People feeling a sense of schadenfreude about the failure of Kangana’s film, remember that your favourite woke superstar, Aamir Khan’s film Lal Singh Chaddha will probably meet the same fate.
People may have rejected the famously motor-mouthed hatemonger’s Dhaakad, but I believe that celebrations are premature because we are presuming it was her toxicity that was the cause. We may be wrong.
Also, I am not a votary of awarding or punishing an artist’s art, especially when hundreds of other people (who may or may not share her views) have also been part of the creation (and while, having been paid for their services, would, like anyone associated with a piece of creative work, want others to know and appreciate their bit in it), based on their political opinions. I understand that there is a case to be made to boycott someone who is as toxic as her since self-admittedly, it colours her body of work, and there is most definitely a case to shun those that are sex offenders, say. But all things being equal (and while Kangana is a vacuous and prolific idiot, she isn’t, at least as far as we know, a Bill Cosby or Kevin Spacey, nor are we an audience that is conscious and woke enough to understand these issues; case in point Malayali cinema and its stymied MeToo movement), I think we are being too harsh on her without (and this part is important, so read it before responding) really understanding what it is that the Indian movie-going audience has rejected, and just presuming that our wokeness is automatically transferred onto this group of diverse people with varied opinions.
In summary: Do rejoice that Kangana flopped, if you despise her (I do) for her hate-mongering. But do not be so naïve as to assume the same hate-mongering to be the cause of the flop. The people have, without doubt, rejected Kangana, and loudly so. We just don’t know why.
P.S: Just to add to my hypothesis that it isn’t her hate-mongering that has resulted in a flop, remember that a minister’s son who ran over farmers in Lakhimpur-Kheri and the huge public anger it occasioned? Well, in the assembly elections following that, the BJP won all 8 constituencies. By record margins. Like they won UP. Where, forget roti, kapda, or makaan, as recently as a few months before the elections, people lost their loved ones for lack of oxygen! So, to attribute a movie’s failure to people intending to ‘teach a lesson to those who spread hate’ is a bit of wishful thinking.
