Constructing a New Manliness: Performing Masculinity in Rowdy Rathore

Abstract

Mainstream popular cinema is a powerful medium to impart social values through cultural indoctrination/ interpellation. The evolving discourse of ‘manliness' in Bollywood cinema is seen to present a neoconservative picture of dominant ‘hypermasculinity', evocative of  but vastly different from the ‘Angry Young Man' trope in the 1970s. The ideals valorized as characteristic of normative masculinity are: patriarchal hegemony, a gendered division of labour, a particular kind of ideal physique, aggression and violence. Since Judith Butler, the idea of performing gender has been an accepted notion and this paper investigates how the film, Rowdy Rathore, a major commercial success in 2012, articulates the stereotypes – the set of expectations and practices –  that society deems appropriate for a man to perform. The paper borrows from R. W. Connell's theory of ‘Social Organization of Masculinities' to show how the different male characters in the film exhibit different masculinities – which are either hegemonic or marginalized and how even those who do not exhibit appropriate/ desirable male behaviour are complicit in the ideology. It analyses how dominance and violence are legitimized and constructed as ‘natural' of the male will to power. The quest for the hypermasculine also implies the subordination of the woman – she is either an object of pleasure to be enticed, possessed or rescued.  Further, it analyses the semiotics of film that work collaboratively to create the masculine image –shots, visual aspects of costume design and character personality.