From “Peddi” to “Peak Gurgaon Content”: Castration Fear and the Armed Outrage of the Manosphere
Despite the language barrier for a South Indian, one could “Top Salary in Gurgaon‘ through keywords like ‘wasool toh karunga’, ‘kiss karte karte’, ‘top uthaya’ and ‘neeche usne pajama’. These words were immediately transformed into mental images, weaponized by a deep-rooted machismo. Himanshu Jangra objectifies and conjures up the physically absent woman through his descriptive language and deprives her of her freedom of choice in his narrative. It becomes a purely imaginary projection. She is neither present to resist, argue, or stand up for herself, nor is she able to assert her subjectivity, conveniently allowing the audience to reduce her to an object of collective gaze.
Be it a 350-crore pan-Indian film or a Rs 370-crore dinner, the underlying calculus remains the same: the female body is treated as a commodity pre-purchased for male consumption.
And isn’t this look a deeply familiar phenomenon for us? Isn’t this the same view that is constantly fed by the hypersexualization of women on the big screen? Be it a 350-crore pan-Indian film or a Rs 370-crore dinner, the underlying calculus remains the same: the female body is treated as a commodity pre-purchased for male consumption.
Fetishistic scopophilia: the fragmentation of the image of women
Let’s apply Laura Mulvey’s concept of fetishistic scopophilia to the interaction between comedian Pranit More and Himanshu Jangra. While scopophilia is traditionally used to analyze the male gaze conveyed by the film camera, it also applies well to the structural gaze of a live audience. The difference is that the cinema screen is replaced by a live stage, while the lights and microphone take over the role of the camera.
While scopophilia is traditionally used to analyze the male gaze conveyed by the film camera, it also applies well to the structural gaze of a live audience. The difference is that the cinema screen is replaced by a live stage, while the lights and microphone take over the role of the camera.
Furthermore, the audience factor can be synthesized in both contexts: in both cases, the audience sits in the dark and remains anonymous and unaccountable while the stage or screen is illuminated and illuminated. This architectural structure immediately activates the passive, voyeuristic pleasure of looking without being seen. In both rooms, the image of the woman is fixed and fragmented without her consent.
Himanshu Jangra embodies an active male archetype and expects peer validation, which should be interpreted as an underlying castration fear. The term has its roots in Freudian theory and addresses the fundamental fear of loss of power and control. In a modern socio-economic context, this fear is heavily shifted to capital and digital validation. In this case, the fear of castration is based on the fear of being deceived or financially exploited by women.
In this pattern, the subculture of the manosphere is transformed into aggressive, preventative entitlement. An independent, self-sufficient woman with her own desires and the power to reject a man triggers castration fear. By reducing her to a dehumanized object of pleasure, the narrative weakens her ability to threaten. The audience bursts into laughter at having co-created and consumed the fetishized thing.
In a digital dating ecosystem where human interactions are quantified by swiping, liking, and signaling, commercialization has become a normalized baseline approach. However, for patriarchal men, the idea is that the money spent must bring a commensurate return in the form of intimacy, and intimacy has nothing to do with emotions or responsibility, but is a debt that must be paid.
In a digital dating ecosystem where human interactions are quantified by swiping, liking, and signaling, commercialization has become a normalized baseline approach. While women in the early stages of dating face sheer exhaustion and intangible fear, faced with the dilemma of deciphering a simple invitation for a meal, coffee, or drink, dating culture is built on insecure baselines for women. However, for patriarchal men, the idea is that the money spent must bring a commensurate return in the form of intimacy, and intimacy has nothing to do with emotions or responsibility, but is a debt that must be paid.
This claim did not arise in a vacuum; It has been nurtured by the mass media we consume every day. Rather than just blaming the individual perpetrators, there is an urgent need to see this as a symptom of a deeper, structurally compounded pathology. Commercial cinema like Peddi, Pushpa, Devara, Dhoom, Himmatwala, Varisu and Beast trains the male psyche to view women as such disjointed, sexualized goods instead of whole people. It persistently fools young minds into believing that crossing personal boundaries, commodifying women’s bodies, and neglecting their voices are normal parts of love and romance. When Himanshu forced his date to go to the park, expecting her to comply, he staged the real-life replica of what film heroes did on screen.
In ‘Peddi’, critics and audiences have criticized director Buchi Babu Sana’s cinematography for repeatedly objectifying Janhvi Kapoor. With camera angles and shots that focus intensely on her navel, waist and cleavage in everyday scenes, she is constantly exposed to the male gaze. This can be understood from how women’s agency is treated in the scene where Peddi (Ram Charan) kisses Achiyyamma (Janhvi Kapoor) without her consent, calling it his unique way of expressing love. Himanshu Jangra did not act in isolation, consciously or unconsciously transferring the normalized sexualization on screen and its distorted understanding of consent into his behavior. His ideas about women and dating were completely colonized by misogynistic media content that preached to him that women were just passive “rewards” for men’s financial and physical activities.
When a mainstream pan-Indian film routinely reduces a woman to a collective body of sexualized parts, viewers are led to expect the same in reality. Similarly, Himanshu reduced his date to a transaction bill of 370 rupees, stripping her of her subjectivity.
The corpse dispute and the fear of castration
The viral backlash against junior doctor Sejal Pawar, who joked about comparing penis sizes of male cadavers in the anatomy lab on the same comedy show, is a classic example of weaponized, strategic outrage that reveals a clearer understanding of how castration anxiety unfolds on a larger scale across multiple levels of this controversy. On the one hand, Himanshu’s boasting about his obsessive behavior can be seen as an attempt to cure his castration anxiety through the loud reaction of the crowd; On the other hand, a female doctor wielding clinical authority to examine, measure, and mock the vulnerable male anatomy strikes at the absolute core of male castration fear.
Although Pawar’s narrative is ethically questionable, it poses no physical threat to any living human being. Nevertheless, the manosphere viewed it as an extreme crisis of gender equality. The outrage isn’t actually about the dignity of body donors.
Although Pawar’s narrative is ethically questionable, it poses no physical threat to any living human being. Nevertheless, the manosphere viewed it as an extreme crisis of gender equality. The outrage isn’t actually about the dignity of body donors. Explosive anger is a desperate ego defense mechanism against a terrible power reversal in which 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 carry out state-sanctioned objectification. However, true accountability requires dismantling patriarchal narratives, not just the sacrifice of their most visible adherents.
Dr. Sitharais an assistant professor at VIT Chennai whose work intersects media, work and gender studies. As a gender and cultural critic with a doctorate from the University of Madras, she uses her decades of industry experience to analyze systemic inequalities in media spaces. Her research interests include autoethnography, childhood studies, and tribal education.
