Grappling With Cancel Culture, Bollywood Needs To Introspect About Its Contents

The first-day-first-show of a movie has usually generated immense interest among filmmakers and audiences over the decades. But it is becoming more of a reason for panic than curiosity given the way some big-budget Hindi films have tanked at the box office in recent times.

Who would have thought that Aamir Khan-Kareena Kapoor starrer,  Laal Singh Chaddha, which hit the screens after four years in the making, would run to near-empty theatres on the very first day of its release? An eagerly-awaited remake of Tom Hanks’ Hollywood hit, Forest Gump (1994), it hit the screens on August 11 with about 10,000 shows, which were reduced by about 1,300 shows on the second day for want of the audiences.

Even Rakshabandhan of Akshay Kumar, the new-age ‘Bharat Kumar’ of Bollywood, faltered. Anurag Kashyap's experimentation and chutzpah also could not save Dobaaraa from sinking. The boycott campaign on social media against these three films is considered a major reason for their failure. It may well be a factor but it cannot be said that only the boycott role has caused the debacle of these films.

One of Bollywood’s leading production houses, Yash Raj Films faced the most significant setbacks this year. Its Ranbir Kapoor- starrer Shamshera and Akshay Kumar's Samrat Prithviraj collapsed despite massive publicity because of their flawed content and lifeless presentation. Ranveer Singh's Jayeshbhai Jordaar from the same banner also bit the dust.

There were several other big-ticket films that failed to live up to expectations over the past few months. Only 20 tickets of Kangana Ranaut's Dhaakad could be sold across the country on the eighth day of its release. The flurry of flops in April-May indicates that the reason is not limited to the boycott call alone. Shahid Kapoor's Jersey, Ajay Devgn's Runway 34 and Tiger Shroff's Heropanti 2 were all rejected summarily by the audience, indicating that Hindi movie moguls have lost their touch to connect with the audience.

On the face of it, different reasons can be ascribed to the failure of every film, but the basic thing is that Bollywood ventures can no longer draw audiences merely on the strength of their big budget, big stars, or hit formulas.

Social media has given unlimited power to the common man and the boycott campaign has undoubtedly created a negative atmosphere around Hindi films. Influencing public opinion by dragging old statements of an artiste to run a campaign in the run-up to the release of his forthcoming movie has become such a potent weapon that no one appears to have a clue about it.

In fact, a boycott campaign is a form of 'cancel culture', which has challenged the existence of art, artists, and eminent personalities all over the world. Anurag Kashyap is the latest example of this, who perhaps jokingly appealed to people during the promotions of Dobaaraa to boycott his film and get it trended. What happened as a result is for everyone to see. Similarly, voices for boycott raised just before the release of Laal Singh Chaddha, on the basis of Aamir Khan's 2015-statement on the communal atmosphere in India, affected the film's performance adversely.

From the 'Arab Spring' of 2011 to the impact of the 'Me-Too' movement and the nationwide protests after the Nirbhaya rape case in 2012 to the frenzy that followed the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput there have been several examples that clearly underline that social media is not merely the redundant noise in the virtual world. How big a role it plays beyond the part of the director, the story, the cast, and the publicity system in deciding the fate of a film is definitely a matter of research.

Actors are now beginning to accept the impact of the boycott call. Kareena Kapoor, who has been working in the industry for the last two decades, had to appeal to the audience not to boycott Laal Singh Chaddha. Even actor Vijay Varma, who hit the latest headlines with the Netflix film Darlings, said in a recent interview that "this atmosphere can scare you. Now it's too much. Something you said ten years ago may be dug up now."

Decades ago, 'cancel culture', which has the power to deny an artiste’s entire artwork even on the basis of what was said in a particular context in the past, has given such power to the audience through social media that it is changing the equation of power between cinema and the audiences. Stories, ways of telling them and the entertainment quotient have always determined the success and failure of films over the years, but the boycott campaign has certainly shown that the social perspective of the Hindi film industry has changed.

Faced with such a situation now, Bollywood needs to introspect about its contents and dig deeper to find a way out of the current crisis.

Swati Bakshi is doing research on Hindi cinema at the University of Westminster, London, and writes on contemporary issues