Despite the language barrier for a South Indian, one could still comprehend the ‘peak Gurgaon content‘ through keywords like ‘wasool toh karunga’, ‘kiss karte karte’, ‘top uthaya’, and ‘neeche usne pyjama‘. These words were instantly transformed into mental visuals, weaponised by a deep-seated machismo. Himanshu Jangra objectifies and conjures the physically absent woman through his descriptive language, stripping her of agency within his narrative. She becomes a purely imagined projection. She is neither present to resist, argue, or stand up for herself, nor able to assert her subjectivity, conveniently allowing the audience to reduce her to an object of the collective gaze.
Whether it is a 350-crore pan-Indian film or a 370-rupee dinner receipt, the underlying calculus remains identical: the female body is treated as a commodity, pre-purchased for male consumption.
And isn’t this gaze a deeply familiar phenomenon for us? Isn’t it the same gaze that is constantly fed by the hypersexualisation of women on the big screen? Whether it is a 350-crore pan-Indian film or a 370-rupee dinner receipt, the underlying calculus remains identical: the female body is treated as a commodity, pre-purchased for male consumption.
Fetishistic scopophilia: the fragmentation of female image
Let us apply Laura Mulvey’s concept of fetishistic scopophilia to the interaction between comedian Pranit More and Himanshu Jangra. While scopophilia is traditionally used to analyse the male gaze mediated by the movie camera, it applies well to the structural gaze of a live audience as well. The difference is that the cinema screen is replaced by a live stage, while the lights and microphone take on the role of the camera.
While scopophilia is traditionally used to analyse the male gaze mediated by the movie camera, it applies well to the structural gaze of a live audience as well. The difference is that the cinema screen is replaced by a live stage, while the lights and microphone take on the role of the camera.
Additionally, one can synthesise the audience factor across both contexts: in each, the audience sits in the dark, remaining anonymous and unaccountable, while the stage or screen is spotlighted and illuminated. This architectural setup immediately activates the passive, voyeuristic pleasure of looking without being seen. In both spaces, the woman’s image is fixated upon and fragmented without her consent.
Himanshu Jangra is performing an active male archetype, expecting validation from the peer group, which should be read as underlying castration anxiety. The term has its roots in Freudian theory, and it addresses the fundamental fear of losing power and control. In a modern socio-economic context, this anxiety is heavily displaced onto capital and digital validation. In this case, castration anxiety works through the fear of being fooled or financially taken advantage of by women.
The manosphere subculture is converted into aggressive, pre-emptive entitlement in this pattern. An independent, self-sufficient woman with her own desires and the power to reject a man triggers castration anxiety. By reducing her to a dehumanised object of pleasure, the narrative dilutes her power to threaten. The audience enjoys a burst of laughter because they have co-created and consumed the fetishised.
In a digital dating ecosystem, where human interactions are quantified through swiping, liking, and signalling, commodification has become a normalised baseline approach. For patriarchal men, however, the idea is that money spent must yield an equivalent return in intimacy, and intimacy has nothing to do with emotions or accountability but is a debt to be settled.
In a digital dating ecosystem, where human interactions are quantified through swiping, liking, and signalling, commodification has become a normalised baseline approach. While women face sheer exhaustion and intangible fear during the early stages of dating, with the dilemma of decoding a simple invitation for a meal, coffee, or a drink, the dating culture is based on insecure baselines for women. For patriarchal men, however, the idea is that money spent must yield an equivalent return in intimacy, and intimacy has nothing to do with emotions or accountability but is a debt to be settled.
This entitlement did not develop in a vacuum; it has been nurtured by the mass media we consume daily. Instead of calling out just the solitary bad actors, there is a critical need to view this as a symptom of a deeper, structurally reinforced pathology. Commercial cinema, like Peddi, Pushpa, Devara, Dhoom, Himmatwala, Varisu, and Beast, trains the male psyche to view women as disjointed, sexualised commodities rather than whole human beings. It persistently conditions young minds to believe that encroaching on personal boundaries, commodifying female bodies, and neglecting their voices are normal components of love and romance. When Himanshu coerced his date into going to the park, expecting obligatory compliance, he was enacting the real-world replica of what film heroes did onscreen.
In Peddi, critics and audiences have called out director Buchi Babu Sana’s camera work for repeatedly objectifying Janhvi Kapoor. With camera angles and shots focusing intensely on her navel, waist, and cleavage during everyday scenes, she is subjected to the male gaze constantly. This can be understood in how the woman’s agency is treated in the scene where Peddi (Ram Charan) kisses Achiyyamma (Janhvi Kapoor) without her consent and calls it his unique way of expressing love. Consciously or subconsciously adapting normalised onscreen sexualisation and its distorted understanding of consent into his behaviour, Himanshu Jangra did not act in isolation. His ideas about women and dating were entirely colonised by misogynistic media content that preached to him that women are just passive ‘rewards’ for men’s financial and physical pursuits.
When a mainstream pan-Indian film routinely reduces a woman to a collective body of sexualised parts, it conditions viewers to expect the same in reality. Similarly, Himanshu diminished his date to a transactional calculation of 370 rupees, stripping her of her subjectivity.
The cadaver controversy and castration anxiety
The viral backlash against medical resident Sejal Pawar, who joked on the same comedian’s show about comparing the penis sizes of male cadavers in the anatomy lab, is a classic example of weaponised, strategic outrage that reveals a clearer understanding of how castration anxiety unfolds on a larger scale across multiple layers of this controversy. On the one hand, Himanshu’s bragging about his coercive behaviour can be seen as an attempt to heal his castration anxiety through the uproarious response from the crowd; on the other hand, a woman doctor wielding clinical authority to scrutinise, measure, and mock the vulnerable male anatomy strikes at the absolute core of male castration anxiety.
Though Pawar’s narrative is ethically questionable, it poses zero physical threat to any living man. Yet, the manosphere treated it as a supreme crisis of gender equality. The outrage isn’t actually about the dignity of body donors.
Though Pawar’s narrative is ethically questionable, it poses zero physical threat to any living man. Yet, the manosphere treated it as a supreme crisis of gender equality. The outrage isn’t actually about the dignity of body donors. The explosive rage is a desperate ego-defence mechanism against a terrifying inversion of power, where the man is helpless and perceived as inadequate, while the woman holds sovereign medical authority and, quite literally, the scalpel.
The collective public will buy front-row tickets to Peddi and cheer as millionaire patriarchs perform state-sanctioned objectification. However, true accountability requires dismantling patriarchal narratives rather than just sacrificing its most visible adherents.
About the author(s)
Dr Sitharais an Assistant Professor at VIT Chennai whose work intersects media, labour, and gender studies. As a gender and cultural critic with a PhD from the University of Madras, she leverages her decade-long industry experience to analyse systemic inequities in media spaces. Her research focuses on autoethnography, childhood studies, and tribal education.
