Freaking over Films

How often do films about the dreams of a man boast of a stand-out female character? Safeena in Gully Boy besides assuming predominance in Muraad’s journey also has an expedition of her own immaculately integrated into the narrative.  Much against the recurrent tropes employed in Hindi Films, Muraad isn’t your typical  aashiq  (lover) vowing to die for his lady. One of the scenes has Safeena taunting him with a-  Jaan nai dega tu mere liye  (Won’t you kill yourself for me).  In another scene , his father asks a shirtless Muraad to cover himself up as they had visitors in the house. But aren’t we accustomed to the ideology that modesty is an adjective only for woman and a man baring his chest and torso no threat to social order? Kudos to Zoya Akhtar for defying the normalization of naked men even if it was one small scene. Few minutes into the film and Ranveer Singh as Muraad sheds prevalent expectations of a formulaic hero, audiences are habituated to.  Alia Bhatt as Safee

The film draws its title from the name of the protagonist, Soni a common Punjabi name which symbolises an object of golden beauty. Beauty is feminine and Gold is fragile, but our leading lady is a fierce cop a striking antithesis of the two virtues encapsulated in her name.   The nomenclature is problematic for it dishes out potential infirmity for a female cop when names like Simba and Singham are synonymous with masculinity and power. However, this anomaly isn’t outlandish, rather alludes to the film’s theme that takes on the conflict arising out of empowering women within the wholesome structure of patriarchal power.  At the outset, the film’s leading lady appears to be an embodiment of misandry, reaffirming her rebellion in an operation as she pounds and whacks a potential molester. Her actions promptly invite disapproval from her senior officer who terms the outburst both disproportionate and unprofessional. The subsequent scene demonstrates her characters red