Dabangg & the sadness of ‘light’ masala…

All masala cinema that counts can really be traced back to Amitabh Bachchan’s seminal interventions. Whether in the ‘North’ or in the ‘South’ all commercial cinema in this genre or more appropriately ‘super’-genre marks the influence of his signature. There is however in Southern cinema also the very important mediation of Rajnikant. If Bachchan’s own peak career involves a movement from the dramatic intensity of the angry young man to the picaresque triumphs of the Desai persona Rajnikant’s historical trajectory has involved a privileging of the latter dynamic to create his own uniquely impish brand of the masala hero. Contemporary Southern masala often reflects both sides of the divide though barring Vikram who mostly belongs to the more silent mode of Bachchan’s career other stars have generally chosen to err on the Rajnikant side of the equation. But the latter can be weakly misread as merely a museum of the iconic and the gestural (sadly Rajni himself is reduced to the latter these days). A whole moral component that is as central to Rajnikant’s masala persona as it is to both movements of the Bachchan intervention is often missing in these latter day films. Many films strive to recreate that epic resonance and hence rely on cathartic narratives but vastly more are content to simply offer up the masala hero as a kind of Leone-inspired avatar who is just the sum of his gestures and lines. In short there is the guilty pleasure of the genre without the moral balance or the cathartic costs of the same. This guise of masala cinema is perhaps appropriate for an age and an economically dominant ‘multiplex’ audience that is not easily inspired by lofty causes or revolutionary ends and often does not even desire systemic critique. It is therefore quite happy to see a skeletal masala story where it’s basically a one-on-one between the ‘hero’ and the ‘villain’. They out-thunder each other throughout the film and eventually the hero wins. As this brand of masala has become the easy fallback option for both filmmakers and their audiences, especially in Telugu cinema, responsible storytelling with all its moral or ethical wagers has become the purview of a more middle of the road ‘new’ Tamil framework. But increasingly, and irrespective of the options available in the South (as opposed to Bombay where the genre has been defunct for a long time), masala seems exhausted. It is mostly little more than a set of registers offering Pavlovian interactions with the audience. It is not surprising then that inasmuch as Bombay seeks to recover some of its own masala heritage after the enervating Yashraj years it finds one branch of the contemporary Southern model to be vastly the better ‘compromise’. Bachchan’s Desai phase essentially produced an uneasy mix. Rajnikant’s dominant model was the very same. A masala cinema where the ‘tragic’ is foreclosed rather unsurprisingly ends up as comedy except that with these two stars even comedy could end up being rather serious or costing quite a bit! The cinema of the present however increasingly effaces any semblance of a serious ethical debate. In Telugu cinema Mahesh Babu offers the exemplary moment of such a strain of masala and in Bombay a rather timid set of directors has also found it similarly necessary to privilege either the comedic strains of the genre or the body-without-soul empty gesturality. Dabangg offers the textbook example of this whole school of ‘compromised’ masala filmmaking.

In a rather impressionistic sense I should state that I enjoyed Dabangg quite a bit, even if at less than two hours it was over before I knew it! This too is symptomatic of the nervous Hindi director who does not wish to test his audiences! Abhinav Kashyap actually touches on many important themes of the genre but almost always at a distance. The viewer observes what is going on without ever having to emotionally participate in anything. Salman Khan becomes the perfect hero for this vehicle. For this film essentially depends on a cipher who will ‘enact’ the gestural but not really ‘perform’ character. Dabangg should have been at least a half hour longer. The romance should have resonated more, the family tragedy, the fratricidal and Oedipal struggles should all have meant more, even Chulbul Pandey’s character could have been etched out somewhat! But Kashyap is quite content to operate on the surface. The film is just in a great hurry to get to the end. It is as if one gets a fine preview of many masala ingredients without ever actually seeing the promised film. Ironically many previews from an earlier age of cinema asked more of the viewer than this entire film does! Kashyap definitely has a deft touch but he is almost too clever for the film’s good. I truly wish he had not wasted this extraordinary chance. The film’s strongest feature is easily its very authentic milieu and ambience, the casting is also handled right just about everywhere, Kashyap also displays a certain visual finesse overall, I am even willing to ignore some questionable editing at points in this rushed film, the narrative for what it is also benefits hugely from a very charismatic star turn by Salman Khan who as I’ve already suggested is really the perfect actor for this part, there is a rather effective soundtrack as well… but the film for all this never amounts to more than the sum of its parts. Because Kashyap simply refuses to go down the cathartic route in any sense. This is a great joyride of a film and nothing more. If it has enjoyed a stunning run at the box office this perhaps validates more the idea that there is an audience that yearns, consciously or unconsciously, for masala pleasures and will make do with what it can get and of course in total fairness Dabangg is miles ahead of other ridiculous (and often B grade) Hindi attempts in recent years (barring the all-important Ghajini where Aamir Khan to his great credit did not compromise in these ways). But if it is nonetheless falling quite short of the 3 Idiots total after having matched it in the initial run or if it is not even likely to match Ghajini’s trending could it possibly be because that emotional investment by an audience ultimately means something? I celebrate Dabangg for its box office run but I also see in it more evidence of a certain masala evasion on the part of ‘Bollywood’, a history that includes even an older effort like Bunty aur Babli or more recently Once Upon a Time in Mumbai. The directors in question just do not wish to run the risk of ‘seriousness’ in the genre. I have pointed this out many times before but masala in its golden period was precisely what had to be taken very seriously. Even in films where comedy and romance dominated most of the narrative the final resolution always involved important questions. Today however there is this somewhat condescending view or at least a rather ‘bemused’ misreading of the heritage that seems to treat masala as a ‘circus’ of superficial delights. This is really to completely misunderstand things. But of course we are in a very different cultural moment and perhaps one cannot easily count on a multiplex audience that is so frighteningly politically disengaged even on much more significant issues.

I would celebrate some of these ‘evasions’ (even as I enjoy them nonetheless) far more if I felt these were detours to a more authentic masala cinema coming about, even if I even thought there was something like new Tamil cinema in the offing. I would be more than satisfied if I could sense a compromise here with multiplex audiences who had to be slowly weaned off their Yashraj narcotics before graduating to more authentic films. But I do not see any such signs yet. Ghajini itself seems to be a flash in the pan because even if some stars now seem to be willing to take up masala they are following very much the less desired route. Of course I would rather have a lifetime of Dabangg-like films than those infernal Swiss romances that Yashraj and Johar foisted upon us for a number of years. But equally I long for a less breezy masala and hope that delightful as Dabangg is on many counts it will not become the norm.

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