From ‘andha’ to ‘langda,’ Bollywood movies normalised abuse against people with physical challenges. Will 'Zero' turn the tide?
A typical comedy scene in a Bollywood film will always draw its laughter from physical comedy.
Picture Ajay Devgn, Arshad Warsi, Sharman Joshi and Tusshar Kapoor heckle a blind Paresh Rawal in Golmaal Fun Unlimited, and you know what we’re talking about. A blind man Paresh can only recognise someone by their touch and voice, and that was the entire premise of the film — four boys tricking and comfortably living off a blind couple until they are caught.
There’s no denying that such scenes were funny.
But then, how is this really funny?
Bollywood, especially through the nineties, has taught us the coolest insults one can throw at someone — and garner the loudest laughs. Of course, they are just jokes. A calls B 'langda', A laughs, the audience laughs. You pick it up and reuse the same insult in real life — from ‘chashmish’ to ‘bhains,’ we know we have all done it at some point. You know how it’s going to turn out because you’ve seen the laughs in the movies.
Except there is no audience in real life, your punch line just fell flat, and your joke wasn’t even funny, to begin with.
The problem is that people with physical challenges are used just as a prop in Hindi films, there to provide comic relief when you need it.
They are deliberately made so inconsequential to the plotline, even when they are at the centre of the film — think Tusshar Kapoor, a central character in the Golmaal series, and his stammer — that you don’t even realise when mockery becomes normal.
In Housefull 3, Akshay Kumar, Riteish Deshmukh and Abhishek Bachchan pretend to be deaf, blind and wheelchair-bound. If the pretence wasn’t bad enough, the loves of their lives are not going to be allowed to be with them because, well, they chose to be with differently-abled people.
So rampant is this ‘normalised’ mockery that most fail to understand how long ago they’ve crossed the line of decency, and how far they have come.
But things get particularly problematic when it’s a ‘self-joke.’ In Shah Rukh Khan’s Zero, Bauua Singh is seen blaming his father for his short height. Apparently, the father’s tobacco-chewing habit messed up his sperm, thereby causing the ‘shortage.’ How does one not laugh when the differently-abled is laughing at his own cost?
Of course, Bollywood has depicted physical challenge fairly, too. There’s a Black and a Khamoshi, and many others to boast of. But there’s something about wrapping a message in crude, gimmicky comedy that makes it so deadly.
And that’s what Bollywood has mastered.
Comedy makes it easily digestible, gives it a wider reach, and because the end result is so hilarious, it makes it cool — a powerful tool that if Bollywood had only used judiciously, it would have helped spread awareness, rather than reinforce systematic insensitivity.
We wonder if anyone is reading this, or will they turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the argument.