Story of #BoycottBollywood
Bollywood has been around the block for almost a century and took the world for a spin. Many aspire to be a part of this juggernaut of a ship sailing on an ocean of money by racking up box offices with their skills and talents as thespian, filmmakers, playback artists, marketing chads, VFX professionals, so on and so forth.
However, in the last few months, the glistening ocean with the colour of money started to go dry for the Bollywood ship after the trending hashtag popping up on twitter; #boycottbollywood.
The hashtag first appeared during untimely demise of Bollywood actor, Sushant Singh Rajput.
Blockbuster Movies with huge star power behind them are falling prey to the #BoycottBollywood trend. With every other movie to delivering box office duds, the glory days are currently in rear-view mirror of Bollywood.
By now you might be asking yourself, "Why oh why would they do that to themselves?
There answers as the netizens have listed are —
Lack of Originality
Many deemed remakes as a smart way of making cash by riding the hype of the original movie's fan following. It might have been so for a while. However, viewers soon got bored and tired of the remakes offering nothing new. They have a hard time to get invested as they already know the plot. The things that remakes have going for them are the music and dialogues. Many even said that watching a dubbed version of the original movie is more entertaining.
Mass and poorly produced songs
The days of soulful melodies of Sonu Nigam, Sunidhi Chauhan and KK have been long gone and replaced by auto-tuned rappers with lack of logic and depth in their lyrics. Songs of early 2010s were miles ahead than Tony Kakkar's cringe pop or Badshah's mass produced songs that have a short shelf life.
Poor or Nepotism Casting
It was never a secret that star kids or, more popularly known, Nepo-kids have an unfair advantage to land their first movie compared to others with no affiliation with the Bollywood royalties. Despite lack of spark and talent, the star kids keep getting offers for movies, brands and endorsements. Which is why the netizen brought the issue under the lime light and went for a march with their pitch fork to boycott their movies.
Political Affiliation
For most people who have bills to pay and salary to make, movies are an escape from the reality of their lives — unrelenting traffic on the road, bickering with colleagues, politicians fighting with each other, and the monotony of daily life. Such elements set the average working joe to long for inspiration and aspire to have better lives like the stars. However, when these stars express political affiliations that are completely opposite to their own, it becomes an issue. They can no longer find an absolute detachment from reality in the world of films and stars.
Movies which were expected to end the dry spell of Bollywood have also caught in the cross fire. Amir Khan's Laal Singh Chaddha had its own hashtag #boycottlaalsinghchadda and faced loss in the box office. Despite the underwhelming aspect of the movie such as Amir making the same face while playing special characters, the movie could have done better.
However, actors like Suniel Shetty, have started to speak up on the cancel culture.
In an interview with news18.com he stated, "It's unfair. We all work hard. We all aim to do well, our intentions are good. Aamir Khan's intentions have always been good. He is somebody who could have chosen five films a year, but he chose to do one film in five years and I think we need to respect that. As far as Akshay Kumar goes, there is continuous effort in wanting to do something and deliver entertaining films. We are entertainers and we go by public choice also."
He further elaborated his point, "I hate this 'boycott Bollywood' campaign that is going on on Twitter. I always pray it stops because we are an industry too and there are a lot of people feeding off us. So, for that sake let's not destroy an industry that has its own legacy of good people and people who probably at some stage make mistakes. But aren't we humans too? Give one that opportunity. I only say it's not fair. We can only pray that better sense prevails and this doesn't happen and these two films work big time."
Actor Arjun Kapoor also gave a piece of his mind in an interview with opindia.com by saying, "I think we made a mistake by being silent for so long. Our decency was taken for our weakness. We always believe in 'let the work speak for itself, all this doesn't matter. We tolerated a little too much. Now people are used to it."
Word on the net is that upcoming films of Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika and Ranbir Kapoor might also fall victim to the boycott culture.