Who is a hero? Is it someone who performs an act of valour? Or is it someone who inspires adulation in others? Opinions differ widely. A Byronic hero, for example, is a “melancholy and rebellious young man, distressed by a terrible wrong he committed in the past”. To American poet Walt Whitman, a hero is someone who does a good deed to make the world more beautiful.
But, perhaps, the definition of a hero is not as fixed as these bards believed it to be. Historian Marshall Fishwick might have been closer to the mark when he said that the hero is always a barometer to the national climate of opinion. “Every hero mirrors the time and place in which he lives,” he said. This might explain why a movie with a toxic 'alpha male' as its hero is doing significantly better than another about a decorated war hero. After all, we live in times when trolls are the most vocal 'aficionados' on most subjects, and words like 'dystopian' and 'deep-fake' are the most searched words of the year.
Two movies which released on the same day (December 1) feature radically different heroes: Animal, a fictional story about Ranvijay, a man determined to avenge his father's attackers; and Sam Bahadur, inspired by the true story of India's first field marshal, Sam Manekshaw. It is telling that even before the release of the films, trade experts predicted that Animal, directed by Sandeep Reddy Vanga and starring Ranbir Kapoor as Ranvijay, would earn more than Sam Bahadur, directed by Meghna Gulzar and starring Vicky Kaushal as Manekshaw.
And that is exactly what happened. Animal, made on a budget of Rs100 crore, grossed Rs700 crore worldwide in 10 days. Meanwhile, Sam Bahadur, made on a budget of Rs55 crore, grossed Rs75 crore worldwide. The opening figures, too, were higher for Animal than Sam Bahadur, thereby sparking a debate about the contrasting ideas of manhood in Bollywood, with Animal's toxic masculinity having more takers than the larger-than-life portrayal of a hero in Sam Bahadur.
Trade analyst and industry tracker Ramesh Bala says, “Animal is a mass-oriented, youth-friendly commercial film, whereas Sam Bahadur is more of a niche movie. The trailers set the tone for what was to come. Animal has the right mix of everything―action, drama and hero worship. As against that, Sam Bahadur appeals to the slightly middle-aged and older generation which is nostalgic about the exploits of the field marshal. It is a multiplex-oriented niche film, compared with Animal, which is meant for the single-screen goer who enjoys a good masala film. This explains the wide gap in the box office collections of the two films.”
Experts attribute Animal's success to the close relationship between popular culture and society, with one feeding off the other. The ideas and attitudes we embrace as a society will make it into films like Animal, they say. “Animal―which appeals to the lowest common denominator and peddles the crudest representations of masculinity, along with a healthy dose of Islamophobia and an attack on all kinds of minorities―holds a mirror to our society, as popular culture always does,” says writer Jerry Pinto. “We have always been that kind of society. It is just that now, with the current dispensation at the Centre and with the trolls, there is a greater nakedness about our darker side. Feminism has always been a thorn for most men, and it takes a lot of effort for any man to give up power. So, any attempt at sharing it must be met with a backlash, and films like Animal are that backlash.”
It also speaks of what society wants to watch―like a man who makes his wife listen to a black box recording of the first time they had sex in his private jet. As against the chivalrous field marshal who charmingly woos his to-be wife and holds open car doors for the ladies. Vanga's earlier films like Arjun Reddy (2017) and its Hindi remake, Kabir Singh (2019), had exactly the same kind of protagonist, and they worked well, too. Kabir Singh, starring Shahid Kapoor, grossed over Rs370 crore, becoming the second-highest grossing Hindi film of 2019. Vanga stands by his characters. Justifying a scene where Kabir slaps his girlfriend Preeti, he had said, “There's love between the two. If you don't have the liberty of slapping each other, then I don't see anything there."
Arjun Reddy might also have given Vanga a "formula for success", which he then applied to both Kabir Singh and Animal―to appease and appeal to the chauvinistic male ego. "Vanga is not making these movies just for the sake of making them,” says Bala. “It is his conviction about his protagonists. Animal is also a part of the alternate fare that Vanga is providing the masses, who are now being bombarded with notions of feminism, liberalism and cerebral content. Vanga knows what works, and he is making it.”
Faiz Ullah, assistant professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, agrees. While conceding that other films have explored a range of masculinities and more nuanced representations of gender relations, even if less successfully, Ullah says that filmmakers like Vanga are “determined to reverse whatever little gains one has seen regarding gender inclusion and the complexity of representation in the recent past”. He calls it a “visceral reaction” to the traction that feminist and social justice movements have been able to create around issues of equality, inclusion, dignity and justice, most recently after #MeToo.
Not many people in the industry have openly appreciated the film. Actor and producer Ramesh Babu and filmmaker S.S. Rajamouli chose to remain silent after watching. Upon facing backlash, actor Trisha Krishnan had to delete her social media post which called Animal a cult film. Film critic C.S. Venkateswaran says that that post-Covid, many films have been displaying more violence of the “over-the-top, visceral, and graphic kind”. "It is reflective of the huge amount of hatred and misogyny in society, and these films are pandering to it and in turn magnifying it,” he says.
Yet, Pinto feels there is hope, because everything happens in waves. “In the 1970s and 1980s there was a lot of violent cinema, then in the 1990s there was romantic cinema and so, this is another such wave which will pass." As for who a hero really is, perhaps it is merely a matter of perspective. After all, for the mother in Siegfried Sassoon's poem, 'The Hero', her coward son who died in the war was a hero. And for many people today, the man in Animal who asked a woman to lick his shoe to prove her love is a hero.