Friday, March 29, 2024

News Destination For The Global Indian Community

News Destination For The Global Indian Community

FILM & MUSIC
LifeMag
Pawns in his game

Pawns in his game

The sordid reality of the 21st century's portrayal of Indian female celebrities is that it defeats all that feminism has tried to achieve so far

As women have come into their own, do they realise that they continue to be objectified even in changed contexts for purposes of mass consumption? And are projected for the wrong reasons than the right ones? That they legitimise the male gaze as a uniform societal response by falling into a trap of imaging they believe empowers and acknowledges them? Further, if they happen to be celebrities with a fair sweep of popular culture, then they are prone to be more “sextualised” as it were as talking heads. So much so that they are now being itemised for politics instead of the big screen, used for advocacy rather than reason, prized for their appearance than their intelligence, made icons of causes that thousands of faceless women are struggling with and drawing accolades and likes that may not be earned or deserved. And should such unevolved but rapidly recognisable faces happen to represent binaries, then you have a catfight that has become the new prime-time fix. In the end, fighting women make a mockery of all that feminism has tried to achieve so far.

What else would explain the obsessive coverage of Kangana Ranaut, Rhea Chakraborty, Urmila Matondkar and their ping-pong exchanges by the media or their appropriation by political parties of the day to amplify their respective narratives? Let’s begin with Kangana Ranaut. An actor par excellence, she has lived through sordid exploitation and displayed a rare grit to carve her space and more importantly, own it. There have been many outsiders in the film industry, co-opted or rebels, but she was neither. Instead, she challenged a system that was based on nepotism and dynastic privileges and insisted on a democracy that would enrich the creative space. She even did her bit, though not the only one, to push the envelope, choosing flesh and blood roles that made real women protagonists as much a revenue-earner for the film industry as its male stars. And there was a straight-forward honesty and boldness about her approach that endeared her to everybody. Most of all she appeared independently sensible and not just fashionably articulate. And much before #MeToo, she called out her male exploiters in the industry, not denying what she had been subjected to but was frank enough to admit that she spoke when she had equal power and respect.

She did carve out a new constituency among the chatterati and was conscious enough to use it to magnify her own appeal. She became a regular at media summits and talks, thereby developing another facet outside films that would lengthen her shelf life. The media, in turn, used her to grab eyeballs. As she became sure-footed, she sailed with the prevailing political winds, beginning with nationalism and then professing her Right wing loyalties. Every citizen, including actors, is entitled to his/her ideological preferences but Kangana, who took years to craft her own disruptive brand, has been waylaid and absorbed this time around. Using her troll-worthy capacities and no holds barred verbal ammunition, the BJP has just made her a pawn in its grand design, whether it is lampooning the Nehru-Gandhis, taking on its arch enemy, the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, or stoking fires in the mysterious death of Sushant Singh Rajput. And it is here that Kangana has faltered and given into the prevailing rant and sentiments of the day than calibrating them to her advantage. Undoubtedly, the Shiv Sena leaders are not known for their standards when they decide to shred somebody apart but for Kangana to liken Mumbai to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir was not only politically immature but more hurtful to her own self than the Sena. Of course, the BJP benefitted from the scream fest without dirtying its fingers. And compared to the troublesome Anurag Thakur and Kapil Mishra, it has found a palatable public lobbyist of some repute. The fact that she is from the film industry would work both ways for it, as an asset if she got traction, maybe a liability at times and a salacious aberration at worst if she failed.

But it is in the process of cleansing the drug taint from the film industry that she has gone overboard, attacking women colleagues in the industry, unarmed with logic and defeating the very women’s cause that she loves to represent. She locked horns with Jaya Bachchan, actor and Rajya Sabha MP of the Samajwadi Party, an industry veteran and an active parliamentarian who has spoken out on societal issues. Rightfully, she decided to argue for an industry that was being vilified over a few bad apples and drug abuse, generalised as a sin city than the enormous talent it nurtures and made to look like a villain of all societal ills when fact is, it supported jobs and created opportunities. This, she said, despite the “non-support of the Government.” Kangana’s rebuttal for the sake of one not only lacked refinement, it undid the work of several women actors who made it possible for her to make her current space and be heard. Taking a potshot at Jaya’s remark that actors were ungrateful to the industry that fed them, Kangana retorted, “Got one thaali which included two minutes of fame in item numbers and one romantic scene with the hero, that too after sleeping with him. I have taught feminism to the film industry.” Reality check? Jaya Bachchan has been a bigger path-breaker than her because she etched powerful women characters despite a hostile climate set by the movie mafia, the single-hero domination and a less than encouraging commercial logic where strong women onscreen were considered artsy and NFDC material. Jaya tried to mainstream that discourse. Kangana perhaps also forgot her own sensuous numbers on screen before she called actor and now Congress member Urmila Matondkar a “soft porn” star. Apart from a pervert television audience that sees news as entertainment, this discourse did nothing but perpetuate the stereotype that “women are their own worst enemy.”  Something that Jaya’s peer and BJP MP Hema Malini realised as she supported Jaya’s speech instead of mindlessly toeing what her party propagandists would have wanted her to do.

Kangana may get a BJP ticket to contest elections in the future but she would again not earn it by her own rules but by conforming to the misogynistic mindset that sees women stars as a whiff of fresh air in the dry world of politics. She should have taken lessons from the late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalitha, whom she is portraying onscreen. Jayalalitha became the respected leader she was by mastering all rules of the political game, working the ground, breaking out of the shadows of her mentor MGR and battling the authoritarianism that had already been established by her male counterparts on equal terms. Kangana, sadly, is in danger of looking like a stooge. Does she realise that for all her headline grabbing acts on social and visual media, she is being used to divert attention from the nation’s more pressing problems like the pandemic mismanagement, the Ladakh incursions or the tanking economy? That she is fuelling exactly what the ruling dispensation wants her to do, namely create a cloud of inconsequential nothingness?

At the other end is starlet Rhea Chakraborty, who is on everybody’s search engine, not because of her films or work but as an exploitative girlfriend of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput. No doubt he was a talent snuffed out too early, but the mysterious circumstances of his death, his troubled history with drugs and mental health, his Bihari identity and his “outsider” status in the film industry have far too many elements to be exploited by politicians and their new hand-maiden, the broadcast media. The conspiracy theory that she might have pushed him to addiction, swindled him, could have diverted funds and in the process pushed him over the edge by entrapping him in a world of debt and drug cartels, has become a credible story that the nation is devouring hungrily. Simply because legal evidence and cold facts of the actor’s death are too dry to be juiced out for news cycles. Simply because a good-looking starlet allows the masses to project their sinful obsessions, aspirations and high crimes to her kind and claim moral righteousness by exclusion. So Rhea’s going to jail becomes a visual that is more satisfying as a portrait of instant justice. Many film personalities have been involved in the drug racket. Yet Rhea’s arrest, for possessing just 59 grams of weed, makes a seething urban sub-culture a sensational discovery. She, too, is aware of the fame that the unfortunate death of her boyfriend has given her. Flashing a victory sign and sporting T-shirts emblazoned with “down with patriarchy” slogans, she, too, could emerge out of this mess as a prime pick for advocacy of women’s rights against the lynch mob trial she was subjected to. She may or may not be a success in films going forward but, like Sushant, has been appropriated as a political tool. If the BJP is fuelling the “justice for Sushant” campaign, the Congress has taken up the “justice for Rhea” crusade. Self-appointed activists shouted slogans opposing the “vilification campaign” against the “daughter of Bengal” and held up placards that said, “We will not stop till she gets justice.” Bengal Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury even invested her with casteist respectability, calling her a “Bengali Brahmin.” What Rhea wouldn’t appreciate, if she walks into this trap, is that she is hated mostly by women with a patriarchal mindset over tea and conversations, seen as a woman who made capital out of what is called “easy virtue.” In this sense, both the newsmaker and the news recipient are defeated, simply because neither gets respect nor understanding. But they certainly perpetuate a male construct of how women are.

Sadly, women newsmakers from popular culture around the globe are being chased for their representational rather than their authentic selves. Their activism, therefore, appears to be more and more fake. And as they use social media to build intimate partnerships with their communities and followers, they are shaping a market economy of medievalism, where women are dependable worker bees but are actually living in a shell believing they are the queen bees.

(The writer is Associate Editor, The Pioneer)

Pawns in his game

Pawns in his game

The sordid reality of the 21st century's portrayal of Indian female celebrities is that it defeats all that feminism has tried to achieve so far

As women have come into their own, do they realise that they continue to be objectified even in changed contexts for purposes of mass consumption? And are projected for the wrong reasons than the right ones? That they legitimise the male gaze as a uniform societal response by falling into a trap of imaging they believe empowers and acknowledges them? Further, if they happen to be celebrities with a fair sweep of popular culture, then they are prone to be more “sextualised” as it were as talking heads. So much so that they are now being itemised for politics instead of the big screen, used for advocacy rather than reason, prized for their appearance than their intelligence, made icons of causes that thousands of faceless women are struggling with and drawing accolades and likes that may not be earned or deserved. And should such unevolved but rapidly recognisable faces happen to represent binaries, then you have a catfight that has become the new prime-time fix. In the end, fighting women make a mockery of all that feminism has tried to achieve so far.

What else would explain the obsessive coverage of Kangana Ranaut, Rhea Chakraborty, Urmila Matondkar and their ping-pong exchanges by the media or their appropriation by political parties of the day to amplify their respective narratives? Let’s begin with Kangana Ranaut. An actor par excellence, she has lived through sordid exploitation and displayed a rare grit to carve her space and more importantly, own it. There have been many outsiders in the film industry, co-opted or rebels, but she was neither. Instead, she challenged a system that was based on nepotism and dynastic privileges and insisted on a democracy that would enrich the creative space. She even did her bit, though not the only one, to push the envelope, choosing flesh and blood roles that made real women protagonists as much a revenue-earner for the film industry as its male stars. And there was a straight-forward honesty and boldness about her approach that endeared her to everybody. Most of all she appeared independently sensible and not just fashionably articulate. And much before #MeToo, she called out her male exploiters in the industry, not denying what she had been subjected to but was frank enough to admit that she spoke when she had equal power and respect.

She did carve out a new constituency among the chatterati and was conscious enough to use it to magnify her own appeal. She became a regular at media summits and talks, thereby developing another facet outside films that would lengthen her shelf life. The media, in turn, used her to grab eyeballs. As she became sure-footed, she sailed with the prevailing political winds, beginning with nationalism and then professing her Right wing loyalties. Every citizen, including actors, is entitled to his/her ideological preferences but Kangana, who took years to craft her own disruptive brand, has been waylaid and absorbed this time around. Using her troll-worthy capacities and no holds barred verbal ammunition, the BJP has just made her a pawn in its grand design, whether it is lampooning the Nehru-Gandhis, taking on its arch enemy, the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, or stoking fires in the mysterious death of Sushant Singh Rajput. And it is here that Kangana has faltered and given into the prevailing rant and sentiments of the day than calibrating them to her advantage. Undoubtedly, the Shiv Sena leaders are not known for their standards when they decide to shred somebody apart but for Kangana to liken Mumbai to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir was not only politically immature but more hurtful to her own self than the Sena. Of course, the BJP benefitted from the scream fest without dirtying its fingers. And compared to the troublesome Anurag Thakur and Kapil Mishra, it has found a palatable public lobbyist of some repute. The fact that she is from the film industry would work both ways for it, as an asset if she got traction, maybe a liability at times and a salacious aberration at worst if she failed.

But it is in the process of cleansing the drug taint from the film industry that she has gone overboard, attacking women colleagues in the industry, unarmed with logic and defeating the very women’s cause that she loves to represent. She locked horns with Jaya Bachchan, actor and Rajya Sabha MP of the Samajwadi Party, an industry veteran and an active parliamentarian who has spoken out on societal issues. Rightfully, she decided to argue for an industry that was being vilified over a few bad apples and drug abuse, generalised as a sin city than the enormous talent it nurtures and made to look like a villain of all societal ills when fact is, it supported jobs and created opportunities. This, she said, despite the “non-support of the Government.” Kangana’s rebuttal for the sake of one not only lacked refinement, it undid the work of several women actors who made it possible for her to make her current space and be heard. Taking a potshot at Jaya’s remark that actors were ungrateful to the industry that fed them, Kangana retorted, “Got one thaali which included two minutes of fame in item numbers and one romantic scene with the hero, that too after sleeping with him. I have taught feminism to the film industry.” Reality check? Jaya Bachchan has been a bigger path-breaker than her because she etched powerful women characters despite a hostile climate set by the movie mafia, the single-hero domination and a less than encouraging commercial logic where strong women onscreen were considered artsy and NFDC material. Jaya tried to mainstream that discourse. Kangana perhaps also forgot her own sensuous numbers on screen before she called actor and now Congress member Urmila Matondkar a “soft porn” star. Apart from a pervert television audience that sees news as entertainment, this discourse did nothing but perpetuate the stereotype that “women are their own worst enemy.”  Something that Jaya’s peer and BJP MP Hema Malini realised as she supported Jaya’s speech instead of mindlessly toeing what her party propagandists would have wanted her to do.

Kangana may get a BJP ticket to contest elections in the future but she would again not earn it by her own rules but by conforming to the misogynistic mindset that sees women stars as a whiff of fresh air in the dry world of politics. She should have taken lessons from the late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalitha, whom she is portraying onscreen. Jayalalitha became the respected leader she was by mastering all rules of the political game, working the ground, breaking out of the shadows of her mentor MGR and battling the authoritarianism that had already been established by her male counterparts on equal terms. Kangana, sadly, is in danger of looking like a stooge. Does she realise that for all her headline grabbing acts on social and visual media, she is being used to divert attention from the nation’s more pressing problems like the pandemic mismanagement, the Ladakh incursions or the tanking economy? That she is fuelling exactly what the ruling dispensation wants her to do, namely create a cloud of inconsequential nothingness?

At the other end is starlet Rhea Chakraborty, who is on everybody’s search engine, not because of her films or work but as an exploitative girlfriend of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput. No doubt he was a talent snuffed out too early, but the mysterious circumstances of his death, his troubled history with drugs and mental health, his Bihari identity and his “outsider” status in the film industry have far too many elements to be exploited by politicians and their new hand-maiden, the broadcast media. The conspiracy theory that she might have pushed him to addiction, swindled him, could have diverted funds and in the process pushed him over the edge by entrapping him in a world of debt and drug cartels, has become a credible story that the nation is devouring hungrily. Simply because legal evidence and cold facts of the actor’s death are too dry to be juiced out for news cycles. Simply because a good-looking starlet allows the masses to project their sinful obsessions, aspirations and high crimes to her kind and claim moral righteousness by exclusion. So Rhea’s going to jail becomes a visual that is more satisfying as a portrait of instant justice. Many film personalities have been involved in the drug racket. Yet Rhea’s arrest, for possessing just 59 grams of weed, makes a seething urban sub-culture a sensational discovery. She, too, is aware of the fame that the unfortunate death of her boyfriend has given her. Flashing a victory sign and sporting T-shirts emblazoned with “down with patriarchy” slogans, she, too, could emerge out of this mess as a prime pick for advocacy of women’s rights against the lynch mob trial she was subjected to. She may or may not be a success in films going forward but, like Sushant, has been appropriated as a political tool. If the BJP is fuelling the “justice for Sushant” campaign, the Congress has taken up the “justice for Rhea” crusade. Self-appointed activists shouted slogans opposing the “vilification campaign” against the “daughter of Bengal” and held up placards that said, “We will not stop till she gets justice.” Bengal Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury even invested her with casteist respectability, calling her a “Bengali Brahmin.” What Rhea wouldn’t appreciate, if she walks into this trap, is that she is hated mostly by women with a patriarchal mindset over tea and conversations, seen as a woman who made capital out of what is called “easy virtue.” In this sense, both the newsmaker and the news recipient are defeated, simply because neither gets respect nor understanding. But they certainly perpetuate a male construct of how women are.

Sadly, women newsmakers from popular culture around the globe are being chased for their representational rather than their authentic selves. Their activism, therefore, appears to be more and more fake. And as they use social media to build intimate partnerships with their communities and followers, they are shaping a market economy of medievalism, where women are dependable worker bees but are actually living in a shell believing they are the queen bees.

(The writer is Associate Editor, The Pioneer)

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