Alert: Spoilers ahead
Malayalam film production house Aashirvad Cinemas uploaded a video from Mohanlal’s 2000 movie Narasimham on Valentine’s Day. If one wondered why the misogynistic proposal by Mohanlal to actor Aishwarya was reposted instead of being forgotten forever, well that’s because the production house was unhappy – perhaps even outraged. The scene has been mercilessly trolled – and that’s where the Freedom Fight meme comes in.
Last scenes in films, and especially those with sharp comebacks, can sometimes have a rippling effect. It happened after Ishq, when a middle finger was raised dramatically on the face of patriarchy (Shane Nigam playing a possessive, vengeful young man). And now, it is happening after Freedom Fight, an anthology, in which at the end of the first segment, a woman, expected to stay quiet and listen to a man’s tirade, uses two words of profanity, shocking him into silence. The gesture, from actor Rajisha Vijayan in Geethu Unchained, has since been used in multiple memes, to call out many misogynistic lines glorified in films in the past.
The first of these, and one that became most viral, is the meme on a minute-long cringeworthy “proposal” that the character Induchoodan makes in Narasimham. Played by superstar Mohanlal, Induchoodan is your textbook “hero” of the late 1990s, all-powerful and masculine, which seemed to automatically entail a heavy dose of misogyny, expected to be lauded and cheered on by a mostly male fan following. In the proposal scene – also the last in the movie ironically – Induchoodan comes swerving a jeep and stops in front of the heroine, played by Aishwarya, stranded on the way with her bags in tow.
Smoking a cigarette, he makes his proposal thus, which is not for the fainthearted or those prone to puking: “To fold my legs and simply kick when I come home late in the night drunk and unsteady, to make love under the same sheet on rainy nights, to give birth to and raise my children, and finally to beat the chest and cry when I die and my body is cremated, I need a woman. If that’s possible, get in the car,” Induchoodan says. Aishwarya lets out an excited shriek, announcing that there was no need to ask her twice, dumps her bags in the car and gets in. They drive away.
The meme stops at the end of Induchoodan’s proposal and instead of Aishwarya’s glee, you see Rajisha mouthing the profanity. And on cue, Mohanlal’s stunned face appears. Most naturally, the meme spread like wildfire, unknown to its creator, Ullas UR, a video editor.
“That was simply my first reaction after watching Freedom Fight. I felt it was such a nice answer to all the misogyny in cinema, which has been used as a mark of the “hero” for so many years. It was a sort of short review, and I posted it as my WhatsApp status to let people have a quick preview. Little did I know it would spread so much,” Ullas says.
By noon that day, screenshots of his meme were shared by his friends on a WhatsApp group of movie lovers. Some of them began posting it on their social media pages, crediting Ullas. “I shared it only in the end,” he says.
But it didn’t end with Narasimham. It triggered a series of memes on other equally horrifying movie dialogues, on what men expected of women. One of the memes addresses Mammootty’s pathetic farewell to the young woman lead in Dubai, when he is about to board a flight. Again, not for the timid, this declaration of love: “However far you fly, you will have to come back here. Not as renowned dancer Ammu Swaminathan but as my kitchen-keeper (domestic worker), my cleaner. Do you have any opposition?”
And doubting whether Ammu would find his super grand offer incredible, he adds, “Hey, I mean it.”
Another round of memes puts Rajisha’s reaction at the end of various dialogues spewed by heroes, including the “you are just a woman” by Mammootty in The King.
Piqued by the reach gained by the first meme, Aashirvad Cinemas went ahead and posted the original scene from Narasimham on February 14, actually calling it “Valentine’s Day special”! You’d think that those responsible for that sad bit of filming would do everything in their power to bury the dark deed several feet under the ground and plant a garden over it, whistle and act like they had nothing to do with it. Not dig it out and exhibit it like an antique from the medieval period. Or perhaps that’s what it is. A museum for outdated, shocking relics from the past. Not that this past was all so long ago, or that shades of it are still not lurking around. But at least several attempts – even if they are desperate and trying hard to fit in – have been made to correct the old images that were terribly wrong. Geethu Unchained tops it all, not as an attempt to make the hero more accommodating, but to show a heroine unwilling to take any more of it.
Geethu’s little retort – only seconds long – has received the welcome it has, because it was long, long due. It is two little words but somehow translates easily into ‘I have had enough of it’ or more literally, ‘get lost’. It becomes all the more enjoyable when thrown at a man who thinks he’s doing you the biggest favour in the world. Even with its other shortcomings, Akhil Anilkumar’s short film becomes important, in that it has been embraced by so many women. Ullas says his inbox is full of messages from women telling him that his meme said what they wanted to.
No wonder that Shammi (Fahadh Faasil) from Kumbalangi Nights also became a ‘popular’ figure among movie lovers and meme makers. The creepy face of yesterday’s hero is today’s villain.