Mumbai, Aug 29: Movies, particularly Indian movies, have a long and dark history of turning acts such as stalking and sexual assault into acts that are supposed to look romantic and normal. While there has been some visible improvement in the field over the years, the 'tradition' of the lead character getting away with sexual assault by virtue of being the lead character remains unchanged.
The latest example to that dark corner of films is Judwaa 2, the sequel to the Salman Khan film, which now stars Varun Dhawan in a double role. The film released its first trailer only days ago, and it has already come under fire from users for showing sexual assault as a 'cute' thing.
One user, in particular, took serious offence to the depiction and wrote a lengthy Facebook post to that end. The user, Pulkit Arora, wrote the following message to express his disgust at the scene in question:
"Professional Salman Khan impersonator Varun Dhawan opens the #Judwaa2 trailer with a playful recounting of how he forced his mouth on a woman as she struggled to push him away.
We're supposed to like this character for committing sexual assault. What a badmaash, so cute.
I've seen classes and classes of children be conditioned to objectify their female teachers after watching Salman Khan films over the weekend. No one in their right mind can deny the impact films have on what we consider right or wrong as a culture.
At what point do we hold filmmakers accountable? In a country where crimes against women are rampant, how is this not even being discussed? HOW HARD IS IT TO NOT PLAY PEPPY MUSIC AS SEXUAL ASSAULT HAPPENS ONSCREEN?"
The post can be read here:
The post quickly became popular, getting over 1900 likes and nearly 1000 shares at the time of this writing. Many people joined to agree with Pulkit for calling the film (and Bollywood) out on this issue.
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