A Brief History of the Slap

A recurring, if not ubiquitous, motif in Telugu films over the decades is the slap the hero bestows on the heroine. In an industry preoccupied with messianic heroes, who are invariably contrasted with heroines whose character arcs are derivative, the use of physical violence against a woman is almost never baffling and only seldom something for audiences to sit up and take note of.

The cult of the “mass” hero hit a fever pitch in mainstream Tollywood cinema of the 1990s. The leading man showed off his virility by taking on dozens of goons at once and beating his opponents to pulp but also by stalking, harassing, manhandling, ridiculing and bullying the heroine for the sake of cheap laughs and gags. The sanction to slap was, naturally, a part of this licence. From Chiranjeevi in Gharana Mogudu, to Venkatesh Daggubati in Abbayigaru and Nagarjuna Akkineni in Chandralekha, movies of this decade established this trope as commonplace. Filmmakers also dragged it into the 2000s, in films such as Okkadu and Sasirekha Parinayam, and even into the 2010s with Dookudu, Sarocharu and Rangasthalam. Mana Shankara Vara Prasad Garu, which hit theatres last month, is the latest addition to this list.

The female leads in movies featuring this trope usually fall into two broad categories: the damsel in distress or the shrew who needs to be tamed. In Telugu films, the damsel in distress, it turns out, is an immensely slappable character—she is subservient enough to not rage or fight back, and her affection towards the hero remains unchanged. The act itself is often meant to signify a “physical demonstration” of his fervent passion for the woman he “loves.” If this analysis rings familiar, it is because it was articulated, infamously, by the director Sandeep Reddy Vanga to explain away a male lover slapping the heroine in one of his films.

In Vanga’s 2017 debut directorial venture Arjun Reddy, and its subsequent 2019 Hindi remake Kabir Singh, the leading lady Preethi is a damsel defined by her meekness—a perfect antithesis to her domineering love interest, Arjun, played by Vijay Deverakonda. He dictates where Preethi sits, how she dresses and with whom she socialises. Following a tense altercation with her parents, Preethi tries to calm a furious Arjun and declares, through her tears, that she cannot survive without him. Arjun responds to these entreaties by landing a tight blow to her face. Deverakonda also went on to slap the actor Mrunal Thakur’s character in the 2024 film Family Star.