Can someone please shoot the sensitive man?

There is somewhere, we women hope, a secret pre-Oscar conclave being held even as we speak. The knights in shining armour, the superheroes, the undefeatables and indefatigables, the Marlon Brandos and muscle men who truly knew how to pack a punch, the impeccable gentleman who left his woman wanting just one more kiss, and oh-so-weak in the knees, the players-to-win and what’s-this-rubbish-about-the-spirit-that-counts men are gathered, to reunite and strategise an early conquest of their lost worlds. First on the agenda we insist is assigning a sharp shooter to target each scriptwriter.
Or should we just give it up sisters, is the battle lost? The stylists of the world have our men plucked, plundered and delivered dry and sober as the mirthless metrosexual world into which they have been born, and none save the image consultant is the merrier for it. They are politically correct, impeccably styled, finely fashioned, and well studied. If Jane Eyre or Charlotte Bronte, or Wodehouse for that matter, lived today where would the character who sighed and said, “Ah, note the glimmer in his eye and spring in his step, it must be love” be? How will a man be altered by a woman’s presence in his life, when he is altered beyond recognition from maleness before she meets him?

And you don’t need a Brokeback Mountain to storm a bastion that had crumbled to ruins when men forgot that ‘no’ never quite went out of fashion. And thus constantly eager to please George Clooney replaced a defiantly laughing at me Clark Gable, and Sean Connery fell to seductresses like a hooker to the highest bidder. The best they could do with Marlin Brando was label him icon and state such a one will never again be. How true. James Bond got bashed up. But incredibly the worst perpetration of the secretly sacrificing the world scriptwriter guild is this: could they not even spare us our superheroes? Chocolate boy Spiderman began to introspect! I’m not even going to comment on the revulsion at his face being seen. Batman begot moralistic origins, in a bid to prove what really drove him batty in the first place. The wonderful world of knights in shining armour was reduced to potbellied has-been animated Incredibles. I mean, Shrek is an icon for the love of an ogres heart. Do you blame Pran for not attending dos anymore? If the afraid-of-nothing Al Pacinos, the Harrison Fords, the Sean Penns have no place and fewer roles in 35mm today, is it because they are questioning which angle of real life to mirror. The macho male, nay, even the gentleman whose first date kiss brings tangible tension, has retired wounded.

Whatever happened to the man who wasn’t afraid of blood, to whom a parlour meant poker, and to whom a poker meant a good stiff fight outside an English pub? They made D’arcy a dunce, took our cowboy turf, and the playboy Nawab of Wherever had to go be responsible and find a job and care for and dutifully marry the woman he loves, never mind being an eager exponent of the virtues of tiger conservation. Forget Brando, give us a Leslie Caron and Maurice Chevalier for heaven’s sake—find us the muscle man, the carpenter, the sportsman, the rake. And for pete’s sake—enough with the men with identity crises.

And for all you scriptwriters who are wondering why your films flop, kindly note that D’arcy and the cowboy and the godfather were sexy because they were arrogant, self-indulgent, insensitive, albeit monied, and good looking men. Not in spite of it. They did not, thankfully, veer, careen or tilt even ever so slightly on the side of the (shudder) metrosexual. In fact, one suspects, that should one have suggested a facial, they would not merely arched an eyebrow, scattered disdain but grunted so loudly, impolitely and unabashedly that reprieve was out of the question. Tony Soprano visiting a shrink to sort his ‘issues’-sorry your political correctness is gasping a mite too loudly in my ear—would have been shot at close quarters. They played rugby, and played to win. They fought pig-headed arguments, stormed out of rooms, and more often than not did not change their socks. As for the great Indian huddle, as my father once put it, “When Kapil Dev led the team to the world cup, they did not hug him, they merely shook hands.”