Hanuman, Hijras, and Heart: What Monkey Man Decolonizes
Photo Source: Universal Pictures
Monkey Man is an action film that is attempting to be many things. It’s part revenge film, part mythology metamorphosed, and part ode and love letter to Asian action and revenge movies past (Dev Patel cites Korean action movies like Oldboy and Man from Nowhere, Bruce Lee overall, and the film The Raid as all influential of and formative to his desire to explore the genre of revenge action movies, and Bollywood as an influence for the “audacity and colorfulness” that suffuses Monkey Man).
More significantly, as a directorial debut, Monkey Man is Dev Patel’s way of starting a conversation. The movie is meant to be more story than spectacle– and it’s interested in saying something quite radical. While comparisons have been made to the John Wick franchise (and which Monkey Man directly references), Dev Patel has made it clear that what he was interested in capturing through the setting of an action film was “social context… my culture, my history, my ancestry”. And it is this culture, history, and ancestry that sets this film apart from other action films– regardless of what things it may be attempting to accomplish.
In honor of June and Pride month, right after May and AAPI heritage month, I specifically want to examine the things both centered and subverted as “holy” in this film– particularly the role of hijras within Monkey Man, what their presence signifies politically and personally, and why this film was met with great controversy and censorship within India. Some (mild) spoilers may follow.
To understand the significance of the renderings and representations of hijras within Monkey Man, a brief plot synopsis is in order. Monkey Man follows Kid, a man who as a boy experiences his mother being ripped away from him in a corrupt religious and political bid for the land his community occupies in a forest village in India. Inspired by his mother’s tales of Hanuman, who mistook the sun for a mango in the sky and was punished by the gods only to later rise up to defeat great evil and serve Rama, Kid vows his revenge. The film follows his determined journey to do so.
During a failed initial attempt, Kid is rescued by Alpha, the keeper of a local temple devoted to Ardhanarishvara, a form of the Hindu deity Shiva combined with his consort Parvati that is half-male, half-female and “represents a constructive and generative power”. Alpha is also the leader and guide of Yatana’s hijra community which takes sanctuary in the temple as a result of being targeted by the same Hindu nationalist and conservative forces that destroyed Kid’s village. Tellingly, Hanuman is also a figure of sanctuary, strength, and harmony with nature. Alpha and the others guide Kid in training mentally, physically, and spiritually to continue his journey for revenge, and even join him directly. They are the catalyst for Kid healing and renewing his determination. He emerges from their sanctuary with almost supernatural strength, and an unshakeable faith in what he must do.
The hijra have a long history in India (as well as other countries within the South Asian subcontinent such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka among others, but are outside of the social context being invoked in Monkey Man, and therefore outside of the scope of this article). In the Sultanate and Mughal courts, they were traditionally powerful figures in charge of collecting taxes and duties. In religious communities, hijras were seen as devotional figures of Rama (just like Hanuman), and seen as integral to blessing newborns and participating in ceremonies and festivals. In sum, the hijra have historically been seen and centered as holy and divine. However, under British colonial rule and the Criminal Tribal Acts of 1871, the hijra were demonized and desecrated because they “did not conform to the gendered logics of the British state”. As a consequence of internalizing these colonial logics, within India the hijra community continues to face discrimination, even as strides have been made (in April 2014 the Supreme Court of India legally recognized hijras, transgender people, eunuchs, and intersex people as a "third gender”). The 1990s and the AIDS epidemic combined with the establishment of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) worked in tandem to demonize hijras in the public eye. Importantly, this is also the decade that the Mandal Commission redressed caste discrimination in India, an ongoing struggle today as the practice of reservations and affirmative action continue to be debated. The Hijra are at the center of these debates, as increasing Hindu nationalism and religious conservatism influences party politics and what’s centered as “holy” and “pure”. As a consequence, the presence and role of hijras in Monkey Man is deeply political and significant.
Monkey Man comes at a time when political struggles in India are reaching new heights for the 2024 elections– and is a pretty clear critique of the BJP Party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modhi. While the film made minor changes to avoid bans and censorship (like changing saffron colored banners to red as saffron is associated with BJP), the Central Board of Film Certification still has not cleared the film for screenings in India. Additionally, the villains in the film abuse religious and political power to repeatedly disenfranchise minority groups like the hijras as well as those in lower caste groups and rural areas, political moves that echo those historically made by Prime Minister Modhi and several prominent members of the BJP- particularly Yogi Adityanath. Yogi Adityanath is a Hindu nationalist accused of orchestrating the deaths of Muslims, Dalits, and even hijras through state sanctioned police violence. He appears paralleled in the film through the character Baba Shakti, the main villain of the film who uses the corrupt police to fuel his own political ambitions, and who causes not only the death of Kid’s mother through police violence but the displacement of the hijra.
As the Indian government led by Modhi increasingly advocates for Hindu nationalism over a secular state, religious intolerance and hate crimes rise within the country. What’s considered “holy” and right is increasingly muddled– a direct result of hatred internalized during colonialism and now being capitalized on for political gain. But Monkey Man subverts this order and recenters those cast aside to the margins as those truly in harmony with what is natural and right. It is important to note that the film doesn’t treat faith or religion with derision. In fact, many aspects of Hinduism are venerated. Monkey Man merely (though this is hardly a simple matter at all in light of India’s geopolitics) points out that religious extremism is less about belief in (a) higher power(s) than it is about wielding power itself. Above all, it is an underdog story— and Kid and the hijra community within the film represent this in almost equal terms.
To be hijra is about embodying something more than what you are told to be– and that radical act is positioned as a divine one over and over again in the film. It echoes Hanuman’s journey and Kid’s in turn. Class and religious politics both tell Kid to keep his head down, to be ok with being exploited for labor and spectacle in the boxing ring, and to look the other way. To keep himself small. But he learns to defy these expectations through time spent with the hijra, who rescue him from his literally unconscious state after his first attempt at revenge goes awry.
Kid learns to box to the tabla and to see where his own roots are because of the hijra, reconnecting with his heritage and ancestry even as he seeks revenge. It is critical that revenge or violence isn’t positioned as unnatural or ideologically evil within the film. The hijra initially stick to hiding, but are encouraged by Kid’s revelations and redemption of self (he learns to not blame himself for the loss of his village and mother) to fight back.
Monkey Man encourages us to rebel against those who abuse their power, no matter what it may take. Enacting this violence may take a steep price, but it doesn’t have to cost you your identity. However, to make that change your path and who you are must be clear to those you lead and to yourself. Gayatri Reddy writes that across cultural, social, and religious contexts the hijra see themselves as “as composite subjects, borne through kinship, the law, state surveillance, religion, class, embodiment, and hierarchies of izzat, in addition to gender and sexuality (56). These same sentiments are echoed in Kid’s actions as he fights against those who abuse women, the hijra, Dalits, and others often treated as damaged or inferior goods within Indian society.
The politics of Monkey Man, even if at times muddled by some of the action and plot points, are explicitly and inherently queer. What does that mean? In 1997, Cathy Cohen wrote that queerness ought to be a political label that centers identities seen as less than by society and recognizes that their solidarity and social redemption is critical and crucial to liberation for all. At the center of this film is a decolonization and queer body politic effort– to recenter mythologies past, the hijras as holy, and recontextualize the difference between humanity and divinity within an increasingly intolerant and religiously extremist political and social context.
The success of this effort– whether within the film or outside of it at present– is not what I want to highlight here. I also want to emphasize I have so much love and appreciation for a film that has taken on so much, and is so beautifully and thoughtfully shot. But this piece is about its politics. It’s about addressing what this movie has to say about authenticity, identity and what’s actually recentered as holy and happy. And so, I leave you with this for the HAAPI-ness issue. Capitalism and structures of power and oppression will always teach you to be small, to be happy with less even as you’re told to want more. You will be told that it is okay because there are others smaller, others less desirable, others seen as more damaged than you. But unless you’re at the very upper echelons of society, our struggle is the same. Happiness with each other leads to happiness for self. Choosing happiness means choosing to embrace what’s been lost and buried, stripped away.
To be who you truly are is a radical act filled with joy. Whether it looks like standing up for what’s right or to simply dance in good company, centering yourself and the community around you will always lead to the ending your story needs and perhaps deserves. Monkey Man is an incredible story for conveying this— and if there’s anything you take away from the film, it should be that.
Sources
Dev Patel's Monkey Man Watchlist & Filming Challenges (Letterboxd)
From Oldboy to I Saw the Devil, these Korean movies are the inspiration behind new action thriller Monkey Man (GamesRadar/TotalFilm)
For the Record:On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India by Anjali Arondekar
Dev Patel’s ‘Monkey Man’ turns saffron to red as India release uncertain - The Hindu
Can 'Hindu extremist' Adityanath become India's premier? – DW – 02/11/2022
Cohen, Cathy J. 1997. ‘ Punks , Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics ?’, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 3(4): 437–465.
