Parvathy Thiruvothu Clearly Explains The Problem With Movies Like Kabir Singh And We Love Her For It
I haven’t been writing for a very long time but I will tell you this. Sometimes you write stories that stay with you long after the day has ended, long after the internet has stopped talking about it. For me, one of these where I faced severe backlash and even some questionable threats is the story I wrote about the most disturbing and now a superhit film, Kabir Singh that released earlier this year.
This was perhaps one of the most misogynistic and dangerous pieces of cinema to hit the screens in recent times. Kabir Singh was the remake of a South Indian film, Arjun Reddy and received a lot of flak for being the sexist crap that it was. A large part of the industry though, pretended that this was all just a lot of hullabaloo around nothing and simply never bothered commenting on it.
But now, we finally have an influential voice saying something and in a room full of A-listers who didn’t know where to look as she spoke, this was important. Actress Parvathy Thiruvothu was part of a discussion that included the who’s who of Bollywood and Parvathy spoke with eloquence and clarity to put her point across. We stan this woman.
Also Read : Hey Shahid Kapoor, Pointing Out Sanju’s Fault Doesn’t Make Your Kabir Singh Any Less Problematic
During a conversation with Anupama Chopra on a chat show, Parvathy touched upon on the debate around both movies – Kabir Singh and Arjun Reddy. This was an actor’s roundtable, a format that this channel follows, where they gather people from the industry to talk about their year. The likes of Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh, Ayushmann Khurrana, Parvathy Thiruvothu and Vijay Sethupathi, Vijay Devarakonda and Alia Bhatt.
During the course of the conversation, Vijay Devarakonda’s movie Arjun Reddy was talked about and very long comparisons were made to the movie Joker and how it may have been similar. And that’s when Parvathy explained how it was incorrectly portrayed by citing an example and comparison with the iconic movie and character of the Joker.
She said and we agree, “Arjun Reddy or Kabir Singh, both had the visual grammar of glorification, Joker did not. Joker literally just showed us, like facts, facts, facts. At no point did I feel that the character that Joaquin played, I’m totally with you, you must kill everyone. I get you, I may not be with you and that’s a tragedy, we can leave it there without feeling inspired to follow it.”
PARVATHY IS A LEGEND!! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 pic.twitter.com/DYJv4rWhiN
— S (@brandonfIynn) November 25, 2019
Furthering on her point, she supported it by saying, “Whereas if you’re telling there’s no passion in a relationship without slapping each other and I see the comments on YouTube where people are resonating with that, there’s engaging in a massive mob-like manner where you are inciting violence,” and it’s like she stole words right out of our mouths. Come to think of it, that is exactly what we and several others had been pointing out when the movie released, because even in terms of fictional cinema, Kabir Singh and Arjun Reddy were more of an inspiration especially since the happy ending justified the means to the end for these troubled characters.
Take for example the very experience of watching the movie too. While watching Joker on the theatre, the feeling of dismay and a certain sense of disturbance lingered on in everyone’s head as they walked out, but only because they understood the makings of a villain-like Joker and because it hit so close to home. But during Kabir Singh, the fact that the audience was lauding it with whistles and hoots when clearly what the character was doing on screen was troubling was the very first sign of how inherently problematic the movie was.
Parvathy concluded her statement by saying, “I can’t be the judge of how to fix that but that’s a bipolar behavior and that’s scary to me because there’s day to day people getting affected by that and I think we gotta be a little responsible. I as an actor cannot stop a director from doing that but I can choose not to be a part of that film.”
A choice that clearly did not dawn upon Shahid Kapoor when he signed on to be part of this troubled and misogynistic crap. Meanwhile, we hope that Parvathy’s strong words offer some perspective to the ones who found nothing wrong with the movie.
