A year ago on this day, we were startled to see a starlet bend down to lick Ranbir Kapoor’s boot. No, it was not a joke. It was a serious command from a man who knew how to get his way with women.
Tripti Dimri became a sought-after actress after this unbecoming act which took women back to the Caveman era. Indeed Animal seemed to espouse the era of the Caveman. The film’s macho trigger-happy hero didn’t actually drag any woman across the screen by her hair. But the message was clear – Ranbir’s character pushed around the women in his life , including his sister, a woman abused by her husband and bullied by her ‘protective’ brother.
Things couldn’t get any more dodgy for the feminist movement. Women were brutally disempowered in Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal. The men were a law unto themselves. They did as they willed and the women just had to quietly submit to the masculine diktat. Looking at Animal now, it appears even more dangerous and sinister. The stakes seemed high and some of them have been driven right into the heart of the feminist movement.
Animal seems to revel in its own misogyny. If only the director had not seemed so enamoured of his characters, we could have perhaps perceived the exaggerated machismo of Vanga’s world as a diseased aberration rather than a loving homage.
Vanga believes he was only putting forward what he knows to be the truth about the man-woman equation. How about a more culture and refined worldview the next time? How about a world where women wear the boots, not lick them?