Mythology, Masculinity and Indian Cinema: Representation of ‘Angry Young Man’ in Popular Hindi Films of 1970s

Abstract

In the 1970s popular Hindi cinema witnessed an emergence of action oriented films with a distinctive "angry young man" protagonist. Tracing the antecedents of Indian masculine subjectivity in colonial discourse, this essay seeks to constitute a framework that identifies vestiges of mythological narratives alongside the politico-historical factors, to explain the formation of the belligerent male in the post-independence popular Hindi films. Reconciling the problematic of overdetermined "Indianness"-conceived as spiritual, calm, and other-worldly, together with its opposite: aggression, anger and this-worldly, that is also constitutive of Indian masculinity-the essay argues, benevolence or militancy cohere in the masculine self and, are activated according to specific political conditions in history. The angry man figure inscribed in the 1970s popular Hindi cinema is explicable in relation to the 1960s political crises in India that exposed a delegitimized Indian state. This essay focuses on the mythic tale of Parashurâma in the epic Purânas, which is instructive in understanding the rage and rebellion of the figure of the angry man-and his violent yet eventually sacrosanct masculinity-whose dharma (sacred duty) is to reinstate the flawed ideal even if that meant confronting the enemy within or going against one's own family.