Bollywood has witnessed a spate of big-budget big-starrer movies getting flopped one after the other over the past two years. Be it Brahmastra, Lal Singh Chaddha, Shamshera, Samrat Prithviraj, Jersey, 83 and the most recent flop Cirkus, all have performed poorly at the box office.
The viewers are educated about the various propaganda served by Bollywood, and now pinpoint at all their flaws and the blatant copied content. The social media looks like a warzone between the ‘boycott bollywood’ campaigners and Bollywood-addicts.
The latest movie which is facing heat on the social media platforms right now is Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone’s ‘Pathaan’, which is slated for a 25 January release.
Many Bollywood professionals, new and old, have come out in the film’s support, expectedly. Recently, yesteryear actress-dancer and Dada Saheb Phalke awardee Asha Parekh, supported Pathaan and the song saying “we are becoming narrow-minded”. During her statement, she also admitted that “Bollywood is dying as films are not working”.
As per reports, during an interview to Aaj Tak, the actress was asked about the “negativity” related to Bollywood on social media these days. She picked up the recent ‘boycott’ calls against Pathaan and Besharam Rang, saying, “Yeh bahut galat hai, film toh film hai. Jiska mool maksad entertainment hai. Ab kisi actress ne, orange pehen liya, ya naam kuch aisa ho gaya toh usse ban kar rahe hai? Yeh nahi achha lagta hai” (This is very wrong, a film is a film. Which is basically about entertainment. If an actress wears orange, or the name is different, you start banning it? It doesn’t look good).
She added, “Bikini per bawaal nahi tha, yahan toh orange rang ki bikini ko lehkar sawaal uth rahe hai. Mujhe lagta hai ki hamara dimaag ab bandh hota ja raha hai. Hum bahut hi chhoti soch ke hote ja rahe hain, jo galat hai. Bollywood hamesha ke liye soft target raha hai” (It was not an uproar on the bikini, it was the orange colour of the bikini that was questioned. I think that our brains are shutting down. We are becoming too close-minded, which is wrong. Bollywood has always been a soft target).
Parekh was awarded with the highest civilian award in the field of entertainment, the Dada Saheb Phalke award, in September this year.
In another interview with India Today journalist Rajdeep Sardesai, Parekh named Deepika Padukone, Shahrukh Khan and Aamir Khan as her favourite actors of the current times. The video can be seen here.
The song Besharam Rang was released on 12 December 2022 from the official Youtube handle of Yash Raj Films. As soon as the song was released, social media users bashed it calling it cheap and vulgar. Here are a few reactions from the archives.
Following the massive outrage, the state Home Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Narottam Mishra, said, “The film ‘Pathaan’ is full of faults & based on toxic mentality. Lyrics of the song ‘Besharam Rang’ & saffron&green clothes worn in the song need to be corrected or else we will decide on whether to let the film’s screening happen in MP or not.”
Many actors and filmmakers from Bollywood have come out in support of the film, especially Shah Rukh Khan. Here are a few tweets from the archives including by Swara Bhaskar, Shobu Yarlagadda (producer of the movie Baahubali), Prakash Raj and others.
As Parekh talked about ‘Bollywood is dying’, readers may read this article by the team behind Rashtra Jyoti, ‘The Demise of Bollywood‘.
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