The arrival of James Dean and Marlon Brando in the 1950s in
films such as Rebel Without a Cause and The Wild One heralded a new kind
of cinematic idol. He was the ‘angry young man’ a brooding type with a
propensity to explode into sudden bursts of anger. His character became
even more complex by the presence of bottled-up emotional
vulnerabilities which he carried as a burden. He was a contradictory
character with the good intentions of the conventional hero but
(simultaneously) exhibiting an ambiguous ethical disposition.
The
character became an immediate draw, especially among the youth who
vented their frustrations against the sterile socio-political conformity
imposed by the American post-war establishment through him. The
cinematic angry young man symbolised the tumultuous underbelly of
suburban serenity.
In Bollywood, the cinematic angry
young man did not arrive until 1973’s Zanjeer, starring Amitabh
Bachchan. His role was of a brooding cop prone to bursts of anger which
saw him undermine the system by bypassing the apathy of the bureaucracy
and the police, and taking on the villains on his own terms.
Amitabh’s character in Zanjeer was a way for the audience to vent their
own resentments, especially against the degenerating law and order
situation and the rising political and economic corruption in India in
the 1970s.
The new-age angry young man can be seen storming TV talk-shows and political rallies, specially those covered by news channels
And even though Bollywood’s angry young man would continue
in this vein across the 1970s and early 1980s, his character in films,
no matter how menacing, intense and angry, was always about a
conscientious entity up against crooked individuals, never the state
itself.
Indian film critic and author Nikhat Kazmi, in
her book Ire In The Soul, suggests that even though the worsening
political and economic situation in India in the 1970s and the lack of
any political leader who clearly articulated the pitfalls of the
situation inspired the creation of Bollywood’s angry young man, he might
just have been created by the Indian state itself.
In
other words, popular ‘angry young man’ films were never about masses of
people rising up against state institutions. Instead, the films were
about a renegade individual getting rid of the rotten apples who were
spoiling a system that was otherwise okay. The system was never blamed.
Only individuals were.
So Amitabh’s angry-young-man
roles were weaved more as an instrument of collective catharsis, rather
than as exemplary cinematic motifs of mass revolution.
By the 1980s, however, Bollywood’s angry young man character started to
seem rather irrelevant in India’s shifting sociology, politics and
economics.
Strangely, till the late 1970s, heroes in
Pakistani cinema remained rather straight-arrowed and conventional,
apart from Nadeem’s character in the ‘socialist’ film Har Gaya Insaan
(1973).
All this began to change from 1975 onward when,
due to the Z.A. Bhutto regime’s haphazard nationalisation policies and
his growing autocratic tendencies, the country’s politics and economics
began to come under severe stress.
It was, thus, in
1979’s Maula Jat that Pakistani cinema first witnessed the creation of
its very own angry young man. He was played by the late Sultan Rahi.
Rahi’s character was quite unlike that of Bollywood’s angry-young-man.
Whereas Amitabh’s roles in this context were street-smart, brooding and
ideologically-charged, Rahi’s role was that of a man steeped in the
rugged and earthy myths of honour and revenge in rural Pakistan.
Maula Jat’s theme of an angry young man in a Punjabi village taking on
cruel feudal lords and eventually his main nemesis — the cool,
calculated psychopath Noori Nath — went down well with audiences to whom
these villains symbolised the uncaring and exploitative
‘establishment.’
When hordes of working-class
Pakistanis and peasants started venturing into cinemas to watch the
film, the Zia dictatorship stepped in and demanded the director re-cut
certain scenes of violence from the film.
According to
the film’s producer, Sarwar Bhatti, this happened because Gen Zia’s
regime — which had by then established a working relationship with
various anti-Bhutto members of Punjab’s landed elite — was alarmed by
the film’s ‘anti-establishment’ tone.
But by the late
1980s, just as Bollywood’s angry young men had become unintentional
self-parodies, so did Rahi’s roles. They became disconnected with the
changing political and economic dynamics of a transforming society.
Economic liberalism had unleashed an unprecedented streak of consumerism
in both India and Pakistan and their film heroes became either
sanitised consumer brands, or untouchable and implausible superheroes.
But
the new urban middle-class prosperity had an underbelly as well. This
time it was the frustrations of a class which had gained economic
mobility but felt that its aspirations to achieve political power were
being blocked. The manifestation of this particular frustration did not
come in the shape of a new version of the angry young man. Rather, it
did produce one, just not on the silver screen, but on the political
podium!
The new angry young man has emerged on TV
talk-shows and in political rallies, specifically those covered by TV
news channels. Imran Khan in Pakistan and Arvind Kejriwal in India are
prime examples. They are real flesh-and-blood men (though not very
young). But as angry political entities brilliantly utilising the media,
they are largely scripted characters and acts written by the
circumstances of an urban class which wants to vent the political
frustrations which betray their economic wellbeing.
Narendra
Modi too represents the same. But instead of being cast as the angry
young man, he has been scripted (by the same class), as the new
Bollywood hero: the superman.
