Power-tripping with 'Pushpa'
Pushpa 2: The Rule much like its predecessor has proven to be a box office behemoth while being entirely problematic in its unabashed celebration of toxic masculinity despite pretensions to the contrary. While enjoyable thanks to the towering talent of Allu Arjun playing Pushpa with his indefatigable charisma and the entertaining antics of Fahadh Faasil, who can play the villainous clown in his sleep, the film makes no bones about its commitment to catering to the slobbering troglodyte in all of us. This certainly explains Pushpa’s pan-Indian success, while underlining the fact that logic-defying though it is, the film does hold up a mirror to a society that is heedlessly plummeting to the depths of inequity and greed.
In the maximalist world of Pushpa, might and money makes everything right and groovy, not unlike the real world. The viewer is asked to sympathise with the red sandalwood smuggler protagonist because he is a bastard who is constantly harassed and humiliated by his legitimate half-sibling. Pushpa puts up with this though he has killed others without compunction for lesser offenses because he craves acceptance and respect for himself and his long-suffering mum and will stop at nothing to get what he feels is his due.
But none of this alters the fact that he is a killer and gangster whose overblown pride can suffer no slight without demanding savage retribution. Yet this feral boy with the massively proportioned ego is celebrated as a God and is rewarded with the slavish devotion of his wife and loyal followers in whose eyes he can do no wrong.
Pushpa pees drunkenly into a pool to get even with an antagonist who sought to humble him and we are asked to cheer his sickening behaviour. Hardly surprising since there is no public place in India that is not treated as a urinal by Indian boys, and we are supposed to look the other way because this is just what boys do, even in doddering dotage.
The first film, Pushpa: The Rise, drew flak for its portrayal of women as the weaker sex who need animalistic types to protect them from their bestial brethren when they are not being objectified outright. The latest edition tries to rectify its mistakes by giving the female lead played by Rashmika Mandanna a rousing monologue about the glory of Pushpa, though it doesn’t hold back from shooting her at pornographic angles in the song sequences. She gets the part of the dream wife who despite rolling in money, spends her days cooking for her husband, singing his praises and performing her conjugal duties with gusto. Consequently, unlike what her character went through in Animal, another ode to the outsized male ego, Pushpa is faithful.
Of course, the film still views a woman’s body as a battlefield for rampaging male pride. It takes great pains to tell women, they are best suited to being the dutiful sidekick to the husband even if he is an unhinged lout or masturbatory fodder for infantile incels as aspiring for more will get them raped or killed. Yet another inedible dose that is the real truth in a fallen world. For all its flaws, Pushpa is inadvertently honest about what is but ought not to be.
Anuja Chandramouli
Author and new age classicist
anujamouli@gmail.com