Readers Write In #650: The Man-Child Hero with 1000 Tragic Faces

By Macaulay Perapulla

Whether it is real life or reel life, it is fascinating to see the rise of ‘man-child’ heroes all around us. What does it tell us about the times we live?

In Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk, he narrates the psychological triggers behind Elon Musk’s impulsive bid for Twitter. As Sampath G writes in his excellent review of the book, “According to Isaacson, one trigger is his estranged transgender daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson (named Xavier Alexander Musk by her parents). In her petition in court seeking a name change, she had stated, “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.” Musk, who had lost a child, did not take it well. He blamed it on her progressive school in Los Angeles, and on the “woke-mind virus” whose nerve centre, Musk felt, was Twitter. He told Isaacson, “I just can’t sit around and do nothing.” He had to purge Twitter of its woke culture so that it became “an open space for all opinions”.

In the recent blockbuster movie Animal, we see Ranbir Kapoor’s character (an actor btw, who built most of his career playing man-child roles) wanting to purge the enemies of his father, because he had been deprived of his father’s love during his childhood.

There is a delicious irony waiting somewhere with Central Bureau of Film Certification certifying the tragic story of a man-child hero with an Adults-Only rating.

It is deeply tragic to see to what extent the character overcompensates to fulfill the biological insecurity stemming from a broken relationship between a child and his father.

Walter beautifully articulates the complex psyche that fuels technology visionaries and their risk-seeking impulses to tackle hard problems: “Could you get the rockets to orbit or the transition to electric vehicles without accepting all aspects of him, hinged and unhinged? Sometimes great innovators are risk-seeking man-children who resist potty training.”

In my yoga-based coaching work, I’ve seen far too many instances of ‘man-child’ and it almost seems tempting to generalize. Why do most Indian men, including myself, have had difficult relationships with their fathers?

I can talk about myself. It took me a lot of time to heal my relationship with my father and break the umbilical cord which narrowly defined how I related to myself based on how I related with my father.

What is it about our society that we continue to have so many man-child (or as one writer harshly put it, ‘grown-up men in diapers’)in our midst? Have you examined this deeply?