#15- Forbidden Desire in Hindi Cinema | Why Bad Boys Captivate Bollywood Fans - Bollywood Films Uncovered

Have yourself a merry little Christmas. Hey guys, it's Amy talking Christmas songs you already know. Let it Snow and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. But do you know some famous singers of these particular songs? You all know I love a classic. Well also I love fresh and totally new old fashioned modern girly that I am. Is there such a thing? Most definitely right. You pick, you choose. Real choice, not blind forced old boxes checked in One clear predestined box makes it really you or really yours from scratch.

A mixed bag like many delicious holiday combinations of fun flavors together. Should I share my favorite winter holiday treats? MMM. My preferences for taste, whether it be holiday dishes or holiday music, reflect the same mixed bag novelty. New, unique and different quality of course do light me up. And so does any nostalgic classic quality of course. Something that lasts the test of time, either because it is that good or it is like a time capsule, you know the nostalgia of it all cannot really be replaced or replicated effectively.

At least classic films, classic music, songs you've heard a million times and a million places are moments like we mentioned for the holiday vibe of it all. The holiday memory, nostalgia, the glue holding together people. Moments change. His generation decades as girly who is emotionally and spiritually moved by and even changed by quality art. It is natural that you would also know right off the bat with any common sense that that includes music that I would love Music every aspect, quality lyrics, amazing sounds that evoke as is seasoned and constant answer whose heart and his body moves to the rhythm of life, the rhythm of a good song.

Music moves literally and figuratively every part of me. And often music you have so many memories with, representing A vibe indescribable, intangible really starts. It's a good time travel now. So what? 2 classic songs. Songs like we have already dipped our toes into. I have so many, so many classic good ones have to do with the mob, the underworld, even the entertainment industry, the Hollywood Rat Pack. Wanna hear some gossip? I love me some Real Housewives. Some reality TV of all types. Maths, but actual reality, History even, can be so much more this year.

Let's talk rumors, shall we? Gossip with your girl here. Let's travel back in time. Tuxedos, cocktails, cigarettes and lounge music. Smooth dressing, smooth voices, smooth bravado, Charisma, Clever quick banter. Personality larger than life Sona records, music, movies, Vegas TV, Christmas specials, even playboys who are oh, the sweet talkers, the sweet singers, bad boys, I'm criminals. The Hollywood Rat Pack was a real group of 1950s nineteen 60s entertainers whose lives looked a lot like the world of dawn and race.

Glamorous, a little criminal adjacent, full of rumors and secrets and built on charm, loyalty and dangerous but safe charisma. Some of the most classic, historic, legendary songs played now, like we mentioned during the holidays, are epic renditions of the songs that were originally written even far longer before that. Standing out though, with these singers, with the style and the presence, these charmers, bad boys, smooth, dangerous yet gentlemanly characters. Allegedly, allegedly, right. I'm sure it's all just rumors.

Frank Sinatra and some of the Rat Pack members were rumored and sometimes investigated for friendships with my bosses and for performing in mob linked casinos in Las Vegas, which made them feel like entertainers with one foot in the underworld. Peter Laufer's link to the Kennedy family, Uh huh, and gossip about Marilyn Monroe, Oh yeah, made them seem close to the most powerful and scandalous people in America. Lawford, by the way, was often described as a a secret keeper who knew things others didn't.

Stories of internal feuds, especially Sinatra cutting Lauferdof after political controversy, added a sense of drama behind the scenes. Liking loyalties, breaking down. A lot of this is a mix of fact and legend, but for the public, it created a powerful myth. These were not just singers. They were the charming face of a darker, more powerful world. OK, so these very real fellows, entertainers. We love our entertainers right here. Now as we obsess again over entertainment, like film again, What about characters in film?

I know you must already be thinking. Come on Don, did you like my online video series? It's an international crime boss who moves through luxury hotels and nightclubs, private jets and high end parties, always sharply dressed and ahead of everyone else. Like the Rat back on a Vegas stage, he makes crime and danger look stylist. She jokes while planning heights, treats police and rival gangs like minor obstacles, and turns violence into choreography and smirks. The Rat Pack played charming thieves or mob adjacent figures on the screen as well, and Don is that figure inside Indian cinema, a glamorous outlaw that Camera loves.

Rat Pack gossip about mob ties mirrors how Don is whispered about in his world. Everyone knows his name bears him, and it's half in awe of how untouchable he seems. Just as Rat Pack fans enjoyed mob flavor without seeing a real brutality, Don gives us viewers a world of crime. It feels sleek, cool and controlled, not raw or traumatizing. What could be thought of or described in a way as bad men,

bad boys with perfect style, inside knowledge and endless jokes. Let's talk rice. I hope you liked my online video series about him and so many other famous gangsters and all types of film and film industries. The Rat Pack lore often paints mob connected men as having a personal code. We talked about it, looking after friends, honoring debts. Ruiz follows this pattern. He breaks the law but helps the poor, defends his community and lives by his mother's moral rules into bollocks and scale. Ruin him where Don is pure cool.

Ruiz mixes danger with vulnerability, love for Aisha, guilt and eventual punishment. That is close to how many people imagine Rat Pack men off stage. Hard living, flawed but sentimental and loyal and private. The rat packing characters like Don or Reese offer the thrill of crime, power and roll branking in a safely staged space. Songs, set pieces, stylized fights so we feel excited but not threatened. Dangerous to enemies, but loyal to their own friends, family, lovers or community. That makes them feel like potential protectors, not predators, which is deeply attractive.

We have talked so much about this now with several characters already. Right? Protectors. Mm. Hmm. Of loved ones. We love them, we are them, right? Say us. Even when they defy the law, they usually follow a visual, a visible code, such as No Betrayal of France, Protect women and children, punish traitors worse than strangers. Hmm. And as echoes the Rat Pack myths of honor among rogues and maps perfectly on to many Indian gangster heroes, Don is like the Rat Pack fantasy amplified the coolest man in the room.

Crime as a stylish game Rais, the Rat Pack myth grounded a flawed but loyal Don, whose power, generosity and eventual fall make him both dangerous and deeply human in the eyes of his people. Both types keep the same core promise that made the Rat Pack legendary. You're watching someone who might terrify their enemies. Oh, yeah. But if you're under their wing, they feel like the safest kind of dangerous man. So we are going deep pass Christmas, pass music, singers, entertainment, Hollywood, Bollywood, the mob, deeper and deeper and deeper into the underworld of it all.

And I am going to now suggest we go, yes, you know it even deeper. Let's talk fantasy. Bear with me. What drives my fantasies? What drives your fantasies? Do you ever wonder why you react the way you do? I have been working for some time on a fantasy series exploring the science, the data behind our personal and private fantasies, men and women, and why we are drawn to certain stories, certain scenes, certain characters. Well, you know how I am once I start to really wonder, oh, I just can't stop.

So I would like to take this moment here as we go deep and deeper and deeper with lovely cheerful holiday season and songs to the now underbelly of our human consciousness in the world, our secret internal thoughts and secret internal world obsessions, preferences, weaknesses with regard to the wrath and to dawn to raise. Why? Why do we love them? I have some thoughts. Are you ready? You're Mia.

Don is dangerous because he's utterly ruthless and emotionally opaque. He's safe for us viewers because he can be like a comic book super villain in a heightened world of twists and stunts with no expectations that his choices are going to be, you know, realistic or imitable. Right is dangerous because his violence in deals feel grounded. Politicians on payroll, communal tensions, police encounter. Oh, but he is constantly shown loving his mother's teachings, wife and community and finally accepting punishment which frames him as a tragic code bound man rather than a random thug.

So in psychological terms, Don lets us enjoy the Rat Pack fantasy of being the cleverest, coolest man in a corrupt system untouched by guilt. Rice lets us feel the emotional satisfaction of a flawed, powerful man who uses dirty means to protect and uplift his people, then pays a price closer to how Rat Pack stories blend sin, loyalty, and all that's sentimental. Characters who feel dangerous but safe hit a very specific psychological sweet spot. They give the thrill of risk and rebellion while preserving a sense of emotional security and control.

Turns out us humans are drawn to moderate risk roller coasters, horror movies, crime thrillers because they activate arousal systems, adrenaline, curiosity in a context where we're actually safe. You know risk like is sought out sometimes in films like Zindagina, Malegito Bara, A dangerous character as we were saying, let's us viewers experience intensity, violence, rule breaking, sexuality, power without real world consequences. So our brain gets the excitement minus the genuine threat. Oh, same, more.

Oh, you know I will. In addition to this, I'm not a separate but related note. I discovered many such characters can be considered like fantasy protectors, some familiar if they're dangerous to others but gentle with ice. They embody the wish for someone powerful who will break rules on our behalf. And this links, believe it or not, to attachment psychology. Oh yeah. People often feel drawn to figures who seem capable of both strength to handle the world and tenderness to handle us, a combination coded as especially desirable in romance and friendship.

Wild, right? I don't know about you. I feel a little exposed here. I don't know. So apparently, and like I said, I will get into this more in my deep dive fantasy series I have been working on long and hard and excited about that. But apparently often our fantasies, well, I mean, I guess it's rather obvious and makes perfect sense, but our fantasies are often like a safe space for shadow desires. So like what some of us would consider maybe shadow traits, aggression, revenge, taboo, sexuality. Basically, as audiences we can be drawn to certain films or characters or stories, and we can reject forbidden impulses onto a character who acts them out and stylishly.

So then we can enjoy identification with the character's rebellious sign while still feeling aligned with a fundamentally just moral universe. Now that is deep stuff. Not Christmassy at all. Oh my was super real. Whether it is members of a talented rat pack, mobsters, gangsters, rebels, whether it is than or whether it is Rais or some other folks we will be talking about very soon. We see in them fictional character, factual characters of history, ourselves, parts of ourselves. At least we see maybe what we wish we were.

Or wish we weren't what maybe some of us what we want. Or maybe wish we didn't want. They represent to us something. Maybe something different to each of us. I like a character, I like complexity. I like me some history and some gossip too. Oof, I like real and there's something real in everything, fact or fiction. And so we don't always know a man, a person. So how can we decide to like a man, a person? At the end of the day, since we don't know or know enough, we have opinions on aspects of people sometimes because of what these people may demonstrate or represent to us personally.

And in this vein of thought, here's one thing Frank Sinatra, one of the infamous group of the Hollywood Rat Pack, had to say. Or rather, sing once for what is a man? For what has he got? If not himself, then he has not to say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels. The record shows I took the blouse and did it my way.

#15- Forbidden Desire in Hindi Cinema | Why Bad Boys Captivate Bollywood Fans

About this episode