Thread by @gauravsabnis

Yash Chopra "romantic" movies don't age well in the #metoo era.

Lamhe - Rich scion wants to get with an older woman, who is not into him, loves someone else. He tries hard, but fails. So then grooms and marries her daughter who looks exactly like her. 🤢🤢

Chandni - Rich scion hooks up with a woman, but then throws her under the bus to please his patriarchal parents. She moves on, meets a nice guy. But rich scion is like, nah, she is mine for life, no matter how much I abused her, cos I'm awesome.

Darr - Violent stalkers and wannabe rapists are cute as long as they sound cute.

Silsila - Rich scion who has a girlfriend, dumps her out of the blue and marries his dead brother's fiance. But still has hots for the girlfriend who marries a nicer guy. The second half of the movie is just absolutely disgusting.

Kabhie Kabhie - Rich scion uses tedious poetry to get with a girl, but her parents are like, lol, you have no agency. She's married off to someone else. Amit marries another such woman with no agency and a baby out of wedlock. Still lusts after ex. Whose husband applauds it.

Has Yash Chopra ever made a romcom that did not involve coveting someone else's partner?

I'm no Barjatya fan but at least the end of HAHK has Mohnish asking very logically, you'd love your nephew even if you didn't marry me, no? Even if you marry my brother, it's the same house. What Yash Chopra nonsense are you trying to pull?

DTPH - Rich scion uses his dancing hobby to continuously hit on a woman engaged to someone else. Breaks that engagement. All the time keeping a backup woman ready in his dance group who happens to have a crush on him. Messes up her life too.

DDLJ - Rich scion on a Europe vacation runs into a woman whose parents have already browbeaten her into zero self esteem, harasses and bullies her until she says yes. But doesn't step up and close the deal. Stalks her in India, plays with the feelings of her fiance's sister.

The ideal woman as portrayed by Yashraj is extremely hot but is basically just a doll to be tossed between different men in her life and in the end, will end up exactly the way some Amit wants her to end up.

Btw, these are just his so-called romantic movies. I could do a whole other thread on similar yucky issues in his "drama" movies like Deewar, Trishul, Parampara, etc. The gaze with which Yash and his proteges looked at women in their storytelling is downright predatory.

What makes Darr interesting is that we have a natural experiment of sorts. Armaan came out around the same time, similar story, also had SRK as the stalker. But in Armaan, he is an out and out villain. Not cutesy like in Darr. And Madhuri in Armaan is not a doormat.

My point is that the Yashraj ouevre was not just creepy and problematic by 2021 standards, but was also yucky even if compared to many other movies of that era. Sridevi single-handedly carried Chaalbaz, eclipsing Sunny & Rajini. But Yash wrote stories imagining her as property.

Eeeks. Brain fart. I meant Anjaam not Armaan. Old age happening.

Anjaam - SRK is an out and out evil stalker and Madhuri is a strong woman who eventually destroys him.

Darr - SRK is a cute charming stalker (rich scion always) and Juhi is pretty much clueless all the way till the end and another man saves her in the end.