A few nights ago, I found myself angrily responding on a long thread where people were dissecting one of my many guilty pleasure films. Now, there's nothing that irks me more than people debating and critiquing those few subjects I've spent my time, money and youth studying it all. This includes Philosophy, the Indian cable TV from the 90s onwards, the internet as a virtual space to interact viz a vis films, pop culture and so on.
Here's a fun fact, I've seen Kuch Kuch Hota Hai/KKHH (1998; dir Karan Johar) 64 times between age 8-10. I stopped counting after age 12.
You can then imagine my frustration to see dumbfucks write 100+ comments trashing on Kajol from KKHH. Only my favourite character in the film.
During my stint with Cinema Studies degree programme between film school and grad school, we were constantly discouraged to use narrative analysis in any way whatsoever. I'll take my personal experience over the years of bad dating/relationship patterns and attempt to address this, something that's irked me beyond belief.
For the uninitiated, if Michael Scott is "Beyoncé, always", then I'm "Kajol, always" from this film. Never the Rani Mukherjee who dies or that annoying kid who enjoys singing and dancing or Farida Jalal imposing Bhakti rituals on the family. I can't be Anupam Kher either cause he's possibly cleared the NET to be the principal at St. Xavier's College and we all know I haven't cleared that one wretched exam yet.
That makes my friend from the last post on the blog as Rifat Bi cause she's always the recipient of "Mera pehla pyaar adhoora reh gaya, Rifat Bi." Maybe, I should start calling her Rifat Bi here.
Imagine my surprise when I defended that thread and got shat on. People were hell-bent on shitting on Anjali/Kajol under lots of dumb arguments including how she could never muster the courage to tell the guy she loves until he took matters in his hand, eight years, one daughter and a dead wife later.
Here's why I think Anjali, Kajol's character is a freaking rockstar in the film and that everyone who thinks otherwise can go suck balls.
1) She had ZERO fucks to give. To the point, she left her college degree mid-way to ghost the shit out of the guy who practically leads her on and acted out on his dick's first stimuli.
Okay, I see why this can be problematic for a lot of people. He didn't owe her a damn thing, and yes, it is true, she never did verbalize her feelings to him and vice versa. He didn't owe her a relationship, they hadn't hooked up ever or even close to potentially hooking up.
However, the difference is, she made that effort to go to him to confess. As she proceeded to do what she intended on doing, he had a whole verbal vomit and told her he loves that new girl.
Good on you Rahul/Shah Rukh Khan. You fell for a person and told your friend, great.
Now here's the snitch. Did she in return owe you a damn thing, especially to be in your life from that or any point onwards? I think not.
In life, often in friendship/relationships, if one person takes a step without involving the other and only steps in to inform, it's on the other person to decide the further course of action between them. In this case, if Rahul/Shah Rukh Khan decided to seal the deal with the new girl, it's on Anjali/Kajol to take a fucking call on how their rest of the life/relationship should look like.
To ensure she doesn't interfere nor does she play the second fiddle, she leaves. She leaves her fucking degree, college, her best friend/guy she's in love with and decides to change her life. Good on you, fren.
2) During Act II, she doesn't give in to the circumstances.
Let's be real. If I was tutoring the child of a man I'd once been in love with, I'd either put her at the back of every class or be detached to the point of no interaction. Anjali/Kajol here is graceful, even after she finds out the parents of the annoying kid is a no couple no other than her former love and her backstabbing friend; she acts with great restraint. She repeats that just the same when Rahul/Shah Rukh Khan physically shows up to disrupt a harmless Summer vacation shindig.
Unresolved feelings of 8 years are met on a basketball court over a competitive match followed by a song and dance number. Followed by yet another intimate rendezvous between the friends. What does she do?
She proceeds to go back to get married. She doesn't succumb. However, yes, she feels a lot. You can fucking see her upset. But then again, she sulks and she's unhappy possibly cause she'd not been laid in a long time. A good head by Aman/Salman Khan would have fixed it. Not rushing into a marriage. I'm fucking certain on this.
This is followed by that douche showing up at her wedding. She definitely didn't need drama at her wedding, especially since she was abandoned at the college fest years ago for a new girl. She also didn't need drama at her last Summer Camp. She fucking needed her peace, that's all.
3) She owed no answers to anyone, least of all the audience.
Let's rewind and keep her perspective central.
She's a hard worker in college, plays basketball, dotes on her friend and is there for him pretty much always.
In return, she gets half-assed friendship in the form of a dude who's constantly belittling her (men who think otherwise are the ones who do the same in their platonic friendships IMO). He thinks she's a worthy opponent in sports and life but when it comes to a relationship, he'd rather be with someone who touches a chord with his family, aka go to a temple looking like a damsel. He would rather confess his life to a stranger he met a week ago than a friend of so many years.
Does this guy of all the people deserve to know why she left unannounced? Absolutely not. You can't come back when you want to and expect the other person to accept you with open arms. You can't belittle people constantly and hope they'll be there for you. There's a tipping point. She had hers. People have theirs. There's no shame in admitting/knowing that.
Again, I get the reverse, that is, it's not on Rahul/Shah Rukh Khan to be with someone he's not in love with and that is totally fair. But then, in the same fairness, we must allow Anjali/Kajol, the space to grieve, move on and make her own decisions including the difficult ones.
What she did was mad, but it called for it. Mad real circumstances of your friend who you're in love with, in a relationship with the new five feet something in town who plays the electric guitar without plugging it in an amp. I've never hated Tina/Rani Mukherjee more in my life.
4) Rahul/Shah Rukh Khan used his dick and not the brain to make a decision.
He consistently lived and acted at the moment. From the get-go when he's trying to chat up Soniya/Monia/whatever random stranger in the college he's peddling the friendship band to followed by Tina/Rani Mukherjee. He never thought of anyone and any other being besides him. That whole monologue of respecting four women? That's a testament to this theory. He respects a fictional entity, his mother, his girlfriend. Not his friends, not his support system.
You can't possibly stand up for a person who allows his friend to get-away and doesn't take it upon him to find her or even try to do that.
This is the dude who was emotionally dependent on his best friend and has the balls to abandon her just as much the minute he finds the first girl who likes him back to give him a head.
We also see his feelings change towards this woman the minute she plays basketball wearing a Saree. The woman kicked his ass for years in an androgynous outfit but no, the minute she has her bellybutton on display in a nude saree (a lit erotica extension someday), he jumps at it.
Prick.
This is possibly the worst of my writing and thought process all put together as I proceeded to chew my nails out after god knows how many years but this was a much-needed rant for everyone who believes the villain is the woman who decides to take her life in her hands. Fuck the woman, it could be a man but nobody whoever stands to correct the wrongdoings in their own life by others can ever be wrong.
If someone's wronged you and you want to avenge, go for it. That's also why I love Gangs of Wasseypur (2012; dir: Anurag Kashyap). A Karan Johar film can be an Anurag Kashyap level revenge drama if you have the eye to see it. If you don't, then it'll continue to be an Archies comics romance set in a fictional world for the non-cinema studies plebs.
If you're a woman who's been personally victimized by pyaar dosti hai narrative and have had to live through it, my condolences. It's a conspiracy by all fuck boys to use you as an emotional doormat and wipe their hands off any and all responsibilities they have towards you and their friendship/relationship with you. If they can't do your friendship right, they don't deserve to have you. The last thing we all need is random strangers defending the no-good fuck boy.
Here's a fun fact, I've seen Kuch Kuch Hota Hai/KKHH (1998; dir Karan Johar) 64 times between age 8-10. I stopped counting after age 12.
You can then imagine my frustration to see dumbfucks write 100+ comments trashing on Kajol from KKHH. Only my favourite character in the film.
During my stint with Cinema Studies degree programme between film school and grad school, we were constantly discouraged to use narrative analysis in any way whatsoever. I'll take my personal experience over the years of bad dating/relationship patterns and attempt to address this, something that's irked me beyond belief.
For the uninitiated, if Michael Scott is "Beyoncé, always", then I'm "Kajol, always" from this film. Never the Rani Mukherjee who dies or that annoying kid who enjoys singing and dancing or Farida Jalal imposing Bhakti rituals on the family. I can't be Anupam Kher either cause he's possibly cleared the NET to be the principal at St. Xavier's College and we all know I haven't cleared that one wretched exam yet.
That makes my friend from the last post on the blog as Rifat Bi cause she's always the recipient of "Mera pehla pyaar adhoora reh gaya, Rifat Bi." Maybe, I should start calling her Rifat Bi here.
Imagine my surprise when I defended that thread and got shat on. People were hell-bent on shitting on Anjali/Kajol under lots of dumb arguments including how she could never muster the courage to tell the guy she loves until he took matters in his hand, eight years, one daughter and a dead wife later.
Here's why I think Anjali, Kajol's character is a freaking rockstar in the film and that everyone who thinks otherwise can go suck balls.
1) She had ZERO fucks to give. To the point, she left her college degree mid-way to ghost the shit out of the guy who practically leads her on and acted out on his dick's first stimuli.
Okay, I see why this can be problematic for a lot of people. He didn't owe her a damn thing, and yes, it is true, she never did verbalize her feelings to him and vice versa. He didn't owe her a relationship, they hadn't hooked up ever or even close to potentially hooking up.
However, the difference is, she made that effort to go to him to confess. As she proceeded to do what she intended on doing, he had a whole verbal vomit and told her he loves that new girl.
Good on you Rahul/Shah Rukh Khan. You fell for a person and told your friend, great.
Now here's the snitch. Did she in return owe you a damn thing, especially to be in your life from that or any point onwards? I think not.
In life, often in friendship/relationships, if one person takes a step without involving the other and only steps in to inform, it's on the other person to decide the further course of action between them. In this case, if Rahul/Shah Rukh Khan decided to seal the deal with the new girl, it's on Anjali/Kajol to take a fucking call on how their rest of the life/relationship should look like.
To ensure she doesn't interfere nor does she play the second fiddle, she leaves. She leaves her fucking degree, college, her best friend/guy she's in love with and decides to change her life. Good on you, fren.
2) During Act II, she doesn't give in to the circumstances.
Let's be real. If I was tutoring the child of a man I'd once been in love with, I'd either put her at the back of every class or be detached to the point of no interaction. Anjali/Kajol here is graceful, even after she finds out the parents of the annoying kid is a no couple no other than her former love and her backstabbing friend; she acts with great restraint. She repeats that just the same when Rahul/Shah Rukh Khan physically shows up to disrupt a harmless Summer vacation shindig.
Unresolved feelings of 8 years are met on a basketball court over a competitive match followed by a song and dance number. Followed by yet another intimate rendezvous between the friends. What does she do?
She proceeds to go back to get married. She doesn't succumb. However, yes, she feels a lot. You can fucking see her upset. But then again, she sulks and she's unhappy possibly cause she'd not been laid in a long time. A good head by Aman/Salman Khan would have fixed it. Not rushing into a marriage. I'm fucking certain on this.
This is followed by that douche showing up at her wedding. She definitely didn't need drama at her wedding, especially since she was abandoned at the college fest years ago for a new girl. She also didn't need drama at her last Summer Camp. She fucking needed her peace, that's all.
3) She owed no answers to anyone, least of all the audience.
Let's rewind and keep her perspective central.
She's a hard worker in college, plays basketball, dotes on her friend and is there for him pretty much always.
In return, she gets half-assed friendship in the form of a dude who's constantly belittling her (men who think otherwise are the ones who do the same in their platonic friendships IMO). He thinks she's a worthy opponent in sports and life but when it comes to a relationship, he'd rather be with someone who touches a chord with his family, aka go to a temple looking like a damsel. He would rather confess his life to a stranger he met a week ago than a friend of so many years.
Does this guy of all the people deserve to know why she left unannounced? Absolutely not. You can't come back when you want to and expect the other person to accept you with open arms. You can't belittle people constantly and hope they'll be there for you. There's a tipping point. She had hers. People have theirs. There's no shame in admitting/knowing that.
Again, I get the reverse, that is, it's not on Rahul/Shah Rukh Khan to be with someone he's not in love with and that is totally fair. But then, in the same fairness, we must allow Anjali/Kajol, the space to grieve, move on and make her own decisions including the difficult ones.
What she did was mad, but it called for it. Mad real circumstances of your friend who you're in love with, in a relationship with the new five feet something in town who plays the electric guitar without plugging it in an amp. I've never hated Tina/Rani Mukherjee more in my life.
4) Rahul/Shah Rukh Khan used his dick and not the brain to make a decision.
He consistently lived and acted at the moment. From the get-go when he's trying to chat up Soniya/Monia/whatever random stranger in the college he's peddling the friendship band to followed by Tina/Rani Mukherjee. He never thought of anyone and any other being besides him. That whole monologue of respecting four women? That's a testament to this theory. He respects a fictional entity, his mother, his girlfriend. Not his friends, not his support system.
You can't possibly stand up for a person who allows his friend to get-away and doesn't take it upon him to find her or even try to do that.
This is the dude who was emotionally dependent on his best friend and has the balls to abandon her just as much the minute he finds the first girl who likes him back to give him a head.
We also see his feelings change towards this woman the minute she plays basketball wearing a Saree. The woman kicked his ass for years in an androgynous outfit but no, the minute she has her bellybutton on display in a nude saree (a lit erotica extension someday), he jumps at it.
Prick.
This is possibly the worst of my writing and thought process all put together as I proceeded to chew my nails out after god knows how many years but this was a much-needed rant for everyone who believes the villain is the woman who decides to take her life in her hands. Fuck the woman, it could be a man but nobody whoever stands to correct the wrongdoings in their own life by others can ever be wrong.
If someone's wronged you and you want to avenge, go for it. That's also why I love Gangs of Wasseypur (2012; dir: Anurag Kashyap). A Karan Johar film can be an Anurag Kashyap level revenge drama if you have the eye to see it. If you don't, then it'll continue to be an Archies comics romance set in a fictional world for the non-cinema studies plebs.
If you're a woman who's been personally victimized by pyaar dosti hai narrative and have had to live through it, my condolences. It's a conspiracy by all fuck boys to use you as an emotional doormat and wipe their hands off any and all responsibilities they have towards you and their friendship/relationship with you. If they can't do your friendship right, they don't deserve to have you. The last thing we all need is random strangers defending the no-good fuck boy.
