When a battle is on, what decides who you root for? Bollywood is currently witnessing an open war, and it’s not hard to see who’s rooting for whom. The war between Karan Johar and Kangana Ranaut.
When it began, it was supposed to be just a gossipy chatter. Ranaut appeared on Koffee with Karan on February 19, along with Saif Ali Khan and Shahid Kapoor, to promote her film, Rangoon. Johar, who is known for poking his guests to get most controversial answers out, asked Ranaut about the person who’s given him the unnecessary attitude. In a startling turn of quips, she took a dig at him.
In the past, both have worked together in Ungli, and evidently, it didn’t really set the warm-clock ticking.
Johar’s taking it on his chin with a smile on his talk show was interpreted as an act of grace, before he responded to Ranaut a few days later during a session at London School of Economics.
A few days later, on March 9, Mumbai Mirror readers opened their morning paper to find the latest volley from Ranaut, sharply directed at Johar. The elaborate interview had many pointy missiles, voiced with precise words.
Clearly, the outsiders, which includes observers, strugglers, and disbelievers, will root for Ranaut. Because her brazenness has opened a dialogue regarding the feudal nature of the industry. Because it makes for popcorn entertainment, which is alive, unscripted and seriously juicy. Because it makes the starters see it as a woman-against-all-odds fable, giving them a ray of hope that entails freedom and stardom together.
We have to wait and watch whether Johar decides to get back to Ranaut again, considering Ranaut has mentioned his deceased father and his newborn daughter (Johar became a single parent to twins born through surrogacy recently) in her Mirror interview. There’s no denying of the clout he has, his position as one of the elite members of the film fraternity is unmistakable in his successes, his friends and his protégés.
The concern, however, looms large for Ranaut. Though she has great support for her proverbial outsider stand, her supporters know Bollywood’s ways of favouring a certain camp or someone. Last year, she was engaged in a verbal brawl with Hrithik Roshan over an alleged affair, and by doing that she has already broken industry’s open secret code. But that was over an affair. Here she is standing against Karan Johar, one of the influential figures in the industry.
So where does she go from here? This is an interesting question because Ranaut’s case is one such that perhaps has no precedence in the Hindi film industry. In an era when we think twice before putting out a tweet, Ranaut engages in a duel with a behemoth in public, without even blinking twice.
She is no art-house actor, who can afford to have a socialist outlook, and no-nonsense attitude. She is a star, the breed that stays in headlines without treading controversies. It’s a delicate position because a lot of money riding on her would look for assured outcomes. Don’t we know our stars cowering down to political bullying before a film release? Because financiers want certainty, not risk, when a star is involved.
Most of the views that want her to keep quiet is also out of a legendary parental concern that her reckless attitude is going to put her career in jeopardy. Stardom is a strange beast, and many Ozymandiases have been reduced to sand dunes under its unpredictable weather.
Ranaut has delivered big solo hits in Queen and Tanu Weds Manu Returns. The commitment to her craft gets lauded always but her performance at the box office has not been consistent. In such a light, Ranaut’s forthrightness seems outlandishly brave because here’s a woman taking on powerful men consistently, without caring for where it leads her.
Some say, success is the best revenge. Madhuri Dixit, who dominated the ‘90s with massive successes one after another, was known to charge more than any other male actor. She was powerful, but like many of her predecessors, Dixit bloomed in diplomacy and was happy being goody two-shoes. Ranaut’s case is unprecedented because she is challenging the status quo openly. She has delivered box office successes and yet, questions the very nature of the industry that has made her a success. She is unlike her ancestors.
Bollywood always teaches its members to wear the protective shine of diplomacy, but Ranaut, with her frank answers and headline-worthy bluntness, is in stark contrast to her peers. She is clearly having the first mover advantage, the archetypal outcast who has made it on her own, and doesn’t mince words.
Ranaut who began her career in Gangster took just a decade to prove that she is a legitimate star. Reports of her consistent creative interventions, and starry tantrums are abundant.
If she’s getting big, and the pictures are getting smaller, don’t worry, it’s the trait of stardom. The interference and tantrums are part of a star-culture, and all male stars of our cinema do such maneuvering to remain on top. Perhaps Ranaut has studied the general theory of stardom quite religiously, and aptly putting it into practice.
When Billy Wilder made Sunset Boulevard (1950) about a faded silent film star, his caustic take on the dark side of Hollywood earned the wrath of movie moghul Louis B. Mayer who publicly berated him for disgracing the industry that has made him and fed him. Mayer even suggested Wilder to be sent back to Germany. Wilder not only got back to Mayer with a vulgarity, he also prospered in Hollywood thanks to his continuous brilliance in filmmaking. This incident has a strange resemblance to Johar-Ranaut drama. About the hands that feed, and about moving out of an industry.
Ranaut works in a business where mentors/ collaborators play a huge role in forging long lasting symbiotic partnerships. The thumb rule of benefaction is about according the due respect, and Ranaut’s growing repute of alienating her directors one by one is only going to hamper her prospects. Reports suggest that director Anand L. Rai who made two career-defining films for Ranaut is growing discontent with her, much like Anurag Basu and Mohit Suri, the other two directors who repeated her in their films and then stopped. She will be next seen in Hansal Mehta’s Simran and Ketan Mehta’s biopic on Rani Lakshmibai.
It’s optimistic to imagine her being successful like Wilder, despite unmasking the hypocrisy of the industry. But Wilder was a male, who worked behind the camera in Hollywood that had a lot of immigrant luminaries. Ranaut, on the contrary is a woman, a star, working in the patriarchal universe of Bollywood. Clearly, huge odds to fight against if there’s not enough already.
(The writer is a journalist and a screenwriter who believes in the insanity of words, in print or otherwise; he tweets @RanjibMazumder.)
(This story is from The Quint’s archives and was first published on 11 March, 2017. It is being republished to mark Kangana Ranaut’s birthday.)
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