A disillusioned police officer raging against the limitations of the law and order system. The waylaid son of a discredited trade union leader turning to a life of crime. A disgraced former Merchant Navy captain repenting for his past by working as a coal miner. The Seventies saw the emergence of a new kind of protagonist in Hindi films. Written by the screenwriting duo Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar — known as Salim-Javed — this new protagonist archetype, often a morally grey vigilante, often named Vijay, and often played by Amitabh Bachchan, came to be known as the 'angry young man'.
The angry young man was a complex psychological persona that was the product of a specific historical context when India was going through great socio-political upheavals, with growing disillusionment with the dream of a prosperous, equitable post-colonial, post-independence nation; of the spectre of license-raj; of the emergency years of authoritarianism. But there was a sense of hope as well — a sense that righteous anger would triumph over evil at last, that all hope was not lost and the system could be reformed if only one man, or enough men, stood up and raged against the status-quo.
Behind the scenes, Salim-Javed encapsulated the anxieties, anger, and aspirations of the common man of the time into their rugged, irreverent working-class anti-heroes who went against the system, took matters into their own hands, and ultimately triumphed over their antagonists and antagonizers.
On the silver screen, Amitabh Bachchan played these roles with unmatched chutzpah and a particular working-class, street-smart charisma. His performances were marked by an innate ability to convey inner turmoil, a sense of barely contained rage, and a body coiled in knots of anger simmering under the surface that could explode at any moment.
Set against the Seventies backdrop of social and political unrest, rapid inflation, rising unemployment, poverty, and widespread crime and corruption, the angry young man captured the cinematic imagination of the working class like no other Bollywood protagonist before him. Drawn from the contours of the disenfranchised and angry multitude, the archetype was an inspired and informed reframing of masculinity, civic sense, and political discourse surrounding the role of a citizen and the social contracts we sign with the state as citizens.
Almost five decades since the angry young man's first appearance, India is once again going through great social and political turbulence. Unemployment has been persistently high, and rapidly ballooning cost of life has led to disillusionment among the youth about future prospects and social mobility in the country. Once again, angry young men are dominating India's big screens — only this time, they are bloodier and angrier than ever before.
The same way Zanjeer (1973) marked the beginning of the Seventies' angry young men era in Bollywood with films like Deewar (1975), Kaala Patthar (1979), and Kaalia (1981) that followed, a recent spate of runaway hits like K.G.F. (2018), Kabir Singh (2019), Pushpa: The Rise (2021), and Animal (2023) mark the beginning of a new age of angry young men on the big screen.
However, this new generation of angry young men are markedly different from the angry young men of the Seventies. Just as the Seventies' angry men were products of a precarious, pre-liberalisation India, today's angry men are products of a post-liberalisation India. Both are shaped by scarcity, corruption, and rage — only they direct their anger very differently.
Unlike the righteous Robin Hood-esque vigilantes of the past, the angry men of today are no longer driven by an inescapable inner moral compass. Their rage is their primary, and sometimes only, driver. Their anger is not a trait but the core of their character itself. They represent our baser, shallower, more impulsive selves. They do what they do simply because they can do it.
In K.G.F., Rocky's desire to become powerful and feared drives him to kill his rivals and opponents at any cost. In Kabir Singh, Kabir's obsession with Priti drives him to addiction when he cannot 'have' her. And in Pushpa, Pushpa's rise through the ranks of criminality allow him to finally acquire the power and prestige he so desires.
In many ways, these characters represent the power fantasies of the powerless. When Kabir misbehaves and indulges in drugs, alcohol, and sex, the audience, too, lives vicariously through him. When Pushpa humiliates SP Shekhawat during the climax of Pushpa: The Rise, the audience, too, roots for him and relates to his desire of humiliating figures of authority. Instead of struggling against the corrupt and oppressive system, they become the corrupt and oppressive system itself.
Their cinematic success — both real and reel — is simply a reflection of the helplessness, loneliness, and sense of injustice all of us, especially young men, feel at the present. We live within rigid social constructs and play by the rules even when we don't want to. Increasingly and often, the on-screen angry men embody our escapist power fantasies of breaking out of the vicious cycles we found ourselves trapped in. And in the absence of better role-models and clear paths of upward social mobility, many of us turn to these angry men and mistake their obsessive, sociopathic bad behaviour as passion, obsession, and brutal honesty — traits many of us root for and even respect.
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