#15- The Safe Thrill of Dangerous Men | Shah Rukh Khan & The Psychology of Forbidden Desire - 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- The Safe Thrill of Dangerous Men | Shah Rukh Khan & The Psychology of Forbidden Desire

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