Scandals a ticket to stardom

A film offer to a murder accused, catfights and publicity stunts on national TV, instant visibility for women has never been easier. Haimanti Mukherjee reports
A wild, passionate affair, dreams of a starlet, a jealous lover, a moment of madness and murder... It has all the elements blockbusters are made of, but when the poster of Ram Gopal Varma’s Not a Love Story was published last week, one couldn’t help but wonder whether Gen Y’s appetite for the macabre and shock value was going a bit too far.Even as Maria Susairaj’s judgment was being read out somewhere else in Mumbai, posters of a film on her Not a Love Story were printed.
The heroes of our times have been treading on the grey side for almost two decades since Shah Rukh Khan stammered his way into the audience’s hearts with Darr. But it’s the women, who are walking the wild side these days and getting maximum attention for it on and off the screen.
Even as America is shocked with the release of Casey Anthony, the 25-year-old mother, who was charged with murder for smothering her two-year-old daughter, and has been flooded by book deals and movie offers.
Last year, Hollywood actress Hayden Panettiere defended her decision to play Amanda Knox, the American student who was convicted of killing her roommate Meredith Kercher in cold blood. “She’s not a malicious girl. She didn’t have any intention to do this. She really tried to be as stoic against all odds and I do commend her for it,” said the actress when accused of glamorising the role of a murderer with no regard to the victim. The role of Kercher has been played by a relatively unknown actress in Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy. The most important role, that of the convicted murderer, went to the glamorous and established Heroes actor who lapped it up as a career move.
Back in India, a 20-year-old model Poonam Pandey’s declaration of stripping if India won the Cricket World Cup had the channels beaming her pictures all over India. The worse the catfights got between Big Boss participants Shweta Tiwari and Dolly Bindra, the more they became the talking point. TV shows like
Roadies’ TRPs thrive on Raghu Ram hurling expletives at the hopefuls and participants in the show. The behaviour of young girls on shows like Emotional Atyachar and Crunch would leave most parents traumatised. But the lure of the spotlight is difficult to resist for most.
Living in a world where the Poonam Pandeys, Dolly Bindras get instant eyeballs, is it surprising to see Maria being offered a film? Social commentator and adman Santosh Desai, says, “Not really. It doesn’t matter to filmmakers what path Maria Susairaj chose to be famous. In fact, the more she’s hated, the more sensational her entry into films will be. This generation has grown up on reality TV. Nothing hooks people more than a scandal or salacious details of other people’s lives.” Nothing matters more than becoming an instant celebrity and talking point in town.
Bejoy Nambiar, the director of Shaitan, a film about a group of youngsters with questionable morals and lack of conscience, says, “I wasn’t sure whether my film would have been acceptable even while releasing it, but the audiences are demanding experimental films which push the envelope. After all, movies only resonate what’s happening in society.”
Actress Mahie Gill, who takes on the role of Maria in Not A Love Story, says she did not have any apprehensions before taking on the role of a woman who was witness to her boyfriend killing her ‘friend’ and hacking him into 300 pieces, then burning his body parts. “The audience, these days, doesn’t want to be transported to the fantasy world where everything is black and white.
I took the role because I could draw a lot of parallels from Maria’s life before that night of the murder. She was a struggling actor, from another town trying to make it big in a very cut-throat industry in an alien city, just like me.” Even as Ram Gopal Varma, the director of Not a Love Story, comes under fire over the timing of the film’s publicity and offering Susairaj a film role, one cannot disagree that the grey area that audiences once craved for may be getting more sinister by the day.