Soft targets or playing victim: Do big Bollywood films ride on controversy?

New Delhi: The Hindi film industry is as much about controversies as it is about its films, actors, successes, failures and money. The lucrative industry has fulfilled many a dream. At the same time the happenings around the time of a big release acts as nothing short of a potboiler in itself.

Now, that Abhishek Choubey’s directorial ‘Udta Punjab’ is finally hitting the theatres, it has also put a full stop to the media storm this movie started. Right from the battle with the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) over its content to the leak just days prior to the film’s release, ‘Udta Punjab’ became the topic of ‘primetime’ conversations, giving the movie the publicity it probably did not plan.

Undoubtedly, ‘Udta Punjab’ will gain mileage after the controversies, but this is not a first. Movies have courted controversies in the past and it is unlikely that they will stop anytime soon in the future. The pattern, however, signals something.

It is seen that films under the big banners, big stars with big money riding on them that find themselves embroiled in controversies. There are examples from the recent past that lend credence to such understanding. Of late, all the films which have made it to the headlines fulfilled all the aforementioned categories.  

Take a look:  

* Aamir Khan’s PK hurt religious sentiments of few groups, resulting in a court case.

* Akshay Kumar’s Oh! My God faced ire of religious groups for what they thought was poor depiction of Gods. The movie was also banned in UAE.

* Shah Rukh Khan’s My Name Is Khan ran into trouble after around the release he said would want Pakistani players to participate in the IPL. Shiv Sena called for the ban of the movie.

* Aamir Khan’s Fanaa was banned in then BJP ruled Gujarat after he participated in the Narmada Bachao Andolan.

* Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s Jodhaa Akbar was alleged to twist the facts of history with many Rajpuatana groups saying that Jodhabai never married Akbar.

* Amitabh Bachchan’s Aarakshan was banned in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh since it touched the sensitive issue of caste based reservation system.

* Shah Rukh Khan’s Dilwale failed to weave wonders at the box office after the superstar spoke on the burning issue of intolerance.   
Shahid Kapoor’s Haider faced backlash because it portrayed Indian army in bad light in the valleys of Kashmir.

* Kamal Hassan’s Viswaroopam ‘offended’ the Hindu Makkal Katchi (a political party), which believed that Kamal, an inspiration and role model to many, should refrain from using a Sanskrit title for his film.

These examples point to a possibility of big projects perceived as soft targets. An NGO which challenged the ruling of Bombay High Court related to ‘Udta Punjab’ also sights the same. All the NGO did was take up a burning topic and made hay while the sun shone.

Call it cheap publicity stunt or a shot to stardom, Bollywood movies do give many a chance to come in news. No one really knows how long these court cases carry on, but they definitely increase the task of our already burdened judiciary.

And then there is the thing about the makers of the movie planting stories to get media attention. If Bollywood’s movies have been at the receiving end of controversies, they aren’t purely innocent either.

Remember Kareena-starrer ‘Heroine’. Towards the end of the movie, Mahi (Kareena’s character) leaks her own sex tape with an established actor Aryan Khanna (played by Arjun Rampal) to help her sinking career. After Mahi plays victim in the entire story, her movie rakes big money at the box office. Not that Madhur Bhandarkar stands as the epitome of reality or truthfulness, the movie does have a point.

It is difficult to negate the fact that filmmakers sometimes seed stories to increase footfall at cinemas. And the controversy doesn’t have to be even as big as what Kareena Kapoor’s Heroine showed.

To create a buzz, a small link up story of co-stars, a rift between co-actresses, a disagreement between the lead actor and director, a clash of creativity between the producers and writers; works well enough to keep a buzz going around the film in some form or the other.

Have we ever wondered why do stories of actors dating each other surface only after they romance each other on screen, like the recent case of Yami Gautam and Pulkit Samrat before ‘Sanam Re’, or the ongoing rumours about Kriti Sanon and Sushant Singh Rajput dating saw the light of the day only after they signed ‘Raabta’? Why stories of Deepika Padukone and Ranbir Kapoor getting teary eyed after completion of ‘Tamasha’ reported only a few weeks before the release?  

Let’s be fair - a major chunk of Bollywood news relies on unnamed sources and unheard quotes; especially, the ones that raise a few eyebrows. So, one never really knows where to distinguish between the truth and fiction. One can’t really tell if a story has been planted just to create noise around the movie or it plain out-of-the-box PR.  

The influx of technology in our lives has reached an extent where information needs to be continuous lest the subject gets forgotten in the din. Moreover, it needs to be gripping enough to engage the audience and keep it curious enough to want to know more. That is how the buzz keeps going. For filmmakers, as a result, promotions across various platforms do not suffice. And controversy is the best way to keep the buzz going and one can’t really deny that controversies do manage to play a considerable role in healthy box-office collections. There are umpteen examples of movies that didn’t really have much mettle but still managed to rake in decent money due to the buzz they created prior to their release.  

The perennial question, however, lies in whether such antics are necessary. Perhaps so. True, technology has made critical inroads into our lives and films that lack substance to entertain audiences can be dismissed within a day or two. However, in the age of multiplexes, a day or two is all it takes for films to rake in a major chunk of the box-office revenue. So, the buzz does help.

Movies, after all, are meant to entertain. However, the media – deliberately or otherwise – has fallen prey to many such antics that have ultimately worked out only in favour of the films. There is not one film that courted controversy but did not work. One could ask if we should have movie releases without mainstream media dedicating time to it. Can movies just not be made to provide entertainment and also bring about a change in the society, just what art is supposed to do?

The answer lies in the fact that it is a two-way street. While on one hand, big films with big stars make for better coverage and more mileage rendering them vulnerable. On the other, one can’t deny that controversies have helped many films perform better, raising doubts over the makers planting stories for mileage.

In the end, it is up to the audience to decipher how or who the controversy benefitted. This applies to audiences in theatres watching the film or those at home who spent hours listening to the countless debates on primetime news agitating over the curbing of ‘freedom of speech’ or intolerance.

Some food for thought, maybe?