Shaukeen vs The Shaukeens: Anatomy of a Remake
Warning: Contains spoilers
Stories have been told and retold ever since the first caveman told the other caveman about his day. The conversation presumably went something like this:
Caveman 1: DUDE YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT I SAW TODAY
Caveman 1: You know that irritating guy in the 5th cave across the valley who’s always fighting with his brother?
Caveman 2: Shit yeah, Rahul. What about him?
Caveman 1: I SAW HIS BROTHER BEAT THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF HIM. LIKE HE WENT TOTAL BATSHIT CRAZY ON HIS ASS BECAUSE RAHUL WOULDN’T STOP ASKING FOR HIS FOOD.
Caveman 2: Cool story, bro.
Caveman 1: What’s a story?
Caveman 2: Hell if I know.
And then that sort of spun out of control. Caveman 2 repeated it to Cavemen 3 through 20. And they in turn repeated it thousands of others. And then we somehow ended up with 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Point is, stories change. Things get added, for entertainment’s sake. Things get removed, for brevity’s sake. And then things get added again because some people can’t get the hang of good storytelling. But what makes a retelling a good retelling is if it keeps the soul of the original intact. That’s basically it. And it doesn’t matter if the retelling’s done through a different medium. As long as the soul is intact, the story will hit the same emotional chords inside you that make it endearing.
So, for example, the first Harry Potter movie is a good retelling of the book it is based on because it hits the same emotional chords that make Philosopher’s Stone endearing. It introduces you into a world that’s full of wonder, but also underlines the dangers lurking underneath. The scenes with Diagon Alley and the Great Hall and Quidditch induce *almost* the same amount of wonder that you got through the book, and then you’re always reminded of the dangers in almost the same breath. Gringotts’ dinginess and darkness almost immediately undercuts the scene after you’re introduced to Diagon Alley, and then it brings you up feeling all light-and-giddy again, undercutting that *yet again* with the scene with Ollivander, undercutting THAT with a shot of Hagrid holding Hedwig as a birthday present for Harry.
It’s that perfect sync between light and dark that keeps you engaged at EVERY point. Introducing you to a brave new world, but also telling you that this brave new world has the same shortcomings and dangers that plague the one you just left. It’s not fantasy. It’s real. It’s that conceit that taps into every 11-year old’s psyche subconsciously. Because it’s real, it could very well be true. Heck, I remember waiting for MY letter to Hogwarts on my eleventh birthday.
That’s what a good retelling does. Retains the soul of the original and everything that makes it endearing to us. So it doesn’t matter if there’s no Hermione-beats-Snape’s-poison riddle in the movie. Because that’s surface level stuff. The film hits you where the book hit you. And that’s all that matters.
All of which brings us to The Shaukeens.
In case you aren’t familiar with the story, (which if you aren’t, why the heck are you even reading this?) the film follows the adventures, and subsequent misadventures, of 3 amorous 60-somethings looking to relive their non-existent 20’s. The film opens on a song picturised on Akshay Kumar for no functional reason except, “HEY LOOK AKSHAY KUMAR IS IN THIS FILM YOU GUYS SHOULD TOTALLY PAY ATTENTION”.
Let me reiterate: a film starring Annu Kapoor, Anupam Kher and Piyush Mishra, three of the finer senior actors we have in the Hindi film industry, opens on an Akshay Kumar sequence because it doesn’t trust them to hold your attention. And these three fine senior actors are playing characters who we’re supposed to sympathise with for the next 2 hours of our lives.
The next scene makes it clear why we aren’t supposed to sympathise with them, though. They’re shown basically ogling and mentally jerking off to every woman they can lay their eyes on, in their community jogging park. This film gets WAYYYY more rape-y as we progress, for the sake of, ugh, comedy. To the point where any sane-minded individual might wonder why these guys aren’t in prison already, because if this is what they’re like at 60, heavens know what they did in their actual 20’s.
This is probably why the filmmakers kept Akshay Kumar dangling in front of us like a carrot in front of a donkey. “It’ll get better, they’ll get their comeuppance. You’ll see,” they seem to say. Which is kinda problematic in its own way. That the filmmakers seem to see a desire for sex, and appreciation of sexuality as “something that should be punished”. All of this comes to a head when a drunk Akshay Kumar shouts in front of national television: YE TEEN SHAUKEEN HAIN! Making ‘Shaukeen’ a synonym for ‘pervert’.
Now, here’s where all of that rhetoric on retelling stories is going to come in handy. The message of the original Shaukeen was the exact opposite from this film.
TIME-TRAVEL TIME. The original Shaukeen had Ashok Kumar, A.K. Hangal and Utpal Dutt as its amorous seniors. All three at the same stages in their careers as the modern three, and, arguably, more successful as actors. But where The Shaukeens looks at the desire for sex and its own sexuality with disgust, Shaukeen is more forgiving and understanding. The word ‘Shaukeen’, when used in this film retains its original meaning.
“Dil abhi bhi shaukeen hai,” chimes one of our seniors with a chuckle, while sharing a drink with his friends. Like articulating a common secret they’d always been told was “immoral”. Like saying ‘Voldemort’, instead of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Punched. That light-hearted exploration of their own sexuality is a constant theme throughout the film. Don’t mistake this for me glossing over the rapey parts of the film, because it does get rapey. But it does so, keeping in mind how that’s going to go over with the people watching this film and, most importantly, makes sure it isn’t mistaken for anything but rapey-ness.
The scene I’m talking about involves our female lead sleeping alone and Utpal Dutt walking around, arguing with himself whether he should impose herself on her. It’s a serious scene and it’s played that way. Utpal Dutt really *is* having this dilemma and by making us silent observers to this long-ish scene, Basu Chatterjee is forcing *us* to think about the consequences of Utpal Dutt’s actions. Meanwhile, in The Shaukeens, a similar scene is played out like a punchline. Piyush Mishra sneaks up on our corresponding female lead, rising from a crawling position to the iconic ape-learns-to-walk position and then proceeds to take a picture of himself with her, whatsapping it to his friends to appear cool.
Now, filming rapey scenes in itself is not objectionable. It’s the intent and how it affects the cinemagoer’s subconscious that matters. Where Shaukeen had its viewers thinking about consent and danger in real, serious terms, The Shaukeens uses it to generate a laugh. And not a loud one, at that.
I could nitpick all I want but that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is to see how The Shaukeens fails as a retelling Shaukeen. And for that, we must dig deeper. What is it about Shaukeen that makes it so endearing? Why do the three ‘perverts’ in Shaukeen feel more grandfatherly than the three ‘perverts’ in The Shaukeens? What is this obsession with sex actually about, and why does this plague all of them regardless of the generation that chose to film it?
The answer, in my humble opinion, is a fear of mortality.
Shaukeen is not a story about three perverts going to do some pervert-giri in a foreign land. It’s a story about three young-at-heart men who, unable to come to terms with their own mortality, try to act as if nothing’s changed by going on a holiday that’ll never end. It’s a story about three senior men coming to terms with being called ‘uncle’ by a young woman.
The Shaukeens, on the other hand, *is* a story about three perverts who, surprise surprise, remain perverts. Their pervert-giri isn’t coming from a fear of mortality but as a rebellion against the women who won’t give them attention because they don’t deserve it.
The Shaukeens is basically Gamergate.
In a discussion about sexuality in film, completely ignoring the other sex is the stupidest thing one can do. Yet, here I did just that because of the larger point I was trying to make. This post script is just to acknowledge that Rati Agnihotri in Shaukeen is a far, far more developed and “real” character than Lisa Haydon in The Shaukeens. Lisa Haydon in The Shaukeens is portrayed as the dumb blonde who isn’t aware of men taking advantage of her, through no fault of her own. You can’t blame an actress for the non-existence of characterization in the script.
Rati Agnihotri’s character in Shaukeen, on the other hand, *knows* the kind of men they are, and treats them as such: Annoying children. She even tells Mithun, her lover, that he should trust her to be more discerning; she works at a hotel, after all, and goes through shit like this all day every day. She knows how to handle herself. So Shaukeen not only works as a coming-of-age of sorts for these three senior people, on a deeper level, it highlights just how much shit women have to put up with just so a man can “come-to-terms” with things. Basu Chatterjee found a way to make a film about the “male gaze” a subtext feminist film.
