the bigness of heart to apologise to his son and win all our hearts at the end of the film.
Currently, we are all stunned by Simone Biles’s return to form, and inspired to be a little like her (and other Olympians) in their constant, gritty quest for self-improvement. Being a sullen know-it-all isn’t ‘strong’ or ‘sexy’. Teachability is sexy. Just look at Akhil Chaddha and Mr Darcy.
editor@theweek.in