you can find it on youtube too!
youtu.be/3FllY0Id4qU?...

you can also find the episode on YouTube. Please do give it a listen and let us know your thoughts as well!
youtu.be/DOBwMnbPMk4?...

(i have written about this much more wrt srk in my thesis, which you can dm me for, and also in the podcast i keep linking so feel free to check that out as well!) bsky.app/profile/limj...

while i have little hope given bollywood's current state that we'll see too many rocky randhawas on the big screen, i do hope that somewhere he, and others, allow us to rethink ourselves and those around us, because life is too short to not dance your heart out 15/15

what we need now is breaking down these ideas of what it means to be a man because they force people to be a certain way and refuse them room to be themselves, however they may be. it hurts marginalised people even more because they will always lie outside these boundaries 14/

in a time where there is a serious lack of good role models for young men and there is a rise in discourse on what masculinity means in the modern day, characters like rocky represent a way ahead, not "the way men should be be" but "a way that men can also be" 13/

much of it is also reflected in how they treat their lovers and others. they don't burst in rage or break things, they fight with love to win hearts, change minds, make life better for those around them. love to them is not conquest or possession but sacrifice and passion 12/

what kjo's cinema as a whole has offered is alternative ways of being men, from the playful rahul raichand and the passionate aman mathur to the kind rizwan khan and the quirky rocky randhawa. they navigate the world in ways not looked upon well, and they're better off for it 11/

again "queer" here refers to the notion of non-normative, unconventional, one that is forcefully excluded by society and marginalised. what rocky experiences is essentially what much of homophobia stems from, an inability to conform to the cis-normative, heteronormative ideal 10/

while his own family punishes him for it, seen both after heartthrob and dola re dola. karan manages to capture men who arent manly the way society expects, but men nonetheless. he's not a queer coded character by his sexuality, but a man who embodies a queer masculinity 9/

ranveer plays rocky as caught between who he thinks he's supposed to be, what a man is supposed to be, and who he really is. he's a dancer who loves to express himself. he doesnt put up a stoic front, he is all emotions all the way through, which rani's family helps bring out 8/

the dola re dola performance has been talked plenty but to me, that is the most visible representation of it, paired with tota roy chowdhury's performance. the film shows a man who is "a fragile" in his own words. he's unafraid to love, who admits fault and seeks forgiveness 7/

2023 was the year of the manly men in a lot of ways, and amidst all of that, the performance that stood out the most to me was ranveer singh as rocky randhawa, visually the epitome of masculinity with all his muscles, but a man who learns to embrace the softer side to himself 6/

much of karan johar's oeuvre features men like this, unafraid to express themselves, cry, men who dont adhere to traditional notions of masculinity. a lot of it is in collaboration with srk, who has put forth a non-normative masculinity for much of his career 5/

thus the idea of looking at the queer masculinities of straight men is not to "include cis-het-allo men under the queer umbrella" but instead to break down the very notions of man = masculine and vice versa. it's to conceptualise gender performance outside the binary 4/

most of us know intuitively that homophobia doesnt necessarily require a person being gay, or knowing someone's sexuality, it is often a policing of how they behave, their affect and presentation. this can definitely be seen with how the media has treated srk and his sexuality 3/

this refers to cis-het-allo people who dont perform in accordance with their assigned gender expectations. while radical feminists have opposed this idea as watering down the meaning of queerness, others see it as a way of understanding how heteronormativity works 2/