Carved like a raw monument to hyper-masculinity, Raya enters Toxic as an unapologetic parade of chiselled muscle, dangerous charm and dark, heavy-lidded eroticism—a siren call so potent that women in his orbit willingly play whatever dangerous game it takes to claim him.
The debate turns to British feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, who in her 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema argued that cinema was structured around the male gaze, positioning women as objects of visual pleasure. Because a woman directed it, but can it be called female gaze just. Mulvey introduced the idea of male gaze, but how many kinds of gazes are there?
The male gaze tends to be easily identified when a woman is being objectified,” she said. “I’m not tempted to frame something aligned with the male gaze and I also know men who are not tempted to frame like that,” she said. It is actually the patriarchal and nonpatriarchal gaze,” she said. Filmmaker Jeo Baby, whose The Great Indian Kitchen and Kaathal-The Core probed gender and masculinity, said theory does not precede experience. Baby said he was responding to the unacknowledged burden of care carried by women while making The Great Indian Kitchen. Patriarchy is so deeply ingrained,” he said, adding that the producer, cinematographer and editor are critical to translating an idea into an image. Historically, it has been coded through Savarna dominance, where authority is reserved for specific identities while others remain sidelined,” he said. Vulnerable men such as Justin in Bethlehem Kudumba Unit or Saji in Kumbalangi Nights challenge the myth of invincible masculinity, while women asserting sexuality and power must also escape the old equations of dominance and submission,” he said. Without idealising Toxic or its protagonist, Kuriakose said Mohandas goes beyond the formula by rooting Raya’s toxicity in childhood trauma and allowing the audience to watch him unravel.
That question has become central to the conversation around Toxic. Written by Yash and directed by Geetu Mohandas, the film has sparked heated debates over the female gaze. And is turning the camera towards the male body enough to overturn a century of cinematic objectification? The theory changed film criticism forever, but its binary framework was challenged for its limited understanding of women, queer spectators, race and other identities. Filmmaker Anjali Menon resisted an easy binary when she responded to the question during a discussion at a university’s youth forum. “I don’t know if there is a female gaze, but we do know when it is a non-male gaze. Mulvey if there is a female gaze, but we do know when it is a non-male gaze. She asked whether gender alone can determine the way a filmmaker sees. Her conclusion is perhaps more unsettling: “That kind of objectifying gaze can be through a camera held by a man or a woman or any gender. And patriarchy is profitable. “I took my life’s experiences into my creative space and presented them as they were. I knew cinema is a commercial medium and that I might not get a producer for the film. Neither my producers nor I had much idea about gaze back then. They trusted me. My understanding broadened after the film. Writer and film enthusiast Ranjith T warns against importing Mulvey’s binary into India. “The notion of gaze needs to be seen as a gendered category with reference to caste, class, race etc in the Indian context. The gaze of a Savarna man and a Dalit cannot be the same. The chiselled, invulnerable hero is rarely neutral. Invoking bell hooks’ (Gloria Jean Watkins) oppositional gaze, he argued that historical and political identities alter the meaning of gaze. Queer filmmaker Jijo Kuriakose pushed the question beyond gender. “For a century, we have been looking at women through the male gaze and we must think beyond it. We need to understand what gaze is for each human being, male, female or queer and it need not always be sexual. That psychological layering raises another question: when a character is allowed vulnerability and inner life beyond his machismo, does the film move from objectifying him towards subjectivity?