Sharanya Vairam

The following is an excerpt from an article I had written about masculinities in male cop movies in South India. Since it is just an excerpt I have given the list of movies at the end of the piece. MASCULINITIES IN MALE COP MOVIES In the male cop movies that were reviewed there is variety of masculinities that are constructed and portrayed. I classify the cops into 3 categories: • • • The action/shooting star cop, who mindlessly swings into action, uses violence excessively and is very destructive like Prabhakaran, Rathnavel Pandian, Ramarajyam and Vikram Rathore. They do very little thinking like Prabhakaran who gets an entire village killed at the hands of Veerabhadran due to his methods and insufficient planning. The thinking cop is the one who thinks a lot, takes down notes, analyses them all the time and enjoys playing mind games. They are even emasculated at times and to make up for that they fight or enter the action mode when the situation demands. They are the intelligent cops like Chadrashekhar (who keeps playing chess throughout the movie), J.K (who finds a breakthrough in the case) and Sethurama Iyer. The balancer cop is the one who is a good mixture of the intelligent/thinking type as well as a shooting star type. They are street smart, dexterous, racy and aggressive. The rest that is Anbuchelvan , Duraisingam, Aaruchaami, Raghavan and the second half of Rathnavel Pandian and Vikram Rathore when the petty thieves are impersonating them. The point that I wish to make through this sort of categorisation is that even though these cops have different methods of approaching crime and cases, inherently they are all good cops only (even if some of their methods would involve making short term friendships with ‘evil’ like in Saamy where Aaruchaami initially becomes friends with the villain, kingmaker Perumal Pichai only in order to destroy him later). The masculine in these movies is both dangerous and good. Firstly, I would like to discuss about the normative masculinity that is portrayed in the films reviewed. It is essential for Tamil, Malayali and Telugu men to sport a moustache especially when they are in tough roles such as police officers, army men, goon, politician or any other role where physical and intellectual prowess are both required. So, the moustache becomes the defining characteristic and necessity of these tough cops to be treated as normative men and defines their masculinity. In other films where the police man does not sport a moustache, he is either a bad cop like Ajith in Mankatha (2012) even if he is the lead character or he is not a Tamil man. There are handpicked movies that have a powerful, honest male lead as a police officer without a moustache like Osthi (2012) and such movies generally do not fare very well especially with the audiences other than the multiplex audiences. The moustache is also a symbol of their virility, transition into adulthood (from boyhood) and bravery/daredevilry. It is not uncommon to hear people say, “how is this baby face going to take on a huge villain, baby face does not even have a moustache”. So, most directors make sure that the hero in their movie has a moustache and a particular kind of moustache while signing them in. Apart from the moustache, the normative masculinity of these cops entails being a Hindu, upper caste man, mostly middle class, compulsorily heterosexual and able-bodied. It is also noteworthy that it is only actors who have achieved the status of a star are the ones who are cast in the role of a male cop; newcomers are generally not considered for the role. So, age is also an important factor in the attainment of hegemony. The names of most of the cops in these movies are also interesting in that they are given different deities’ names or the name has something to do with lord like Aaaruchaami (chaamy-saamy meaning God), Duraisingam (where Durai means lord and Singam means lion, the king of the forest), Rathnavel (the name of the Tamil deity Muruga), Ramarajyam, etc. The most powerful characters in these films would be the cop and the main villain both of whom will be hegemonic in a sense but finally, the cop will the most powerful symbol of the plot when he destroys the evil in the form of the villain. The portrayal of the villain borrows from the regional legends of demons, rakshasa, picasus, etc. who are mostly dark skinned, malevolent and vengeful, may or may not be from the lower class/caste but definitely have power and money. The villains are also shown as having indomitable desire for sex, body, money, power and fame. For example, Mayilvahanam, the villain character of Singam is shown as being a real estate mafia who kidnaps people for money. Perumal Pichai of Saamy is again shown as a land mafia, running several wine shops in the city and an electoral kingmaker. Veerabhadran of Captain Prabhakaran is lustful as far as women are concerned and is also a sandalwood smuggler. In Oru CBI Diary Kurippu, the actual killer of Omana, kills her in a fit of the moment when she did not oblige to his sexual advances. In order to show their power and prowess, there are elaborate stunt sequences where they singlehandedly take on the villain/goons/other ‘evil’ characters in order to restore the rule of law/save lives/save people. The sense of authority comes also because of their institutionalised power which comes which is given to them as police officers by the state and the law unlike the villains in these movies whose power and authority comes from money, political power, criminality (which causes fear among people) and man power in the form of many beefed up sidekicks. The cop’s power is also portrayed through the numerous instances where he is not only saving women but also other men who are emasculated like a helpless father/brother. There are also a bunch of wingmen that the cop has around whom he not only throws around authority but also love. The underlying idea behind these movies is that good always triumphs over the evil and whenever evil runs loose, there would be timely intervention by the star hero acting as the cop through a ‘subsequent performance of aggressive, violent machismo effectively which averts crisis’ (Muraleedharan 2005: 78) or restores good. So, in a sense, the star hero is deified. This deification is portrayed through a series of low angle shots called the ‘Darsanic view’ by Ravi Vasudevan (Vasudevan: 5) which makes the audience look up to the authority of the hero rather than a straight shot where the beholder (the audience) has the power and reduces the hero to an object on screen. The low angle shots show the muscularity, virility and power of the hero. This technique is also used in the posters of cop movies. In Yudham Sei though, the darsanic view is not given to the hero for reasons- one, is that Cheran is not an established actor who has claimed the star status; he is a director who recently turned actor and has been playing emasculated roles like in this movie (though in this movie he does have his moments of asserting his masculinity as a cop) and the second reason is that the darsanic view is reserved for the killers in the movie who are affected by the group of evil characters in the movie which organise peep shows for lustful old men by kidnapping girls, drugging them and raping them. The family is killing all those involved in this and are in a ‘punitha por’ (holy war). The darsanic shots are to show the holiness of their deeds even though it involves violent killing. THE MOVIES THAT WERE REVIEWED • Tamil movies- o • • Captain Prabhakaran (1991) with Vijayakanth in the lead as Prabhakaran, an IFS officer on a mission to save an IFS officer held captive by Veerabhadran (modelled on the lines of Veerappan) and also to capture Veerabhadran. o Saamy (2003) with Vikram in the lead as Aaruchaamy, a newly posted DCP to Tirunelveli City in order to restore the deteriorating law and order situation in the city. o Kaakha Kaakha (2003) with Suriya in the lead as Anbuchelvan IPS, a special cell officer posted to reduce crime in the city of Chennai. o Vettaiyadu Vilayadu (2006) with Kamalahasan in the lead as DCP Raghavan trying to solves a case of serial killing in India and USA. o Singam (2010) with Suriya in the lead as Inspector Duraisingam, an honest cop who gets transferred to Chennai from his village due to his daredevilry against a powerful dada, Mayilvahanam and ends up cleansing the city of the deeds of the goon. o Yudham Sei (2011) with Cheran in the lead as J.K, a CB-CID officer who is trying to solve the case of a spree of suspicious murders alongside trying to find his lost sister. o Siruthai (2011) with Karthi in the lead playing a double role as Rathnavel Pandian IPS and a petty thief, Rocket Raja. Rathnavel Pandian is an honest upright who faces with a near-death situation while trying to fight a gang of criminals in Devipattnam and is in his death bed when his look alike is found by his colleagues to replace him and finish the gang of criminals and free the people of Devipattnam. 3 Malayalam movieso Oru CBI Diary Kurippu (1988) with Mammootty in the lead as Sethurama Iyer, a CBI officer solving the murder case of Omana which was closed off as a suicide by the local police but was reopened on court order due to a petition by her family which suspects she was killed. o Sethurama Iyer IPS (2004) with Mammootty in the lead as Sethurama Iyer, CBI officer. It is the third sequel to Oru CBI Diary Kurippu. In this movie, Isow Alex is convicted of 7 cold-blooded murders and is given a life sentence. But he says that he had murdered only 6 of the 7 and Sethurama Iyer tries to find out who killed the 7th person, Manikkunju. o Grandmaster (2012) with Mohanlal in the lead as Chandrashekhar IPS, Chief of the Metro Crime Division (MCD), who is an ardent player of chess and is dragged into solving a serial killing of women in the alphabetical order by the killer himself who says he is an admirer of the officer and hence, would like to play this mind game with him. 2 Telugu movies o Rowdy Inspector (1992) with Balakrishna in the lead as Inspector Ramarajyam who single handedly fights crime in the town and wants to restore the rule of law. In this endeavour he is helped by Auto Rani (Vijayashanthi) who also plays his love interest. o Vikramarkudu (2006) with Ravi Teja in the lead as ASP Vikram Rathore, an honest police officer and Athili Sathi Babu, a petty thief. Siruthai is a remake of this movie which was also remade in Hindi as Rowdy Rathore in 2012.