Posts Tagged ‘sunny’
Sunny Leone and Swadeshi
“The way characters like Sunny Leone are being celebrated and thrust upon us socially, incidents like this were just waiting to happen”, quipped a lady friend of mine, seemingly annoyed with what has happened in Karnataka Assembly.
The literati of India has always supported making pornography legal, citing bans to be signs of cultural repression aka Taliban. The people who go lengths as to how porn is an art and as to why restrictions surrounding it must go, fall short of answering one question, “Do they share same views with respect to a porn star”.
Will they encourage their children to take up this profession, the way they would encourage them to become say a cricketer or a film star? We don’t even have to wait for an answer, given the uncomfortable and insulted look on their faces.
Sunny Leone is admittedly the first famous and celebrated porn star in India. Still she is someone we would want to enjoy, not emulate as a role model.
We would like the porn stars to be some aliens, existing just in the movies and not in the society. Would we rent out our house to a known porn star? Would we share social space with him/her. Accepting adult video and accepting the people working in them has to go together. It can’t be a one way race.
It is also a reality that most of the young kids have easy exposure to these movies via internet. So what’s the way forward? Be it Khajuraho, Be it Lingam pooja, be it Kamasutra, be it Exploding population, sexuality is inherent in our religion and society. But somehow we lost race to the West in capitalizing and making money from it.
I would suggest that instead of letting Western adult movie industry thrive on Indian viewers, it would be better if our own people benefit from it. Go Swadeshi!
Akshay, Aamir, Awards: A Dilemma
Last night a breaking news simultaneously bombarded across all the News Channels. “Akshay refused to accept the Star Screen award for the best actor in popular category”. It was said that he was miffed at it not being given to Aamir. Here’s the catch. Aamir don’t attend such award ceremonies as a policy. Would announcing Aamir the winner take the sheen away from the ceremony, given his absence? To some extend, yes. Now what can Star Screen do? I recollect similar dilemma during the time of Gadar and Lagaan. Their resounding success was of so sheer velocity that no award ceremony dare give it to some other movie or some other star. Since Sunny and Aamir both boycott these populist awards, what happened? The award functions looked pale and just a formality. This brings us to the current discussion, Was Star Screen right in not giving award to the deserving, Aamir? Well, answer might not be as simple.
One solution might be to stop nominating them. Make it a policy statement. In the past a lot many award functions have done so, including Oscars. This might in turn end up lending them, a much needed credibility.
So why haven’t they done it already? Most of the award functions are organized by private media houses who need the stars for promotional purposes. Consider a scenario, “Aamir Khan not been considered for Star Screen awards”. Given the size of egos in Bollywood, Aamir (or his well wishers), might take it as an insult. This would open the floodgates, open war b/w camps (already there are no less). No media house wants to end up at the point of no return. So they try and maintain cordial relations. Not attending the award lends the star, a high moral ground. Not being openly considered might be taken as an outright insult. The truth today is that stars such as Aamir are more powerful than any particular media house. Hence they are nominated year after year, should they ever change their mind.
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