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Stories from South or East India are now finding favour across the country as Padman and Mary Kom show, but people who look like us are still not!
Stories from South India or East India are now finding favour across the country as Padman and Mary Kom demonstrate, but people who look like us are still not welcome!
Akshay Kumar starrer Padman, due to be released on February 9th is already creating quite a buzz for dealing with the taboo subject of menstruation. Padman is a biopic based on the life and story of Arunachalam Muruganantham, the man who created low-cost sanitary napkins for women.
Though it is a movie about an inspiring man who brings about a massive improvement in women’s health through his innovation and definitely seems a movie worth watching, there are still certain things that might have been done otherwise in the movie.
The film is set in Madhya Pradesh and is based on Twinkle Khanna’s short story, The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad. However, Khanna’s story was inspired by social activist Arunachalam’s life. Arunachalam comes from a hamlet near Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. Not only the setting but even the main character has been changed into a North Indian in the movie. This brings us to the question, what makes Bollywood so eager to give the North Indian treatment to most of its movies?
One of Akshay’s earlier movies, Airlift too received the same treatment. Though it was based on the life of Sunny Matthews, the Malayali entrepreneur who coordinated the evacuation in Kuwait in 1990, it was once again set in North India and the main character, Akshay Kumar is a Punjabi.
“It may be a business decision to shift the setting to North Indian contexts, but it is also very telling of the mentality of filmmakers at large. You are assuming that the story and characters that you have picked from South won’t be accepted by your audience in North. That, in itself, is a worrying sign for Bollywood,” says Mihir Pandya, film critic and author of Shahar Aur Cinema Via Dilli.
Another example of this misinterpretation was when Priyanka Chopra was asked to play Mary Kom, the legendary Manipuri boxer. In order to create the ‘oriental look’, special effects solutions from Shah Rukh Khan’s visual effects studio, Red Chillies VFX, was employed. And yet, the makers couldn’t choose a North Eastern actress to play the role of Mary Kom? There are many talented actresses from the region like National Award Winner, Geetanjali Thapa, Bala Hijam, Masochon V Zimik (from Chak De India), Karen Shenaz David (a Canadian actress born in Shillong).
Of course, having Chopra in the role was to ensure that more people are lured into the theatres due to her star appeal thereby leading to the film’s success. But what does success mean here? Catering to the cultural mindset of the majority to generate more money and maybe an award or two? And can it only be ensured by star power?
These actors are playing the role of personalities whose physical attributes, cultural backgrounds, or identities are extremely disparate from their own. And yet, Bollywood couldn’t look past this North Indian mindset to represent the rest of India beyond a certain level.
When a person like Mary Kom won in the Olympics or someone like Arunachalam Muruganantham brings about a social revolution, the entire country was proud of them. But people who actually look like them or come from their states are not good enough to play them onscreen? Just think about the irony and biased mindset that Bollywood is pandering to, through these movies.
Kasturi’s debut novel, forthcoming in early 2021, had won the novel pitch competition by Half Baked Beans Publishers. She won the Runner Up Position in the Orange Flower Awards 2021 for Short Fiction. Her read more...
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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