Nationalism was the master key that pulled us out of colonial clutches into a sovereign, socialist and democratic republic seven decades back. Fifty years hence it was hyper-nationalism in cahoots with liberalization built around the demolition of a mosque that not only robbed us of sovereignty and socialism but also started shrinking the democratic space we had hard earned in past. It was a matter of time when this ‘hyper’ got reduced into ‘Hindutva’ and accepted as a new normal after 2014 with a MODI-fied dispensation at the center. In the last couple of years with cinemas closed and citizens locked inside their homes in fear of a deadly virus, we could easily see a cultural phenomenon unfolding on Indian OTT platforms that takes Hindutva Nationalism to a next level in a very subtle form.
It is more or less similar to the Cold War era, where mutual distrust and public fears of a possible hegemony of the ideological and cultural “Other”, had generated plots for anti-communist films, film noir, spy detectives, horrors and fantasies of a possible apocalypse. The bottom-line difference being that in Indian cinematography one cannot give away with “The Family”, the most pious and indivisible unit of this society.
Welcome to Season 2 of “The Family Man”- latest “Over the Top” nationalist cinema that has become the most watched original series on the Indian version of Amazon’s Prime Video service that is subscribed by 64% of households in India. After espionage-based web-series like “Bard of Blood”, “Kathmandu Connection”, “London Confidential”, “Special Ops” etc., the protagonist has come off age. He is neither divorced nor in recluse. He is living a family life with a couple of children and facing hiccups due to his professional commitments. So, the “family” seems to be a new trendsetting element in this genre which obviously catches eyeballs.
6. The Family
One cannot miss the irony in this web series nomenclature. The de-hyphenated relationship between the Man and the Family underlines the basic philosophy of a “Hindu” family i.e., Man is the provider and protector of his family- so be with him, whatever it takes! That is a departure from the mafiosi-styled Cicilian clan where Don Corleone (The Godfather) proclaims that real men are those who dine with their families and do not talk business on the eating table. That is not the Indian case. Here Shrikant Tiwari (Manoj Bajpeyi) finds himself sucked between table and trigger. He could opt for either of the one, so he leaves his spy job and starts working in an IT firm only to find himself later back on the spy job after all his love’s labor is lost to win back his wife. Eventually when his daughter is kidnapped in the midst of a mission and he extracts her out, the ‘family’ is sort of restored.
