The Villain Vanishes
THE VILLAIN VANISHES
Where has the leering, moustache-twirling, scotch-swirling, babe-hounding bad guy gone?
DEC. 4, 2009 – WHEN STORIES CHANGE, so do the characters in them. Earlier, when stories (like Do Raaste) revolved around joint families that laughed together and cried together, a villain (or more likely, a vamp, in the form of a daughter-in-law) was needed to rupture the gleaming edifice of oneness. Or when stories (like Arjun) were based on an innocent wronged by society, a villain was needed to give face to the corruption that caused the loss of innocence. And as those kinds of stories have receded to make way for multiplex-friendly pop-movies, those villains too have vanished. There aren’t too many joint families on screen anymore, and neither do many films concern themselves with social issues. Dramatic tension is engineered through circumstance, which has become our reigning villain – not a specific person but an unfortunate chain of events.
The lovers in Love Aaj Kal are split up by the circumstance of being in different continents. The wayward twin in Kaminey is due to the circumstance of an unfortunate childhood. The chain of dastardly events unleashed by the protagonists of London Dreams and Omkara is less the result of any inherent evil than the circumstance of a weak will. (Even the ostensible villain of Omkara isn’t the all-out-shades-of-black bad-guy from the earlier days; his loyalty is swerved by the circumstance of a coveted post finding its way to someone else.) It’s only in the stories about gangsters (Sarkar) or religious intolerance (Aamir) do we find, any longer, characters that can be classified as villains, though even they can be excused under exonerating circumstances (in these specific cases, the favoured son being chosen over the older son, or the tangle of racial fear in the world we live in today, which causes minorities to opt for offence as the best form of defence).
That, I feel, is the key to the vanishing villain. We live in a more complex world where good and evil aren’t so easily demarcated. We do not look at the protagonist of Dev.D as a villain, though even a few decades ago, such extreme self-absorption (along with “vices” like smoking and drinking) would have been shunned in a hero. In those sunnier days, if a character thought only about himself, the moral hand of fate would bear down upon him – there would be, say, a mandatory jail sentence, or the temporary loss of a loved one. When Dev Anand sold tickets in the black market in Kala Bazar or when he embarked on an affair with a married woman in Guide, he was expelled from paradise (even if only for a brief while) before being allowed to rejoin the company of angels.
But the angels and demons are indistinct today – not in the sense of our being unable to distinguish between good and bad, right and wrong, but more along the lines of the good being wedded to the bad, the wrong appearing at times right. In a more innocent age, the bad was so outlandishly segregated from the good that it came with a special set of accoutrements – a number of stolid henchmen, a near-naked moll, a den filled with twinkling gadgets, and most importantly, the echoes of cackling laughter from a head thrown back, that unmistakable sign that darkness resided in the hearts of these men. Those films were different too, distilled as they were from our own archetypal myths of good and evil. Rama was good and Ravana was bad and that was that. If there was an element of “bad” in Rama’s chauvinistic requirement of Sita having to prove her chastity through the agni-pariksha, or if there was the “good” in Ravana that allowed him to establish a great, golden empire (a “sone ki Lanka”) before the fatal folly of abducting another man’s wife, we weren’t interested.
The early films of Amitabh Bachchan did a lot to tilt the balance. You could lay the blame for his badness in Deewar on circumstance, but how could you explain away his criminal in Don? Even with the compensatory comfort of a “good” counterpart, it was the bad Don who was remembered – for his panache, for his lines – so much so that when Farhan Akhtar remade Don, he resurrected the villain as the protagonist. Good died helplessly in the hands of Evil. The all-bad villain is about as much use, now, as the moll, who was needed earlier to wear short skirts and show off cleavage – these duties have passed on to the heroine, just like the badness of the earlier villain has percolated down to the milk-white hero and resulted in shades of grey more suited to our times, when we’re all neither wholly pure nor irredeemably impure.
Besides, where are issues of morality being explored in the movies any more? We seem to have love stories, coming-of-age stories, amoral gangster stories – but with the rare exception of a Shikhar, where are the movies that weigh the easy rewards of being bad against the hard-earned gains of leading the good life? That dichotomy has all but disappeared. The only truly-evil people we see on screen is in the rare throwback to the archetypal masala entertainer (Ghajini, Wanted), which operate on Manichean black-and-white ideologies. And it’s interesting to note that, despite the success of these films, we haven’t seen a slew of me-too announcements. They appear to be one-offs rather than a revival – at least where Hindi cinema is concerned.
But in regional cinema, at least in the mass-entertainer masalas in Tamil and Telugu, the villain is a thriving presence. Even as newer stories are being explored, the older archetypes haven’t been abandoned. There is room, it appears, for everything – black, white, and the shades of grey. The relative lack of penetration of the multiplex-mentality may have something to do with this. Hindi cinema has learned that maximum profits can be made from the handfuls of multiplexes in a handful of metros – the other audiences, the more traditional Hindi-film audiences, have been abandoned. The hipster-movie (with its borderline-effete, pink-tee heroes) hasn’t yet made its presence felt elsewhere, at least not to the extent in Hindi cinema – and that’s why there still are macho-male stories about good triumphing over evil. The villain hasn’t vanished, exactly. He just doesn’t speak much Hindi anymore.
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Did this piece for Outlook magazine, a special issue about “maleness” — they wanted a piece on “the vanishing villain.”
Very interesting piece. Agree with the observation. The vanishing villain, the grey-shade hero and the less-than-perfect bhartiya nari heroine are all symptomatic of a world where larger-than-life characters do not cut ice with an audience that wants to be able to relate to each character at some level.
Or maybe not, given that the archetypal black and whites still exist abundantly on television and all soap opera plots.
That’s a great article. Its hard to find no-brain entertainment in hindi movies these days which are worth a few laughs at the end of the day. The villains that mothers used to scare kids to get them to eat quicker have indeed vanished. But I guess the “traditional Hindi-film audiences” have overly made-up Ekta Kapoor aunties to carry the torch forward.
phoenix: Reg. “a world where larger-than-life characters do not cut ice with an audience” Not too sure about that. It’s the multiplex audience mainly. Those very same factor would still cut ice, IMO, with the rest of the country.
R: Reg. “Its hard to find no-brain entertainment in hindi movies these days” Are you kidding? The Priyadarshan movies? The Akshay Kumar films? There’s a lot of “no brain” stuff still around
you know, this is aboslutely silly, after years of lamenting the lack of greyness in characters when it arrives, people have a problem with that too.
now multiplex is the root cause of all evil?
s: Does this piece read like a lament to the “vanishing villain”? That wasn’t the intent, which was to simply write about a fairly obvious recent phenomenon.
Excellent observational piece BR.
Nice need of the hour piece.
A story without a villain has to work so well to get me hooked. A good villain makes it work with least effort.
My all time best villains would be
1. Gabbar singh from sholay
2. Amavasai a.k.a nagaraja chozhan from amaidhippadai
3. Ramanadhan in Avargal
The other interesting phenomenon also seems to be a fairly large number of Tamil/Telugu movies dubbed in Hindi being screened on TV channels like Zee Cinema, Star Gold where the numbers for viewership I think are more lop sided in favor of the non-multiplex crowd.
Though I think to say that Villains have disappeared from Multiplex movies is an inaccurate description. You are discounting a couple of excellent performances of Boman Irani in “Munnabhai Part 2″ and “Khosla ka Ghosla”. Girish Karnad in “Iqbal” and “Dor”, I do not think that any of these four characters had any redeeming features going for them to call them having shades of grey. And how could you forget “Dr Handa” of “Oye Lucky Lucky Oye”. I would even like to make a case for Rathore the politician in “Manorama Six Feet Under”. These are all villains but their violence may not be all physical as maybe the case is in say a “Ghajini” or a “Wanted” but they still send a chill down my spine (esp Khurana as to the ease with which one could lose private property and Girish Karnad in Iqbal in terms of how a single person can easily control a cricketer’s career).
Badesaab, who are your all time favorite villains? or the most memorable, acc. to you ? Gabbar Singh, obviously was one the best, if not THE best. How about Mogambo? Dr. Dang from Karma ? Subhash Ghai probably had the most comical villains in ‘prime showman’ days. What about Ashsish Vidyaarthi’s character in ‘Drohkaal’ (though he was not your regular evil without a reason villain)? I’m not that aware as far as regional cinema goes? I’m sure Utpal Dutt played one well in some movie. Finally, who are your favorite actors as villains? Pran, Ajit, Amjad Khan, Amrish Puri with Danny Denzongpa, Prem Chopra, Ranjeet and Shakti Kapoor.
Trishool was probably the most villainous role of Amitabh.
Lee Marvin said that the best way to play the bad guy is like a good guy.This has also been an element of change-high octave villains like Mogambo and Gabbar have been replaced by more sophisticated ones.
I’ve noticed a evolution in terms of Villainy of regional movies – directors are often picking actors that are uncharacteristically slotted into villainous roles. See JD in Sarvam, Ajith in Varalaru, Jayaram in Saroja and Dhaam Dhoom, mottai dude in Naan Kadavul, doctor Yaavarum Nalam, that dude in Ayan, samudhirakani in nadodigal. Rangan – there has been shift down south as well!
Its not a coincidence that Ghajini and Wanted are both South Indian remakes. Like you mentioned, those kinds of films still thrive in the South, and their success as Hindi remakes shows that people still want those kinds of films.
To me, it is the bad villains and heroes with shades of gray that are memorable. Gabbar Singh is memorable because of his utter ruthlessness, but Jai and Veeru are also memorable because of their imperfections and the fact that they’re ex-cons.
chhote saab / Nightwatchmen: Like Jaiganesh mentioned, those are some memorable villains. I’m not so much a fan of the Dang/Mogambo type. The outlandishness is fun while the film lasts, but they don’t remain a rooted character like Gabbar Singh or Ashish Vidyarthi in Drohkaal. Though even the latter was an “ideological” villain, while the former was absolutely ruthless because he just was. Plus Amjad Khan brought an uncouth rawness to the character that’s still shocking today. Poor guy. After scaling those heights in his very first film, he spent the rest of his career in the shadow of Gabbar, never again getting any part even close. But then, how could he? Gabbar was as much his creation as Salim-Javed’s, and after they split up, there was a long drought in a specific kind of movie-writing. I also love the Amitabh of Saudagar, Parwana and Zameer — not really the Gabbar brand of villainy, but very effective in a smoother way.
kamil: But sometimes, this “uncharacteristically” business appears just a gimmick, as in “see who I’ve cast as villain!” Jayaram in DD was just plain laughable. And yes, there has been a change in the kinds of villains down south too, but the phenomenon is more marked in Hindi because an entire type of movie has all but vanished.
That visual medium is a powerful medium is a fact overstated.
I normally dont “hijack” blogs but this particular story was so powerful that it haunts me even as I write this
do visit the site: http://www.ted.com and acess the story on Sunitha Krishnan and her battle against sex trafficking
of recent villains i love the way mba rowdy in quick gun murugan was setup (the cheesy chorus playing in the background
)…the prakash raj character in wanted had good potential but was not exploited fully…but the villains of the 70s are hard to beat…
Sigappu Rojakkal was perhaps path breaking in this context…having a hero with a completely grey shade. Even in recent films such as Kanaa Kandaen, Prithviraj’s character starts off impressively before turning into the cliche of being truly evil. Also, the reversal of roles in Anjathey during the course of the film was pretty interesting too. However, you are right that Tamil cinema is still largely stuck in the stereotypes. When I watch the promos of Vettaikkaran, I simply sigh and wish that some of the newer paths that Hindi cinema has taken lately, finds its way down south too!! We still seem to be getting spoon-fed a lot!!
Shankar: Actually, I’m not talking about stereotype so much as archetype. I think it’s good that all kinds of villains exist in Tamil cinema — the Anjaathey kind versus the Yaavarum Nalam kind versus the more overt villains and so on. (That these villains, sometimes, get short shrift in the writing is a different issue altogether.)
Not to appear too flippant, when was the last time there was a “rape” in a Hindi movie. The answer to that question can be used to mark a sociological inflection in Hindi movies.
Even in Telugu or Tamil cinema where the snarling villian still continues, sexual assault as a weapon seems to be dying out. Any reasons behind that???