Director Vignesh Karthik’s style of filmmaking has always been shocking (not in a good way). He employs a strategy of taking on sensitive topics to amuse himself with applause under the guise of stimulating conversation around them, only to end up being extremely problematic. “Hot Spot 1” was nothing different. “Hot Spot 2 Much” is no different.
According to the most recent misogynistic rant by Telugu actor Sivajimoral policing of female actors on how they should dress to be considered “respectable” or being branded with insults, saying that beauty lies in wearing saris or other fully covered garments rather than showing off one’s “saamaan” (assets). Director Vignesh presents his own version of this rhetoric on screen.
In the short film Black and White, Baskar (played by Thambi Ramaiah) similarly scolds his own daughter (Sanjana Tiwari) for a long time about what she should wear and why women’s clothing choices are rejected by him and society. It’s old-fashioned, fearful of choice, stigmatizing women for drinking alcohol and having the courage to speak up, stand up for their rights and challenge casual misogyny, patriarchy and casteism at home.
This isn’t even the only recent depiction of its kind, as in Kalaiarasan Thangavel’s directorial ‘Aan Paavam Pollathathu’, there was a scene where a husband (Rio Raj) shames, mocks and demeans his wife’s (Malavika Manoj) clothing choice during a family function and asks her to change as it tarnishes her parents’ image and goes against the set societal norms of ‘how to be a child’. Woman’. But the problem arises when Vignesh Karthik sets up the short film and makes us feel that he is going to flip the narrative by having a daughter who is very outspoken questioning the rigid norms and even breaking them, only to end up ‘stroking’ the oppressor with a calculated crowd scene. The hooting and cheering that Sivaji got on the stage in Hyderabad, Vignesh gets here.
By equating a woman’s choice of clothing in which she feels comfortable with a man’s inability to understand her agency by wearing ripped underwear to a celebratory gathering, Vignesh falls into false equivalence and blatant mansplaining. He fundamentally confuses the two: one is about freedom of choice; The other is a gimmick designed to weaponize the term, portray women’s clothing as “revealing,” and provoke public shame and critical scrutiny. This is even more telling because the director himself asked a woman in a film during a post-film discussion X-space if she would “wear a bikini to the temple” and labeled women who don’t obey their parents as “stubborn.” When female audiences criticized the film’s regressive portrayal, the filmmaker dismissed them as pseudo-feminists or “aravekaadana” (half-baked) feminists, a classic defensive insult used by men in power to delegitimize women’s lived experiences by portraying their dissent as an “insincere” performance.
When we see Baskar in the introduction, we see him scrolling through photos of his daughter dressed only in saris, taking pride in the fact that she is demure, conventional and “homely”, showing us his deep-rooted misogyny that he has carried through generations of patriarchy. This isn’t just a character flaw; it reflects broader, systematic surveillance of women’s bodies. We saw this in real time when actor Sivaji praised a host’s “dress sense” for wearing a sari on the same stage.
The film’s hypocrisy extends to the first story. Titled “Dear Fan…”, it explores the extent of fan rivalry and its extremism, while the short film criticizes and denigrates fan war culture and its hero worship, just like actor and race car driver Ajith has done for years.
Witness Vignesh Basker meets his daughter Sharnitha wearing a nautical striped notched tank top and charcoal denim cut-offs with a frayed hem. The camera moves slowly from her legs to her hips and then to her face, interspersed with reaction shots of men (even Bhaskar’s driver) staring at her. Accompanied by a thrilling, suspense-building piano melody, Baskar is in a state of pious disgust and insecurity, recreating the same problematic male gaze that modern Tamil cinema has found difficult to move away from.
The film’s hypocrisy extends to the first story. Titled “Dear Fan…”, it explores the extent of fan rivalry and its extremism, while the short film criticizes and denigrates fan war culture and its hero worship, just like actor and race car driver Ajith has done for years. The criticism becomes superficial when the film itself continues to use mass dialogue, meme references and references from popular actors even after the shorts are over. It constantly throws innuendos at you and makes you think about whether the intention was to denounce the extremes of fan culture or to anger fans by touching on this topic in memes, thus fueling fanboyism. Despite its lack of boldness, the short film as a whole fails to explore the psychological or sociological perspective of stars’ god-like personalities or fans’ devotion.
The same hypocrisy can be seen in the fact that there is a big difference in the introduction of the narrators: while Mohammad Sherif (Vignesh himself) is given a pretentious “mass” entry. Priya Bhavani Shankar (as Shilpa) plays with soft, sensual music, with a “semmaya irrukale (she looks so good)” comment from the producer with a lustful look, peppered with sexual innuendos throughout.
The short film has a biting tone, from its mocking live-in imitation of Singappenney (a song about women empowerment from Vijay’s film Bigil) to its reduction of women to mere disposable plastic cups.
Like both “Aan Paavam Pollathathu” and this sequel Women’s agency The third section of “Hot Spot 2 Much” parallels Baskar’s ultra-conservative rhetoric in defaming the phrase “my choice,” comparing the girlfriend-best-friend dynamic to “cholera for the culture” and declaring that contemporary relationships are “toxic” and a “protector” is needed to quarantine these modern influences and preserve the “purity” of the culture. The short film, titled “Yours Lovingly, Love,” is a half-baked, distorted commentary on modern relationships and the professed lack of “true love.” The short film has a biting tone, from its mocking live-in imitation of Singappenney (a song about women empowerment from Vijay’s film Bigil) to its reduction of women to mere disposable plastic cups. Here the excuse is time travel.
While the meta attitude can help captivate audiences more easily, both hot spots simply use it as an excuse to avoid their chance at immersive storytelling, with the constant interference with the narrator making the storytelling seem boring. The main so-called “twists” that Vignesh Karthik always has in his films, from Thittam Irandu, which shows a trans person’s coming out and transitional journey to “shock value” using offensive, triggering terms like “biological error” and “natural problem” while referring to trans identity, to this series, are both ultimately regressive. Here, coming out is accompanied by a Kulavai sound effect (Lululation), traditionally a divine celebratory sound meant to ward off evil or signal divine possession. Along with a horrified, wide-eyed cis-het man, Vignesh uses Kulavai as a lament, framing it as a “mourning” for family honor and spiritual possessions, intended to trigger a latent fear of queerness in the audience.
Even the film’s criticism of KS Ravikumar’s Padayappa for its outdated views on “virtuous” women is a hollow dig as it engages in the same moral policing from a modern lens. With a female narrator at the forefront telling a story in which a man in a mainstream film explicitly makes a triggering request to a woman: “There’s nothing wrong with just conforming a little to us,” it feels like an attempt to soften the blow against patriarchy by weaponizing guilt, and it’s a disturbing display of female oppression passed off as preserving family honor.
Oxford University Press called the word of the year 2025 “ragebait,” defining it as “online content that is deliberately designed to provoke anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted to increase traffic or engagement.” “Hot Spot 2 Much” is perfect rage bait.
Vijaya Shankar O is a Chennai-based journalist with nearly three years of experience covering cinema, gender and social issues. His work has appeared in DT Next and High On Films.
