{"id":457,"date":"2025-06-03T14:23:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T14:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/?p=457"},"modified":"2025-06-05T02:23:45","modified_gmt":"2025-06-05T02:23:45","slug":"sikander2025-intersectional-feminist-analysis-an-indian-alpha-male-in-bollywood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/?p=457","title":{"rendered":"Sikander(2025): Intersectional Feminist Analysis An Indian Alpha Male in Bollywood"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Reality TV is entertaining. Real people are #cringe, <\/em>and we love the messy, cringey reality depicted on screens. In the same vein, I recently spent three hours of my precious life watching a 2025 film called Sikandar <\/em>(translation from Hindi: King, alludes to Alexander the Great). The film\u2019s hero\/protagonist is Salman Khan, a well-known giant in the Indian\/Bollywood film industry. He usually (every Salman Khan film I\u2019ve ever watched, which is 24) plays the hunky hot full of swag and nonchalant action hero. Tamil movie maker, AR Murugadoss, wrote the screenplay, dialogues, and directed the Sikandar movie. Yet there is nothing that really holds the story together. For two hours and 23 minutes, I watched in awe, and comedic disbelief (no comedic relief), how it built up a slow yet action-packed storyline that purely stroked the hero, Salman Khan\u2019s male hero complex. It is simply action (men fighting each other in various positions and locations for various reasons), pure drama and action. There is no critical analysis needed, in fact, I propose this film does not require an ounce of thought to watch. It is meant for passive viewing (at least for me) because the film\u2019s cinematography is beautiful, full of colorful action and people-packed scenes, and brilliant lighting. The film starts off with Sikandar depicted as an actual King (King of Rajkot) with fantastical superhuman strength. Immense wealth (he owns 25% of India\u2019s Gold, which is several hundred metric tonnes). He is in the present-day post-COVID, digital age, contemporary India. He\u2019s got a city that worships him and is a good man. The film emphasizes his fights with rap music in Hindi and English. Every fight is filmed in slow motion. All the punches land. He\u2019s decidedly cool and does not break a sweat. But because of his various royal and philanthropic responsibilities, he is too busy for his kind and protective wife, Queen Saisri. She passes away within a year of marriage, dying while protecting him (in the first 35 minutes of the film). She donates her eyes, lungs and heart to three strangers. Sikandar, crying his eyes out, feeling really sad about losing his young late wife who he did not actually know (because he\u2019s so busy and they were married only for a year) to find the three people who have his late wife\u2019s organs for closure. The antagonist is artificially introduced as a high-ranking politician who wants to kill the three people with Sikandar\u2019s late wife\u2019s organs. Why? The politician believes that Sikandar is responsible for killing his (lecherous, entitled creep) beloved 30-year-old son (who actually died in an accident). Confused? I am, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me confuse you further. The Queen\u2019s eyes go to a smart yet submissive stay-at-home wife, Vaidehi, who is not allowed to work because of a patriarchal family head (#my_house, #my_rules kind of situation). Queen\u2019s lungs go to an orphan living in the polluted slums of Mumbai (the world’s biggest slums are in Mumbai, which also happens to be the movie capital of India #Bollywood). Lastly, the queen\u2019s heart goes to a modern teenager Nisha who loves her gym-loving hunky Alpha male boyfriend (he does not seem to love her). Every person with the Queen\u2019s organs has their problems solved by Sikandar. Sikandar teaches feminism to an upper-caste Brahmanical patriarchal Indian family, solves an environmental problem in the most polluted city in the world, and ALSO makes a young girl realize that her alpha male boyfriend isn\u2019t emotionally available and she shouldn\u2019t waste her precious heart on him (literally). Impossible premise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reason I chose to explain this impossible film is because of the explicit mention and commentary on \u2018alpha male\u2019, how Sikandar, as the \u2018real\u2019 alpha male, corrects and changes the wrong alpha males to save the women and empower them, allegedly. My question is, why does so much of it still hinge on hegemonic associations of power and the very real capacity to do harm and violence? The way Sikandar solves problems is primarily through his wealth and violence: by beating the shit out of goons who want to beat him up, or killing hitmen who want to hurt women and children (who have his late wife\u2019s organs). It is hard to analyze and answer such questions. This film is so hard to take seriously. I cannot analyze any part of it seriously because it is so<\/em> bad, yet I try, as it remains enduringly popular. It may be a commercial failure, but it still grossed over 50 million dollars in the first few months of its release. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 1. Netflix Does Not Allow ScreenShots!! Nisha in Yellow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The interesting analytical bit is in the last 30 minutes of the movie. Nisha (modern teenage girl with Sikandar\u2019s late wife\u2019s heart) is outside her large mansion-like house with her dad, Sikandar, and his bodyguards. The audience can assume she\u2019s wealthy and modern because of her Westernized clothing, streaked blonde and brown hair, low-cut dress, and luxury cars strewn around. Kapil, her boyfriend, shows up with a bandaged eye and bruised body. She\u2019s erratic and frantically apologizing to her \u201cboyfriend,\u201d Kapil, who was beaten up by Sikandar at his gym.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Her dad tries to tell her that Kapil is here to tell her that he doesn’t love her. And the teen daughter, Nisha, screams back and says it doesn\u2019t matter because she loves him and that\u2019s enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Immediately after, she says, \u201cKapil is an Alpha and Alpha means King.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of the hunky bodyguards (their one dimensional role is to literally stand by Sikandar) exclaims (putting her back in her place, allegedly!) that she has no idea what she\u2019s talking about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He further reveals that the Sikandar isn\u2019t a random nobody but the \u201cKing of Rajkot and very very wealthy man who is taking care of the people who have his late wife\u2019s organs.\u201d In a sense, Sikandar is established as the real alpha. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nisha, in less than two seconds after her erratic outburts apolgies and asks for the King Sikandar’s forgiveness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I infer Nisha\u2019s character as stereotype in opposition to the masculine men around her. She\u2019s the chaotic, emotional feminine. She is the heart of the film cinematically, narratively, ideologically and discursively owned by Sikandar. She is less a person and more a custodial vessel of the hero\u2019s grief, a surrogate mourner, a daughter-substitute, a body on lease. She’s a young woman who feels too much<\/strong>, who loves wrong, and who must be guided, corrected, or mourned. What a sterotype! I infer her mistake, as not being too emotional but being emotionally loyal to the wrong man<\/em>. The solution? Sikandar reeducates her affective compass. She’s not punished directly, she is rescued into clarity by male rationality, wealth, and muscle. This is not love. This is re-domestication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the life of me, I could not tell you the plot or motivation except the film follows Sikandar helping (empowering) poor and disadvantaged common folk and that all of this started because his wife died and he is trying to be less nonchalant and be a better man. Indian cinema is rich, complex and contains multitudes. This film is not emblematic of Indian cinema, yet it is typical of a popular action packed genre of Indian films. Let my critique not dissuade you from Indian cinema, especially bollywood. Although it has all the hallmarks of a bollywood movie: 1. Intense choreographed dancing, singing 2. Length (Bollywood films are egregiously long. Much like this thought piece. They are a time investment.) 3. Colorful. 4. Repetitive plots and definite happy endings. It is not a symbol of a good movie. And Sikandar definitely proves that popularity may not mean good content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reality TV is entertaining. Real people are #cringe, and we love the messy, cringey reality depicted on screens. In the same vein, I recently spent three hours of my precious life watching a 2025 film called Sikandar (translation from Hindi: King, alludes to Alexander the Great). The film\u2019s hero\/protagonist is Salman Khan, a well-known giant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=457"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":458,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions\/458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}