A love letter in red pen to Karan Johar's celluloid women
Prologue: Love, legacy, and the lingering letdown
Karan Johar’s stories shaped my adolescence.
For an entire generation of young Indians like me, his films were aspirational blueprints of love, of longing, of what it meant to be cool. His characters live in gilded homes and wear stylish clothes, but they felt close enough to touch. They were our emotional language before we had the words ourselves. And his women? They seemed larger than life to eight year old Anushka. Hopeful, sometimes naive, exuberant women.
As we approach the second anniversary of the release of Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, his return to direction after almost a decade, I find myself rewatching the film in the hope that I dislike it less than I did on first viewing. I remember the theatre erupting in applause, and critics celebrating it as Johar's progressive redemption after a directorial hiatus. And yet, I found myself disappointed. Not because I didn't appreciate the attempt, but because beneath the contemporary veneer, I saw the same patterns playing out again. And I couldn’t help but wonder, had he not grown up in the 20 something years since Kuch Kuch Hota Hai in the same way that the girls who wanted to be Anjali had?
And so, I exercise the muscle most intuitive to me, applying a bit of critical thinking to discover which one of us is the problem. Dear gentle reader, see this not as a takedown. Instead, a love letter with a red pen.
The familiar blueprint: Who are Johar's women, really?
Despite their designer wardrobes and outspoken personalities, Johar's women often orbit a single gravitational force; Male validation. When I map the characters across his filmography, patterns emerge.
The Johar woman typically has:
A love triangle or unresolved romantic tension
A matriarch as her emotional sounding board
No true female friendships with a contemporary, or worse, passive rivalry and mockery
Aesthetic confidence but emotional isolation
Growth arcs that serve the male lead's emotional development
They speak, but rarely reflect. They challenge, but often without context. And they love, but usually at the cost of their own clarity.
Rani Chatterjee: Progress or posturing?
In Rocky Aur Rani, Rani is positioned as the most evolved Johar heroine yet. She's a Bengali journalist, an outspoken feminist, and unwilling to shrink herself for love.
And yet….
She belittles Rocky's lack of cultural capital, making intelligence a weapon, not a bridge. Strong women in my life are usually the wind beneath the wings of most all those they consider dear.
She overrides consent, enrolling Rocky’s mother in a televised contest without discussion. I found myself wondering, wouldn’t a night of Rabindra Sangeet at her parents have been as freeing for her emotionally astute future mother-in-law as it was for Rocky? Did she have to be on TV to assert her passion and talent?
She equates dominance with power, mistaking volume for depth in professional spaces. Her career is merely a trope to display her ability to belittle men in power. Not the thing that she is proud of or confident because of, as it is for so many of us women.
She ridicules a past lover’s sexual vulnerability with her father. I couldn’t help but think about Ranbir Kapoor’s character in Bachna Ae Haseeno at this point; Crass and unthinking of another’s feelings. And wondered if she might have been a better version of herself had the forced jilted lover (who served no purpose in the narrative, really) been replaced with a friend who called her out on her own red flags when she sat in judgement of Rocky or his family, but never reflected on herself.
She rarely apologizes, even when clearly in the wrong. Not even buckling in the end when she knows well that she was disrespectful in the same way she hated seeing her family disrespected.
She encourages infidelity, taking no accountability for Rocky’s grandmother’s feelings. She demanded kindness of her, but didn’t exude it herself. In totality, she bullies a past version of a patriarchal woman into her ‘patriarchy pret’ view of the world instead of becoming the embodiment of what soft power, matriarchal leadership, and kinship among women can do.
Seemingly in trying to make Rani strong, Johar accidentally equated feminine power with traditionally toxic masculine traits. The background score, the forced woke-isms and the bold saris put perhaps too much emphasis on this rendition of a strong woman, all in all making her more a loud woman from where I stand. At this point I pause to reflect if my own gaze is coloring my views, and so take what I have said so far into consideration bearing that truth.
To me, Johar’s true win is Rocky Randhawa; A new template for men who are a work in progress, see women as their equals, willing to unlearn, and, sensitive and gentle in a world where we celebrate near Animals. Pun intended. I wish in the making of this story that Johar had held both his characters accountable, and not just the one who had to make himself smaller for her. However refreshing it might be to see the gender dynamic switched in this circumstance.
The Mirror Effect: Writing women in his own image
What feels most telling is how Johar's evolution seems reflected in his female characters. Perhaps his much-documented close relationship with his mother manifests in every maternal confidante on screen. His journey toward self-acceptance, becoming more outspoken and confident, appears mirrored in Rani's unapologetic assertiveness.
It is as if he isn't writing his women as we, his audience are, but as extensions of his own emotional landscape. Larger than life, resilient, conflicted, and occasionally blind to the nuance of experiences different from his own. And while I say this, I want to be clear that we all carry ourselves and our experiences into the shaping of our creative work. This certainly isn't a criticism unique to him. Many writers create from their own emotional reality.
But for a filmmaker whose work has defined cultural touchstones for generations of South Asians, these patterns matter more. And it is only because one loves the worlds he builds so dearly that one hopes these patterns are what he reflects most on as he crafts his next female protagonist.
If I were his next creative consultant: A pathway forward
A little bit of empathy, Edward De Bono’s six hats for design thinking, and some building of castles in the air makes me dream up the next female protagonist I’d love to see in his films. Here’s what I’d do if I were him.
Center authentic female friendships
Let women be each other's safe spaces and critics. In my life, my female friends are the spine around which everything else grows. They call me out on my missteps and celebrate my victories. These mirrors can exist without the yuppy #behencode of his long format stories.
Redefine strength beyond aggression
Empowerment doesn't mean adopting toxic traits. It means having the confidence to be vulnerable, to listen, to compromise without losing yourself, to grow from acknowledging your fractures.
Allow women to exist beyond romance
Give them ambitions, anxieties, and dreams that don't hinge on men. Let their growth serve their own arcs, not just the male protagonist's journey. After all it’s Rocky aur Rani’s kahaani, not Rocky’s powered by Rani.
Normalize consent as everyday practice
Grand romantic gestures don't replace small permissions. Respect for agency can be woven into every interaction, not just sexual ones. Consent must exist in every exchange.
Explore intergenerational healing
There's untapped storytelling potential in how women across generations navigate changing values together. Unpack these relationships as an exchange and a true community. Our mothers and grandmothers are more than agony aunts, they’re wonderful and sometimes flawed too. Most of all, they never stop learning and growing.
Epilogue: A critique born of care
I critique because I care. Because the eight-year-old who watches Kuch Kuch Hota Hai on repeat still lives somewhere inside me, believing in grand gestures and perfect timing. Because the thirty-something woman I am now understands that love looks different than what I was shown; Messier, more communicative, built on mutual growth rather than transformation for someone else's sake.
Karan Johar has built worlds I once wanted to live in. But the world has changed, and so have we. We've grown tall and proud, held together by the strong female friendships that are intrinsic to who we are. We hold each other accountable with love. We have learned that sometimes it’s important to know when it’s time to call it a day on love, refocus the energy reserved for a partner into learning to re-love oneself, question oneself, and grow from the parts of ourselves that aren’t perfect.
If Johar truly wants to evolve, as Rocky Aur Rani suggests he does, he must trade some of the gloss for grit, and some of the monologue for dialogue.
Images credited to Dharma Productions.