No country for Jawan or not so Jawan women – Is Bollywood falling into a testosterone trap?

From the little girl playing Nayanthara’s daughter, whose job it is to make Khan look noble for marrying a single mother, to Bollywood superstar Deepika Padukone, who has a fairly long special appearance, the women in Jawan exist solely because of their connection to either or both of Shah Rukh Khan’s characters.

Nayanthara in Jawan.

Nayanthara plays a successful police officer and a single mother, but it’s Shah Rukh’s character who is given cute moments with her daughter to make him look like a great dad before he has parented the child for even a day. A star of her calibre is reduced to participating in songs and making gun-toting appearances to connect one plot point to the next.

Deepika’s character Aishwarya, is merely a device to bring Azad aka Shah Rukh Jr. into the world and burden him with the task of revenge while he is still a toddler. She is an educated woman who puzzlingly seems to make no effort to fight against her death sentence in spite of having five years to do so.  The aggrieved women in Shah Rukh’s team are all female convicts. While it is nice to see women wield guns and hack computers, they admit that they have been chosen by Azad to be a part of his convoluted revenge and anti-establishment narrative. These women have just accepted their fate till Azad literally and metaphorically sets them free. But shockingly, after putting their lives at risk and helping Azad, all these women, including Nayanthara, who is a highly trained officer, are all locked up in prison cells at the film’s climax, while both Shah Rukh Khans and Vijay Sethupathi bask in all their massy massy massy glory.

But the side-lining of female characters is not limited to Jawan alone. None of the other films that have made the big bucks this year have been able to avoid the testosterone trap.

In Pathaan, Deepika Padukone played second if not third fiddle to Shah Rukh Khan and John Abraham. In the climax, she stood aside while the two men battled it out in jet packs and beat each other up in crumbling homes. Gadar 2 was essentially a Sunny Deol show with director Anil Sharma’s son Utkarsh Sharma hogging the remaining limelight. Satyaprem Ki Katha did give Kiara Advani and character Katha screen time, but the whole film was essentially a story of her husband Satyaprem (Kartik Aaryan) discovering the concepts of feminism and consent.

Satyaprem Ki Katha stars Kartik Aaryan and Kiara Advani.

In Dream Girl 2, poor Ananya Panday was side-lined twice over by Ayushmann Khurrana, as Karam and Pooja. Apart from Alia Bhatt in Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, the only woman who got equal screen time as a man in a successful mainstream Bollywood film this year, was Khurrana cross-dressing as Pooja.

Does this mean that in the post-pandemic world, for a film to be successful in theatres, it has to have a male-dominated narrative? Is it a mere coincidence that films like Jaane Jaan, Khufiya, a web series like The Trial, or Kriti Sanon’s upcoming film with Kajol are all releasing on OTT platforms? Or that Ghoomer flopped as badly as it did?

Kareena Kapoor plays the lead role in Jaane Jaan.

Shah Rukh Khan built his career with films where he made the lady he loved, feel truly special. Whether it was Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Dil Toh Pagal Hain, Kal Ho Naa Ho, or even Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, women in his films were always an integral part of the narrative. Sadly, with the success of films like Wanted, Bodyguard and Dabbang, this began changing over the years. With films like Ra One, Fan, Raees and even Zero, Shah Rukh began choosing films where the women and everyone else, were merely around to serve the myth of his stardom.

What is more dangerous, is that filmmakers are now writing film scripts for him where women are included in seeming positions of power, but only because they contribute to the narrative that Shah Rukh Khan has a special connection with his female co-stars. He is gentle with them, he respects them, and he never cracks chauvinistic jokes or gaslights them. It’s all true, but sadly it also now all feels like a sham.

One look at the films lined up for release will show you that ‘massy massy massy films’ are here to stay for a while. Whether it is Tiger 3, Kalki 2898 AD, Salaar, Welcome to the Jungle, Bade Miyan Chote Miyan, Ganapath, or Fighter; based on the promotional material released so far, these films promise to be stories where the women show up to watch the men have fun, come of age, come of middle-age, save the world, or save their own stardom. For those who want to do more than being a jaane jaan, well we can hope and pray that this phase will pass. Till then there is always stree-ming content.