The alpha illusion

EYE CULTURE

- KUMAR ABISHEK

‘The teaser for Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown - Ups opens not with character or context, but with posture. In two minutes and fifty-two seconds, Yash’s Raya detonates a graveyard while having sex in his car, then emerges through the smoke with guns blazing, alit cigar in hand, and a blunt announcement: “Daddy’s home.”

Here power has been performed rather than explained.

This provocation lands in an industry primed for it. After Animal and Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar, the alpha male demands scrutiny. Too realistic to be dismissed as propaganda, Dhar’s film presents hyper-masculinity as a tool for confronting modern anxieties — terrorism in Dhurandhar, capitalism in KGF, corruption in Jawan. Is this masculinity grounded in biology, or just spectacle dressed as inevitability?

Animal provides the clearest manifesto. Ranbir Kapoor's Ranvijay doesn’t merely behave violently; he theorises it. Alphas act, dominate, and protect; betas write poetry and ask for respect. Women, in this world view, instinctively choose strength over softness. Delivered with conviction, the argument feels less like opinion than natural law.