Raksha Bandhan to Laal Singh Chaddha: ‘Struggling’ Bollywood’s online hate problem

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Calls to boycott two of India’s greatest Bollywood stars’ upcoming films have been made on social media, but are these efforts genuinely effective?

This week on social media, the flicks Laal Singh Chaddha and Raksha Bandhan, starring Aamir Khan and Akshay Kumar, respectively, have been trending amid calls from some users to boycott the productions, the stars, and even Bollywood itself.

The evolving relationship between Bollywood and the Hindi-language film business in India that employs millions of people and its audience appears to be reflected in social media trends, but experts say it’s difficult to quantify the harm that such calls might cause.

Bollywood has yet to make up for the significant losses it suffered because of the COVID-19 lockdowns, which kept theatres down for months at a time. Many high-profile films have underperformed at the box office even after they have reopened, prompting some analysts to believe that the industry is facing a serious crisis.

A lot of money and hope are riding on the success of Raksha Bandhan, in which Akshay Kumar portrays a loving big brother to four sisters, and Laal Singh Chaddha, an official remake of the Forrest Gump movie starring Tom Hanks.

However, right-wing online trolls have dug up past quotes from the actors or other people connected to the movies to charge them with being “anti-India” or hostile to Hindus.

Since Kumar is one of India’s most bankable performers and has produced several films that appeal to Hindu nationalists, it is more difficult to determine what is really behind the resistance to Raksha Bandhan.

In the most recent season of the well-known chat show Koffee with Karan, the impact of social media trolling and the toll it takes on people in the film industry have frequently come up for discussion.

While not every Bollywood hit can be credited to “excellent content,” Mr Bhatia believes that, for the time being, the spectator is still king—“not the troll.”

It’s unlikely that Bollywood’s bad relationship with social media will improve any time soon, though, as online environments continue to get more poisonous.

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