Ok so now regarding this toxic male lead thingy.
So the first thing is that every decade has a specific type of hero. 80s was Angry Young Man. 90s was Chocolate Boy. 2000s was Urban meets Chocolate Boy.
Post 2000s, grey-shade characters were introduced. Because we were always watching heroes who were nice and pious and perfect. Characters like Mr Bajaj and Sujal Garewal gained popularity and that was the beginning of such characters. That slowly was taken over by roles played by Gurmeet, Barun and Vivian.
At this point, grey and even anti-heroes had started becoming the norm.
With exposure to Western media a lot more now, women demographic was attracted to characters like Chuck Bass, Edward Cullen, Damon Salvatore and Klaus Michaelson. The new wave of such roles was when Fifty Shades of Grey became mainstream popular.
In today's times, women don't want the goody goody guy, they want the bad guy. But its important to understand why.
The 'bad' guy would go to any lengths for you. The good guy would stick to his morals and be all like "this aint possible" but the bad guy would get you anything you want. And women do fantasize of someone who can do that.
Thus, since late 2010, such characters have become the norm.
But here's where the barrier has to be made between and anti-hero or grey-shaded character and a toxic character.
An anti-hero, like Jaan-e-Alam was toxic as f**k. But a Sultan Durrani was only grey who descended into madness. Whereas a Shahzaib Sadat stuck to his morals at all times but lost his senses temporarily.
Whenever there is a toxic character, they must get the ending they deserved. Like Jaan-e-Alam deserved to die, no matter how much he'd apologize to Mariyam, he had completely ruined her life.
Sultan Durrani did not deserve death because he was not a bad person. He was tipped over only because Nageen chose to be arrogant and rude. Meanwhile Shahzaib Sadat tried to make everyone happy and that's what costed him a lot.
Now here's where writing comes into the scene.
Writers do not know how to write such characters well. They confuse anti, grey and toxic, without understanding the basics. A grey shade character does not necessarily mean a bad person. Whereas even a goody good boy can be toxic.
A hero like Massimo of 365 Dni is sick and deserves no love in his life. Even Chuck Bass did not deserve the happy family he got by the end given the horrible things he had done, but then almost every character in Gossip Girl were terrible people.
Deewangi's actual moral should have been that women do not have the right to insult men for no reason while men cannot forcefully attain a woman. Unfortunately, Narmeen's death and Nageen's forced abortion ruined that. Ishq Hai's moral was that parents should not ruin their children's lives due to their stubbornness and pseudo self-respect...unfortunately Waqar's death and the gun point scene (added for drama, I know) took that away.
Meanwhile, there are such dumbf**ks here, who make such pathetic characters that torture and torment the heroine, but end up getting an HEA. There was a show called Pinjara Khubsurati Ka where the hero (very much inspired from Sultan) legit shuts the heroine in a cage. And I think he even goes to the extent of marring her face because he wanted to taint her beauty so that no one could have her. Such a despicable character got "redeemed".
Not to forget, RK of Madhubala got the girl in the end, even after everything he put his wife through.
If we talk specifically about toxic males, it is also very important to use such characters to convey the correct message. Example: Men like Jaan-e-Alam exist and one must learn to be cautious...at the same time, he got the perfect ending. And even though I am not a Feroze fan, but men like Mustajab too exist. He exhibits symptoms of mental illness and uncontrollable rage on top of which he is extremely manipulative and a sweet talker; thus it is an important lesson for girls. But at the same time, I hope they don't make it about religious differences or put the point that atheists are bad, instead they should either show him get better or if he goes nuts then not an HEA.
Finally coming to actors, are two types now...ones who justify every bad thing that their character has done and others who portray different roles to prove their versatility.
I completely blame the writers for not understanding the difference and writing such horribly stupid storylines that justify everything.
Because grey and anti heroes are here to stay for the time being, its their era, simply because of the complexity and layers characters have. I personally love writing for Sultan and I am writing an OS on Jaan-e-Alam because there's so much you can explore...and due to their nature, the story can go anywhere.
But writers have to understand this, rather than either giving a terrible character an HEA or a still-redeemable character death, try and understand what grey and toxic means. They are not interchangeable or synonyms, they are two completely different words.
Arjun
