Bollywood For Beginners: Part 3

Note: This series was originally posted to my Bollywood blogspot blog and represents the cumulation of the wisdom of a decade or so spent in the Bollywood trenches. It would have last been edited in about 2014.

Bollywood for Beginners 3: 

Bollywood Character Archetypes: The Hero

The most important figure in Bollywood films is the hero. The hero is usually the protagonist and the lead male role but, like many things in Bollywood, these rules are extremely flexible. It’s certainly not unheard of for the nominal hero to play second fiddle to the heroine, more rare but still done is for the villain to take the main role, and, very rarely, the comedian will be the main protagonist. But all of these films will still have “a hero” because the hero isn’t simply a male protagonist (although most of the time he is), the hero is an idea, a totem for the audience. 

Just mentioning the word “hero” will set most pop culture aficionados running straight for their copies of The Hero With A Thousand Faces but Bollywood doesn’t operate in Joseph Campbell territory, despite the coincidental use of the term “hero.” Campbell’s work on what he called the “monomyth”--an attempt to boil down all of humanity’s sacred stories into a single essential formula--came to pop cultural prominence in the wake of Star Wars in the 1970s (George Lucas having used it for the foundation of his story) and again in the 1990s with the Matrix films. Campbell described the monomyth, also called the hero’s journey, like this:

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” (Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949. p.23.)

And while some Bollywood stories do follow this path many, many more do not. 

Campbell “heroes” Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins, Neo leave the mundane behind to discover their sacred destinies. Devdas, the “hero” of Devdas (a story remade many times in Bollywood, most recently in 2009), spurns his childhood love early in the film and then spends the rest of the movie moping and being drunk until he finally dies.  Chulbul Pandey, the “hero” of the immensely successful 2010 film Dabangg, spends the entire film in his own village, trying to mend his relationship with his family and kicking the ass of a local politician. There is no Bollywood mono-hero.

The Bollywood hero’s journey can involve addressing past wrongs, addressing current inequalities, mending family relationships, vanquishing an evil presence in the community, or a simple playing out of fate through romantic love. He will always get the girl, except when he doesn’t, but he will always triumph over wrongdoers, even if that triumph is purely moral or takes place after his death. Except when he doesn’t. Most importantly, the hero will learn his place in the community and how to be a productive member of the wider world, except when he doesn’t and everybody dies. Sometimes the hero is Luke Skywalker and sometimes he’s Han Solo and sometimes he’s Mr. Darcy and sometimes he’s all of those things combined into one incredible man. 

There are infinite shades of hero, as many as there are actors to play him and your favorite hero defines you as a film fan. Is it Ranveer Singh, the slightly unhinged striver? Scrappy Shahid Kapoor, who never seems to get a hit? One of the legendary Three Khans? That old stalwart Amitabh Bachchan or his son Abhishek, the nice guy with average talent and a huge name to live up to? 

Film fans can be extremely loyal but heroes do have to earn their audiences. Nepotism runs thick in Bombay and every director, producer, and actor has a relative who wants to be a star. Film fans have seen enough of these “star sons” come and go that they can easily sniff out the difference between manufactured hype and the real thing. Real star power is rare and can strike from the most unexpected places. Along with those born in the well-connected households, there are heroes who got their start as scene-stealing villains or as extremely charismatic playback singers or as solid actors who played small roles for years before catching the public’s interest with one lucky break. 

Talent is certainly part of being a hero but there are a lot of talented men who never become big stars. What most matters is the connection with the audience and beloved heroes can stretch their careers well into their 50s or or even their 60s, although most heroes will have transitioned to character roles by that point. For example, Bollywood’s Three Khans have dominated the scene for more than two decades and show no signs of slowing down, still ruling the box office even as 50 grows ever closer. But the result of this intense love is the quintessential Bollywood phenomenon of 40 year old actors playing college students and naifs. Bollywood films are not meant to be literal depictions of life and audiences don’t read them that way, so fans take it in stride that these heroes can and do play characters who still live at home with their mothers because they aren’t seeing the man, they’re seeing the hero, their totem.

I say that fans don’t see the real man but actors’ off-screen lives often bleed into their on-screen personas. In fact, leading men are usually just referred to as heroes instead of actors in the press. These men are heroes, they don't just play them on-screen and knowing their off-screen image adds another layer of meaning to their films, a layer of meaning that can be crucial to understanding the significance of a film but that many Western critics overlook. Sanjay Dutt has been a good case study of this in recent years. His bad boy person on screen was born from his own real life insecurities and while he was playing the khalnayak (villain) in films like Khal Nayak (“Villain,” 1993), he was mixing with real life gangsters and is currently serving time for his role in the tragic 1993 Bombay Bombings.

Because they are so crucial to the industry, Bollywood has developed a unique vocabulary for dealing with heroes. The ideal hero is the masala hero, who is supposed to be good at everything from fighting to being patriotic to romancing the leading lady to busting out fresh dance moves. 

A young, fresh-faced hero who specializes in romantic roles is called a chocolate hero (or sometimes chocolate boy.) The term comes from a time when handsome pictures of men used to decorate boxes of chocolate and there is a bit of a negative implication to it. A chocolate hero may be popular with the ladies but he is usually seen as nothing more than a pretty face and any film starring a chocolate hero is going to have a heavy romance focus.

The chocolate hero’s counterpart is the evergreen hero, referring to a hero who is well into his 40s or 50s or beyond. The most famous evergreen hero was Dev Anand, often referred to as, naturally, Evergreen Dev Anand. Well into his 80s, he was still making movies with nubile young actresses. 

The Angry Young Man  is a phrase that originally applied to Amitabh Bachchan (better known as the Big B) for a series of films he did in the 1970s where he played... an angry young man who extracted vigilante justice on mob bosses and government officials. The term is now applied to any hero who takes on a similar role.

An art-house hero does mostly what we in the West call indie cinema and you can also find a tragic hero and action hero, used similarly to the Hollywood terms.

Not just any Average Rajesh can wander in off the street and audition for a role, a hero must be launched, taking almost as much time and money and promotion as the rockets out of Cape Canaveral. The bigger a splash the hero makes, the quicker he can win a fan following and start generating massive profits for his backers. Although sometimes the only ‘“splash” these heroes make is of their egos hitting the floor when their film is rejected at the box office. But, depending on how powerful the hero’s father is, if a launch flops he can get re-launched with a new persona. Less well-connected actors can get their starts as the secondary hero which is sometimes softened to parallel lead (meaning the actor isn't the protagonist but isn't going to admit that he's playing a supporting role). Sometimes the secondary hero provides comic relief and sometimes he is just there to amp up the action, give the ladies a pretty face to look at, or to add emotional resonance by dying at the right time. Films with two heroes are called, yes, two hero films. Add another hero and you get a multi-starrer. The secondary hero tag isn't a kiss of death--although some actors ego's might disagree. Many charismatic secondary heroes and parallel leads have stepped up to become solo heroes.

The hero is more than just an actor or a pretty face, he is the lifeforce of popular film. And the public root for their favorite heroes like Americans might root for their favorite baseball team. His victories are our victories; his failures are our failures. And just like the fans of a losing team will continue to support that team through dropped balls and bad plays, diehard Bollywood fans will continue to support their heroes through good films and bad. There is no equivalent to this mindset in Hollywood. For all that the Western media likes to set up comparisons between actors, a Brad Pitt fan and a Salman Khan fan are just not the same type of fan. The Salman Khan fan is much closer in spirit to a Red Sox fan--loyal to the actor but with a broader tribal element. The Brad Pitt fan enjoys his movies, the Salman Khan fan belongs to something bigger than himself. 

There has yet to be a true female “hero” in Bollywood, although with more and more women entering the industry in behind-the-scenes roles this is quickly changing. Bollywood industry watchers have the unofficial bar for female “hero” (as opposed to the supporting role of “heroine”) at whether or not she can generate a box office hit on her own. A few contenders for the title have emerged in recent years including, most interesting, former heroine Madhuri Dixit who retired in the early 2000s in order to have children. Now in her mid-40s, she has returned to Bollywood with a bang and seems poised to snatch the title. But until Madhuri or any of the other talented actresses in Bollywood can pull off that solo box office hit, they can be protagonists but will still remain heroines.