Unless you’ve been living under a rock these past couple of weeks, you would have heard about the tempest in a teacup that is the Karan Johar-Kangana Ranaut spat. Now some of us would snidely argue that the whole brouhaha was carefully preplanned scheme between the two to remain in the news; however if you discount that, the back and forth does make for some interesting and very revealing reportage. We look at who said what to whom and what the words betray about the speaker:
Kangana Ranaut called Karan Johar the flag-bearer of nepotism and a Mafiosi of a kind, when she was on his show Koffee with Karan. At the time, Karan appeared to accept her words; or perhaps he was just too taken aback to formulate any kind of retort. Later he said that he was being 'gracious' not having edited out the scene entirely. This may have had more to do with TRPs and less with graciousness one suspects.
In an interview he did later at the sidelines of the London School of Economics, he said that he was fed up of seeing her play the ‘woman card’ and the ‘victim card’.
Karan Johar also said that if Kangana didn’t like the way things were, she could think about quitting it. Now where have we heard something like this before? O yes! The classic response to everyone who ever made an argument one couldn’t counter! Karan Johar has faced a lot of flak and intolerance; been asked to go to Pakistan because he cast Pakistani actors in his movie… perhaps he was having his own Go-To-Pakistan moment here? A bit of misguided tit for tat perhaps?
People who otherwise don’t amount to much in the hierarchy or Bollywood often latch on to the coattails of others to remain relevant. Shekhar Suman’s spiteful and small minded comments about Kangana in this instance bear out this fact. This was also the chance he and his son were waiting for, to take their petty revenge for the revelations Kangana had earlier made about their abusive behavior towards her. Shekhar Suman, the great Bollywood nonentity did of course get his just comeuppance on Twitter.
Kangana decided to issue a few clarifications for those who did not quite grasp that she had the temerity to show a mirror to Bollywood and Bollywood biggies; which is not tantamount to being a victim. When Karan implied that her grasp of English is poor by claiming she did not understand the meaning of ‘nepotism’; she clarified that she very much did.
You may remember the Hrithik-Kangana controversy. We’ve probably forgotten about Shekhar and Adhyayan Suman’s incident. And now we have Karan Johar one of the most powerful men in Bollywood being openly critical and asking Kangana to leave the industry. We also heard it said that, Kangana's co-stars Shahid Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan were unhappy at being paid less than Kangana for Rangoon (clearly evidence that turnabout is not fair play here). Is it that the men are scared and resentful of existing power structures crumbling; of some of their power being wrested by ‘mere’ women? Or is it just a continuing suspicion of rank ‘outsiders’ usurping positions in the insular world of Bollywood?
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