How India’s Dangal Won China’s Heart

Between these two, which of these Indian films would you bet on to become a bigger hit?

Choice A: A sequel to the country’s highest-grossing movie, a special effects bonanza and an epic story set in a semi-fantastic world of kings, warriors, and dark forces.

Choice B: A biographical movie about an ex-sportsman training his daughters for wrestling competitions.

Choice A is Bahubaali 2: The Conclusion, a continuation of the Bahubaali: The Beginning. Both Bahubaalis proved to be instant and smashing hits, just like the heroes of its story, who smash entire armies single-handedly and throw bulls and elephants as if they were sacks full of feathers. Choice B is Dangal, whose heroes are women capable of throwing men in the wrestling arena as if they were sacks of, well, let’s say sand.

So in a way the box office race between the movies was a duel of men vs. women, a fantasy realm vs the real world, epic vs… well, epic but still more realistically so.

So who is the winner? The answer is both, but in different markets.

Dangal was released in India in December 2016 to a decent reception but was later overshadowed by the insanely anticipated Bahubaali 2: The Conclusion, which crushed the Indian box office in April 2017. Then an interesting twist in the plot took place. In May 2017 Dangal was released to international screens and this is where – contrary to the domestic market – it grossed more than Bahubaali. The source of Dangal’s international success turned out to be its strong performance in the Chinese market. Dangal emerged as one of the highest-grossing foreign productions ever screened in Chinese cinemas, beating contenders like Guardians of The Galaxy 2. The film was also publicly praised by President Xi Jinping and became a sweet spot in Indo-Chinese relations, mere weeks before a significant flare up in border tensions laid the relationship low again.

What explains Dangal’s Chinese success?

On the surface and through half of the story, Dangal has a rough, rustic idiom that would be most comprehensive for Indians, or, more precisely, some north Indians. The story is set in India’s agricultural, flat, haze-covered, and highly conservative state of Haryana. The stereotype of Haryana’s inhabitants is that they are strong and hot-headed, and they love wrestling and fighting. This is the stereotype on which the movie is built. The heroes of the movie are bold and stubborn farmers raised in a traditional society that teaches them not to dream too big. They speak Haryana’s coarse dialect and the dialect appears in a sentence on the movie’s posters, where usually text is written in Hindi, English, or one of India’s more dominant languages. Stopping at this level of style, it would be hard to understand how the movie did so well with Chinese audiences.

But in total, Dangal is a story of hard work and ambition, of achieving success despite all odds. The main male protagonist – Mahavir Singh Phogat – is a promising wrestler from a poor family whose dreams were shattered by his father who forced him to take a regular job instead of pursuing a career in wrestling. Just like many other fathers worldwide, Mahavir then projected his unfulfilled ambition onto his children, hoping that they would become what he could not. Like a traditional Indian patriarch, Mahavir hoped to have a son and it took him a long time to grasp that two of his daughters – Geeta and Babita – could become as good wrestlers as the boys (and that he could be a better coach than a wrestler). Here the story of excruciating workouts and tough fights starts.

While the film clearly belongs to the sport genre, where one is supposed to cheer the heroes’ team and weep during the final moments, Dangal is in some respects quite realistic (unlike its rival, Bahubaali). Indian village life is depicted with much of its true flavor and characteristics, but without either idealizing or demonizing it. The film is partially based on a story of real-life characters and therefore cannot be rejected as complete fiction. And unlike the nearly-flying heroes of Bahubaali and Bollywoodish fights-with-no-real-hits, Dangal is a feast for the eyes for those that love wrestling. It offers realistic and well-executed sequences of catches, saves, and throws, even if the outcome of most of the duels is predictable.

Finally, the protagonist is played by the Bollywood actor Aamir Khan, who is not only famous in India but achieved a degree of fame in China with some of his earlier films, like Three Idiots.

While the strong girls emerge as the movie’s heroines, it would be wrong to conclude that the film carries a feminist or anti-traditional message. One of the most striking things is that girls' own desires seem to be the least important – the main aim is to fulfill their father's dream of winning a gold medal for India during a prestigious tournament. Gaining financial independence, developing their own careers instead of being trained for lives as perfect housewives, having the right to choose their life partners – it all seems somehow much less relevant than acting exactly in line with what their father desires. Be it discipline methods, wrestling techniques, or neglecting the advice of their official coach – father is always right.

Mahavir remains deaf to his daughters’ pleading, whether it is about waking up at 5 a.m. or fighting with boys. He even makes his daughters cut their hair short despite the girls’ heartrending cries. The haircut scene might be perceived as a forcible renunciation of their own femininity (not that a woman cutting her hair short always means a de facto loss of femininity, but in this context – in a village where everyone points fingers at the girls because of their “untypical” hairstyle – it surely does). Such an impression is strengthened by a scene in which Geeta, after being enrolled into India’s national training center, grows her hair long again and finally starts smiling at her own reflection. Eventually, however, she understands that her father was, as always, right and she must follow his strict discipline rules to the letter.

Nevertheless, growing hair long and wearing colorful bangles is still not all that the girls must sacrifice – even watching movies or buying new clothes is a bad thing that may only distract them from training. To put it more brutally, they are forbidden to have any natural, everyday entertainment and pleasure. Their father is absolutely furious when they attend a friend’s wedding; it could be easily imagined that hearing about a daughter on a date would precipitate a heart attack. On the other hand, it cannot be forgotten what kind of future Mahavir’s daughters would have if he weren’t so determined to make successful wrestlers out of them.

So why was the movie so popular in China? An average Chinese viewer can surely sympathize in a way with the strict, everyday drilling experienced by the heroines. It is quite common that instead of going to the park and playing with other kids, both on weekdays and weekends, many Chinese children attend extra classes; they may learn to play the piano or chess. Chinese parents, in the interest of boosting their children’s future opportunities, carefully schedule beneficial activities and encourage the development of expertise via routine practice. What Chinese children and youngsters must fully concentrate on is studying and getting prepared for final exams – having a high-school relationship is not only unsupported, but often openly condemned by parents and school officials. By making his daughters train to the extreme of their limits “for their own good” instead of searching for husbands, Mahavir seems to resemble a stereotypical Chinese father rather than an Indian one. Consequently, millions of Chinese viewers might feel for Mahavir’s daughters and see their own sacrifice mirrored since they have had to deal with similar expectations from their parents.

Trying to explain Dangal’s success in China from a cultural perspective, one may also assume that it might be the message about men and women being equal that attracted millions of Chinese viewers, who, after all, live in a country which at least ideologically attaches great importance to gender equality. Nevertheless, in the light of what has already been said on the film, it seems fully justified to claim that Dangal is not really a story of girls being equal, but girls being equally good for fulfilling their parents' dreams.

However, if anyone still has an impression that despite Mahavir’s tyranny the movie is promoting women’s emancipation, let us consider how relevant – or rather irrelevant – the happiness and dreams of Mahavir’s wife are. She makes no decisions on how her daughters are raised – she can only humbly express some doubts in a low voice and accept her always-right husband’s explanations. Her power is limited to the kitchen door. The only thing she can forbid her husband is the cooking of meat in “her” kitchen; however, she cannot oppose making their daughters reject vegetarianism.

By depicting an Indian villager’s life – with all the superstitions, child marriages, and girls being brought up to become perfect housewives – the movie does tell some truth about millions of Indians’ lives. However, by giving some emancipation hopes to the daughters, but not the mother, it surely cannot be lauded as conveying a strong feminist message. Perhaps paradoxically, the film revolves around a patriarchal father whom everyone at home has to be scared of, and whose decisions are always final. It might be that both the movie’s conservative outlook and its story of a everyman’s hard-earned success were what made it popular both with India’s and China’s audiences.