I would say I had the misfortune of watching Maari 2 on Monday night, but because I picked this film over every other one in the theatres right now I’ll resort to it being a mistake, hopefully the last one for this year. But, to be honest with myself and fair to the film, there were three good things about it — Varalaxmi Sarathkumar (who deserves more writing than a mere mention now), Sai Pallavi’s impressive dance skills (the likes of which I haven’t seen on screen in a long time), and enough fodder for the column (so I mustn’t be cribbing at all).
Cinema has for a long time seen rowdyism, dons, goons, gang leaders and the mafia with a good-bad binary lens — if the hero is the rowdy, he’s the good guy and if the hero is a police officer the rowdy is the baddy who must be finished off. The movies that do not have this binary view of women, police officers and rowdies are exceptions, and even they feel contrived in looking for a soul and reason in the cold-heartedness and corruption of these characters.
In Maari 2, Dhanush is a don with the titular name who averts a hundred murder attempts. Through a cake-cutting and celebration of ‘100 not out’ scene that seemed to go on forever, my mind wandered off (fully justified I must say) to this business of glorifying bad men. When violence or criminal activities are undertaken by the hero, it is portrayed as the collateral to saving friendships and touching lives, thus justifying violence as a means for greater good and making a person who would be considered criminal by the law into a heroic saviour of people and property, lauding his sense of justice while it is really a deplorable khap panchayat. The continuous portrayal of men such as these as worthy, deeming them eligible and using female characters to want ‘konjam kettavan’s’ pushes forward a sexiness and machoism in men, but at its very foundation is a trait of toxic masculinity.
One important aspect of this particular streak of toxic masculinity is what it does to the actor who plays the role and the character that it is written into. It has to do with the fact that this baddy sees himself as beyond love and familial affection. As an actor, this kind of role brings the hero (Dhanush in this case) to place on the curve where he stops chasing after women. As a character, this allows ample opportunity to have women pour her love out for the man while singing praises of his unblemished character, thus elevating the natural desirability for him.
That then brings us to ‘Araathu Anandhi’, the role played by actor Sai Pallavi in the film. She is an auto driver — tick off gender-bending job — but, only an excuse for an earnest working woman that remains vocal about her love for the man who has shown her kindness. She chases him even when he openly rejects her advances and attention, and this is done by using another character by the same name, but one who is visibly darker skinned — a ploy it’s high time we got rid off altogether. A ‘nice’ woman being madly in love with this man so ‘committed’ to what he does that he wants no attachment to a woman elevates the worthiness of this gangster and makes the whole thing look cloying and pitiful at the most. But, what it does manage to do is to cover up what this woman is really doing, and what if had been done by a man would’ve caused a murmur if not outrage.
The fact is that this woman is a stalker, who is deluded that Maari behaves the way he does because he likes her (a way in which women are asked to adjust with men’s behaviour, and stalkers convince themselves to keep at it). What this makes ‘Araathu Anandhi’ is exactly what she says she’s not — A loosu ponnu — only that she’s of a different kind, and in love with a criminal. That said, stalking is stalking, and consent just that, and toxic masculinity must vanish, and actors could pick better scripts to keep the curves going.
archanaa seker
seker.archanaa@gmail.com
The writer is a city-based activist, in-your-face feminist and a media glutton