How the great Indian family found a new cinematic language in 2021, from Gullak, The Family Man to Tabbar, Aarya-Entertainment News , Firstpost
The Indian family has not disappeared from our screens as many anticipated, but has only found a new language to utter the old and rehearsed.
Everyone who has lived through the ’90s possessing a certain amount of consciousness knows that ‘K-dramas’ were a wholly Indian concept before they became an eclectic brand of the liberalised OTT space. Kohl-wearing vamps, scheming mother-in-laws, and a handful of cornered men were common fare on whatever entertainment channels you were switching between.
The Mihir and Tulsi Virani relationship that was at the heart of Kyunki Saas bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi has even survived generational overhaul to now be the subject of modern communique, aka the meme. The explosion of OTT platforms, with its wider boundaries and higher ceilings, suggested at least briefly that the trope of the familial would eventually make way for the landscape of the individual, and subsequently, the unconventional.
While there have been hints of that break-free moment in Indian entertainment, 2021 only cemented the family’s role as the seed of our most comprehensive ideas.
To which effect the Indian family has not disappeared from our screens as many anticipated, but has only found a new language to utter the old and rehearsed.
2021 started with Gullak Season 2 (SonyLIV), a feel-good, slice-of-life series that sweetens the family pie with nostalgia and conflict that are both in service to the larger idea of the family bond. The year petered out with Tabbar, incidentally another SonyLIV series, that used the palette of gore and violent desperation to make the same point – family comes first.
Indian tele, before the arrival of OTT platforms, conveyed the idea of joint families as breading grounds for domestic miscreants and scheming witches. We have evolved to the point where these twists can be outsourced to circumstance and civil politics, but the evidence suggests there is still nothing more scandalous than the mutinous inbreeding of a mole within that which is conveyed as culturally nuclear.
Ironically, alongside Gullak , Tandav (Amazon Prime Video India), portrayed a high-stakes fight for power that consumes families and siblings alike. Then there was The Family Man Season 2 (Amazon Prime Video India), where Manoj Bajpayee’s middle-aged agent tried to keep a rebellious, almost fragile, ecosystem of a family from collapsing. A lot of these families are disjointed and dysfunctional in their own way, but while some are redeemed by the arrival of an unfamiliar challenge, another crumbles under the weight of personal ambition.
Aarya Season 2 (Disney+ Hotstar), which came out at the end of the year, is yet another story of a stubborn woman working, sometimes against her own instincts, to protect her family. Even in the most chilling true-crime documentary of the year, House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths (Netflix India), a family self-destructs almost too calmly and incomprehensibly for even the powers of fiction to entrust its absurdities. Historic shows like The Empire (Disney+ Hotstar) were understandably cued to generational feuds but their essence has, in a way, carried on into the stories of today. The nucleus has sustained, its provocations still as fascinating to witness and ruminate over.
Still from House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths
Saas-bahu soaps that flourished through the ’90s were perpetuated by the consummate intent to assign the invisible – family togetherness – a certain value. In the modern-day story, that value is not only visible, but also expressed, be it through gendered naivety or ignited anger. In Gullak, a mother finally loses control and tells the three men of her house, what’s what. In Tabbar, a hesitant father must transform to a kind of desperate evil to keep the good from, wholesomely abandoning, his own family – even at the cost of one of them. In The Family Man, a righteous yet bitter man must find a way to save both his country and his marriage – something he cannot tell apart unless both become one. In Aarya, a mother must assume a role that circumstances have forced on her. In House of Secrets, a man’s vision finds a way to envelope the imagination of an entire family. Even in Bombay Begums (Netflix India), unrelated women find in each other’s suffering an attribute that feels familial without being genetically coded.
It is easy today to, of course, scoff at the parlour tricks that the TV soaps of the previous generation consumed, and are to an extent continuing on TV still. Predictably, it is still the bigger market as internet and streaming remain minority projects hoping to bridge the class gap, which is unlikely until a lot else changes on the ground. That said, evidently, our most scandalous and quirky ideas are still scraping the family dynamic for episodic thrills and chills. Regardless of our politics, individuality is still a far-fetched idea that existentialism is yet to steal from under the umbrella of the family canopy, for it remains our source of succour, comfort, and even refuge.
Still from The Family Man Season 2
Familial cracks and fissures have, over the last few decades, retained their gravitas, even their audacity. Even though we have given them a new vocabulary, a more hands-free environment to scream in, these remade ideas continue to whisper, echoes of the old, forgotten, and often ridiculed.
Manik Sharma writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between.
