What happened to the ire in the soul that kept the silver screen ablaze for decades? Where is all that anger? Is the Hero dead, finally? The moving images throw up a disconcerting picture. Bollywood has buried its angry past and moved on with the times. With the Cause in the backburner and the rebellious spirit in deep freeze, the Hero, as we understood him until the early eighties, has lost his raison d’etre. He does not always stand for the sense of justice that is supposed to be embedded in the human conscience. And he is no more the weapon the common viewer unleashed on the forces of evil. A morally confused Hero has, in a major way, transformed the intensity of what transpired in the stretch of darkness between the screen and the viewer earlier. So where in heavens’ name is the Angry Young Man of the seventies and eighties who attacked the aberrations in the system with undiluted vehemence? In an earlier era, where socialist shibboleths were the norm, it was easy for the Hero to connect with the masses and seem to be speaking for them. That tie has become increasingly tenuous with the passing of the years, especially in the post-nineties’ globalised and liberalised world. The exposure to unending opportunities for personal advancement, has eased the youth out of the collective scheme of things. Their needs and the society’s are not the same always. The dichotomy has left the Hero in an image crisis. He has the incredible job to straddle both the worlds — to be Lord Ram and Bill Gates at the same time and balance collectivism with individualism in his persona. This is a difficult proposition. He has, besides, to tone down aggression. Compromise, not conflict, is the leit motif of the new age. That probably explains the lack of righteous anger in today’s youth. Campuses that were rocked by strikes throughout the seventies and eighties are today islands of calm. Rage in the soul is not what you expect of the Hero today. Do not blame him for it, though. Society is in a flux and is yet to decide who the clear villains to fight against really are. It is yet to reach a consensus on the Cause and hence our Hero will have to wait until that happens and he can do what he has always liked doing— to fight for a Cause, even if it means coming up with the occasional black eye. Until the Cause makes its appearance, our Hero will have to languish in the background. Which, of course, is bad news for the scriptwriters of Bollywood, not to speak of Mollywood, potboilers.
