{"id":4438,"date":"2016-05-03T07:05:18","date_gmt":"2016-05-03T01:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=4438"},"modified":"2016-05-03T07:05:18","modified_gmt":"2016-05-03T01:35:18","slug":"super-deluxe-tamil-film-vijay-sethupathi-fahadh-fasila","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=4438","title":{"rendered":"Super Deluxe: A Tamil Film Shows How Morality Breeds Toxic Masculinity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

O<\/span>ne of the lasting moments in Thiagarajan Kumararaja\u2019s dark yet oddly comic <\/p>Super Deluxe,<\/span><\/i> comes in its beginning minutes when Mugil, a betrayed but creative husband (a lively Fahadh Faasil) performs his angst in front of his wife\u2019s dead lover. Mugil has only just discovered that the lover died in their home \u2013 on their bed \u2013 mid-coitus with his wife, Vaembu. An acting student in a loveless arranged marriage, a seething Mugil instantly blames Vaembu (Samantha Akkineni) for shaming him and the honour of his family. Yet, he also decides to help her dispose off the body. When she steps out of the car, he turns to the body placed in the backseat and launches into a diatribe. No one thinks about the consequences, he moans, guilting a dead man about the intensity of the hurt that he now has to contend with.\u00a0It soon becomes clear that Mugil isn\u2019t as concerned about his feelings being invalidated by his wife\u2019s infidelity, as he is about his ego being battered.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nIt\u2019s a relentless moment, that succinctly reveals both Mugil\u2019s helplessness and his pride: To him, his wife sleeping with another man, is first and foremost, an irreversible blow to his masculinity, rendering him almost incapable to defend his own standing among his friends. It\u2019s this thread, society\u2019s perpetual dependence on a woman\u2019s actions to boost the male ego, that remains one of the predominant themes of Kumararaja\u2019s supremely existential second feature (<\/span>Super Deluxe<\/span><\/i>\u00a0was co-written by three other directors).<\/span>\n\nClocking in at three hours, the film that comes eight years after Kumararaja\u2019s <\/span>Aaranya Kaandam<\/span><\/i>, revolves around humanity itself \u2013 its contradictions, assumptions, and arrogance. Its plot rests at the intersection of three fragmented stories that pit life\u2019s greatest beliefs against lethal ills: there\u2019s god vs porn, marriage vs a woman\u2019s right to sexual pleasure, and family vs freedom. These three tracks unfold in the other\u2019s vicinity and by extension, spill over into each other\u2019s universes \u2013 sometimes with alarming ingenuity (like a flying TV set punishing an assaulter), and at times, questionably. But all of them, convincingly ruminate on the rigidity of gendered expectations and lay bare the toxicity of Indian masculinity, which, as the film suggests, when enmeshed with morality becomes the biggest obstacle to life itself.<\/span>\n\nSuper Deluxe\u2019s<\/span><\/i> second \u2013 and most dazzling \u2013 track involves an absent husband who suddenly reappears in his wife Jothi and young son Rasakutti\u2019s life seven years after abandoning them \u2013 only, he is now a woman named Shilpa (a tender Vijay Sethupathi). On the one hand, the world refuses to recognise Shilpa\u2019s freedom, chastising her for daring to become a woman. But Rasakutti, on the other hand, is overjoyed to witness the return of the parent he yearned for\u00a0\u2013 the only person whose love for Shilpa remains unaffected by her gender.<\/span>\n

The detailed make-up of Kumararaja\u2019s almost hallucinogenic takedown of a human existence that is obsessed with ascribing meaning to the mundane, is never not enthralling.<\/blockquote>\nThe film is rounded up by a track about four hormonal friends whose dedicated pursuit of 3D porn (a clever scene that shows them meekly renting a porn CD from a neighbourhood video shop offers plenty of laughs) leads them to an uncomfortable discovery: One of the boys realises that his mother Leela (Ramya Krishnan) used to be a former porn star (Krishnan famously played the morally upright matriarch in the <\/span>Baahubali<\/span><\/i> franchise). But then, tragedy befalls and he\u2019s rushed to the hospital, leaving his parents \u2013 including his religious godman father \u2013 to tussle between leaving it up to the will of God to rescue his life or letting a surgery do its job. <\/span>\n\nSuper Deluxe<\/span><\/i>\u00a0revels in eking out comedy from the depravities of humanity and never stops pointing out male double standards: A boy sees nothing wrong in the consumption of porn, designed for male pleasure but also willingly subscribes to society\u2019s mentality of punishing women who dare to star in this pursuit of male pleasure. A husband chides his wife for disregarding the concept of marriage to have sex with another man but also promptly agrees to offer her on a plate to a horny police officer who blackmails them. A godman finds salvation after the destruction of his faith, and finally, a transwoman, who plans on deserting her loved ones the same way society is destined to leave her behind. <\/span>\n\nKumararaja pushes these ideas to show how men internalise the act of shielding their masculinity as a way of life and how our systems encourage men to oppress women in the name of morality. It\u2019s no wonder that the young Rasakutti is the only male protagonist in<\/span> Super Deluxe<\/span><\/i> whose empathy remains uncorrupted by toxic masculinity. The director’s irreverent filmmaking pokes fun at the male ego, but more importantly, it also dissects and critiques the social order that nurtures it and turn women into victims of the Indian moral code. As a result, none of the female protagonists in <\/span>Super Deluxe<\/span><\/i> sacrifice their desires or get \u201cpunished\u201d for daring to make their own immoral choices. Even Shilpa’s transformation as the parent her son needs feels like a resistance against societal diktats.<\/span>\n\nSuper Deluxe <\/span><\/i>crafts<\/span>\u00a0an explosion of moments stitched together in disconnected timelines that dispense a towering and uninhibited viewing pleasure \u2013 even when its leap of faith falls short. Yet, through it all, the detailed make-up of Kumararaja\u2019s almost hallucinogenic takedown of a human existence that is obsessed with ascribing meaning to the mundane, is never not enthralling.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Super Deluxe rests at the intersection of three stories where our greatest beliefs are pitted against lethal ills: god vs porn, marriage vs a woman\u2019s right to sexual pleasure, and family vs freedom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":4439,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[7890,7891,7892,5398,7893],"class_list":["post-4438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-fahadh-faasil","tag-super-deluxe","tag-super-deluxe-review","tag-tamil-cinema","tag-vijay-sethupathi"],"yoast_head":"\nSuper Deluxe: A Tamil Film Shows How Morality Breeds Toxic Masculinity<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Super Deluxe rests at the intersection of three stories where our greatest beliefs are pitted against lethal ills: god vs porn, marriage vs a woman\u2019s right to sexual pleasure, and 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