We are appalled at the lyrics of Honey Singh as he croons in a gathering; we detest watching Emraan Hashmi dig his lips into any actress paired opposite him; we cringe at the sight of porn stars splashing their all in Bollywood and we are disturbed about the kind of stuff showed on TV at prime time. But we move on with it. Social scientists tell Deebashree Mohanty that this ‘sab chalta hai’ attitude is the main reason why we the unacceptable is the new acceptable
Recently a popular TV actor turned down a plumb role by a big banner production house because she was expected to enact a smooching sequence for over 2 minutes with a co-star. The serial was a youth-based love triangle, scheduled to go on the floor by December 2014. “I have spent 10 years in this industry but this was the first time such an atrocious demand was put forth. I am a method actor and do anything that my role demands. But thisIJ No way! For a serial to be shown at prime time, I don’t even see the need,” the actor said recently.
In June 2014, a similar incident was frontpaged in Pune. For a theatre artist living in Setalwadi region of Pune, her first day at work proved to be the most harrowing one. She was asked by the director to do a bikini sequence for 15 minutes before a live audience! “The play was about a modern-day grandmother teaching her grandson how to live life to the fullest. I couldn’t believe when I was asked to change into a bikini and parade for 15 minutes in a hall. Of course, I turned it down. But I am told the director found a replacement and the play is a super hit in Pune and elsewhere,” Sunita Dahiya, a 23-year-old performing arts student, recalls. She is yet to understand the need to expose in that play.
Almost during the same time in Kolkata, small-time model Sushmita Mukerjee got excited over a call from www.indiasarees.com for a photo shoot for their e-commerce venture. She had been out of job for a few months and grabbed this opportunity. She now says the shoot was baffling and painful. She was asked to wear an orange chiffon saree and pose dripping wet for an online advertisement. Mukherjee has moved the Kolkata High Court seeking a justification for such an ‘irrational demand that aims at objectifying women’.
While some celebrities do put their foot down against such outrageous demands, there are a few who comply without questioning. This ‘going with the motion’ is a lethal problem in India, according to social scientists.
“If we are accepting the unacceptable it is only due to our lethargic sab chalta hai attitude. For instance, Honey Singh’s lyrics are a outrageous but instead of doing something about them, we dance to his tunes. literally! This has only encouraged his sorts to come up with more daring songs. It’s like every time they push the bar down and we do nothing but accept it and move on. Apply this syndrome to movies, theatre and TV serials and you see there is a pattern,” Dr Shikha Rawat, professor of Sociology (Hons) at Janaki Devi Memorial College, Delhi University, says.
Rawat tells you that if YoYo would have been penalised for coming up with something as gross sounding as lak 28 di kudi da (album) we would not have had to put up with ‘raat hai ek whore...from Go Goa Gone. “If you have to praise the beauty of your beloved how about chandan sa badan, chanchal chitwan...,” she asks.
It’s not just the lyrics that have shed propriety and turned ugly. From concepts on TV to costumes in movies — everything seems to be moving towards unmeaningful bold.
“At some level, I have detached myself from Bollywood as I cannot relate to it anymore. leaving apart a handful of newage directors who want to explore new but meaningful routes, the others are only beating around the vulgar bush. And every time a discussion of this sort is held on a public forum, directors opt for the safest option — ‘the audience ask for it. We merely deliver’. Arre bhai kamar hilane se kuch hatkar dikhaogey tabhi to audience ke paas choice hogiIJ” actor-turned-director-turned-producer Satish Kaushik, says in usual candour.
A forward-thinking man, Kaushik tells you that the audience takes in kitsch because that is the only thing being served to them. “If there were meaningful movies with a message for society, our people would have gone in droves to watch it too,” he points out, adding that the Irrfan starrer lunchbox was not a commercial venture and had zero glamour quotient but the movie was a hit.
Other prolific directors such as Kunal Kohli of Hum Tum fame blames it on the number of movies being churned out every year and the opening of multiplexes at every nook and corner. “Earlier, an actor used to find time to do only a movie or at most two in a year. But these days, actresses are a part of four-five releases. And with each movie, the producer breaks even. So, the drive or the need to come up with a novel concept doesn’t exist,” Kohli says.
For him, the biggest change in the industry which we have accepted with eyes closed is the main protagonist grooving to item numbers. “I don’t remember who started this trend but I don’t see it as a remarkable change. There were item songs in the past which Helenji and Binduji used to perform to perfection. That was their forte. But today, from Kareena to Bipasha to Katrina and Priyanka, everyone has tried her luck at item songs. WhyIJ It beats me,” Kohli says.
According to him, their participation in the item dance sequences takes away the seriousness quotient attached to an actress.
What about the love-making scenes and over-the-top romance on screen which was earlier restricted to moviesIJ “When overdone, it robs the story,” Kohli adds.
In Bollywood, the focus is no longer on lip locks. It is on the number of lip locks and lip-on-what-other-part-of-the-body details that are being marketed aggressively and as usual, the audience is supposed to take it in their stride. “Did you realise there were unnecessary lip locking scenes in Raja Natwarlal where it was clearly visible that the actors were doing it without putting their heart into itIJ like it was put in there because it was scripted,” Shailaja Subramanium, Bangalore-based sociologist working on a study titled What influences the society, points out. The findings of her study, incidentally, are shocking. First, our society is in a phase where it will accept anything thrown at it in the name of entertainment. Second, people are too passive to protest, leave alone rebel.
So, does this mean that in the coming years, we will have to bear overt sexuality in normal filmsIJ “From flower to flower touching to hand holding to lip locking — apart from grabbing, we have seen all there needs to be seen on 70 mm,” Kaushik says, jokingly.
But Rupesh Paul, director of Kamasutra 3D, insists that erotica in a 3D avatar is the newest thing to hit Indian cinemas and he is confident that the film will ‘grow on the Indian audience’ much like the other genres have. In an interview to The Pioneer in January 2014, Paul had said: “I have been travelling across the world and honestly, the new section of Indian audience have the best of IQ and consumption levels than anybody around the world. I don’t think the audiences will ever say no to any movie.”
Paul’s controversial movie is yet to release but in the meantime, the hapless audience have been treated to erotica in the form of BA Pass and Grand Masti. The latter was promoted as ‘adult humour’ and ‘strictly for adults’ but even with these gimmicky tags, both the films bombed at the box office.
“A line has to be drawn somewhere. There is a difference between being funny and being cheap and reality is that the Indian janata is still not matured to appreciate adult comedies,” los Angeles-based Shonali Bose whose film Margarita with a Straw has been creating a worldwide buzz, tells you. The film is about a disabled person’s sexual urges.
Apart from the concepts and the storyline that has undergone a makeover, Bose says it is the psuedo and selective treatment meted out by the Censor Board which is irksome. On one side, we make it a point to beep cuss words in an English film and on the other hand we pass obscene dialogues like: “Dekh teri maa kisi gali key kuttey ke muh lag rahi hai...” which Tusshar Kapoor tells Mithun Chakraborty pointing at a dog in the film Kyaa Kool Hain Hum.
Suggestive dialogues with sexual innuendos are the next big change on the small screen and there is nothing much one can do about this unacceptable. When the light banter between host Manish Paul and filmmaker Karan Johar on the sets of Jhalak Dikhlaja Season 7 started taking gay overtones, the channelwallahs let it pass because it got them the eyeballs. When Season 8 kicked off on Colors, editors passed just about anything. So, we put up with dialogues like ‘aap ke paas kya hai sir, dikhayey naIJ Kuch badi cheez lagti hai’ and ‘bas kariye sir, mera to aa gaya... aap ki awaaz suntey hi...”.
As if the dialogues were not enough, content writers had games where they could exploit this to the maximum. In one of the episodes, the hosts wanted the mentors to utter dialogues in a given emotion. Karan Johar and Remo d Souza were asked to say their lines ‘lustfully’ and there were a lot of puns that followed this activity.
“There was a time when our audience used to look forward to Mahabharat and Hum log. Now, they are glued to adult concepts of child marriage, casanovas, live-in relationships, cheating spouses and gruesome crime in the city. In fact, they are the ones demanding movie-like action and romance sequences on TV,” Rajesh Johri, celebrated scriptwriter in TVdom says. He says, because there is a demand for such things on TV, producers have to comply. Selecting the cast was not such a big task a decade earlier but now producers harp on things like chemistry between the leads and compatibility between the lead and the vamp. If either of the things is missing, it brings low TRPs.
“Chemistry between the stars is a big thing on TV. We have seen soap thrive because the leads had a spark. Be it Anurag-Prerna or Sujal-Aamna, the more they sizzled on screen, the more the people were hooked to the show. However, now we don’t stop at the eyelock chemistry stage. It is the physical proximity and intimacy which decides which jodi is here to stay and who is going to flop,” he tells you.
Some time back, in his show on Zee TV, Johri made it a point to show a hamam scene with the leads relaxing in the bath tub and some coochie-coo moments of the leads are a regular dose to keep his young audience enthralled.
There was a strong rumour that Paridhi Sharma, who plays Jodha in Jodha Akbar met with a lot of problems with her director on the sets because she refused to go through with some love making scenes. It was reported that the suhaag raat between Jodha and Akbar was delayed because Sharma was uncomfortable sharing romantic moments with Rajat Tokas (Akbar). She had even decided to quit the show and met producer Ekta Kapoor to sort out matters.
Two months later, Sharma was hugging Akbar in a romantic embrace. He pulled her not once but five times towards himself, held her by the waist while begging her to comply to his sexual urge. He lifted her and took her to his bedroom and removed her jewellery one by one before untying the dori of her blouse and kissing her constantly. There was a brief halt and then clever camera angles took over to show the leads kissing and what not. This erotic suhaag raat was the longest on TV. It lingered on for 13 minutes and did a world of good to the show’s TRPs.
“A excuse people give is that there is a demand for such things so they have to give it out. If people want cyanide will you provide it over the shelfIJ No na,” Kaushik says, adding that this outrageous representation of women has picked up in the last decade. “Why do you want a model wearing skimpy clothes to be sprawling on a BMW at an auto expoIJ And then we have activists talking about empowerment of women. If this is not pseudo, what is,” a visibly angry Kaushik says.
But Kohli feels it is the moral responsibility of the director and the producer to show things aesthetically. “let’s face it, this is the 21st century and we are exposed to a lot of things and mediums. I cannot, for instance, show two flowers getting together to convey that the hero and heroine have fallen in love. It will be ridiculous. It is good to move with the times but a bad idea to move ahead of time,” he says.
