Spoiler Alert
“Veere Di Wedding” became a sensation on social media for its masturbation scene. The movie started trending and got more attention when a bunch of right-wing trolls started tweeting about having watched the film with their grandmother.
For some inexplicable reason, there seems to be a tremendous demand for Veere Di Wedding among Indian grandmothers, regardless of their alleged, consistent (word-to-word consistent!) opinion after the film. pic.twitter.com/VCn1wroHlf
— Karthik 🇮🇳 (@beastoftraal) June 2, 2018
The exact same thing was tweeted from multiple accounts. This raises a suspicion – was a smear campaign carried out against the film, especially against Swara Bhaske
r?
“Veere Di Wedding” has been said to be India’s response to “Sex and The City”, but that’s for another debate.
Veere Di Wedding’s box office success shows that criticism of the movie gave it more publicity and boosted its success rather than harming it. We can say that the smear campaign probably backfired. Swara Bhasker was quick to give it back to the trolls.
This was the second Bollywood film that showed a woman masturbating and drew flak from the public. The first one was “Lipstick under My Burkha” where Ratna Pathak was seen masturbating over phone sex. But in the previous case, no one carried out a smear campaign against the actress for doing the scene, unlike the case with Swara Bhasker.
India is known as the land of the Kamasutra, where for generations, we have openly spoken about sex and embraced it. Just have a look at the sculptures on ancient temples.
Here, we have right-wing trolls posing as guardians of our culture which apparently gives them the right to abuse, attack and carry out smear campaigns against anyone who doesn’t conform to their views.
If “Veere Di Wedding” is a box office success, then the actors and the filmmakers can thank the trolls for helping out.