Even though Deepika Padukone’s PR stunt at JNU trended for over a week, her film Chhapaak has spectacularly bombed at the Box Office and is now officially a flop. Her PR team is now working on overdrive and putting out cheesy videos on TikTok in a last-ditch attempt to help her movie.
However, Deepika’s complete ineptitude and her utter disregard for acid attack survivors came to the fore as she threw a TikTok challenge to a make-up influencer on her Chhapaak acid survivor ‘look’ and with this, Deepika Padukone has hit new levels of low and is unfitting to portray the role of India’s braveheart Lakshmi.
Telling you this as the son of an acid attack victim: @deepikapadukone you are one sick human being. My mother had to undergo years of surgery & emotional trauma. The victims are strong & beautiful, your commercialisation of their suffering is disgustingpic.twitter.com/2tOvkJqyU9
— Abhijit Iyer-Mitra (@Iyervval) January 18, 2020
Deepika Padukone launched herself on TikTok with much fanfare in the lead up to the release of Chhapaak, perhaps hoping that with her promotions on TikTok, the film would be able to penetrate in the tier-2 and tier-3 cities. Now, it’s a separate discussion on why Deepika should have never joined TikTok, the recent events that took place further corroborate the fact that Deepika has blurred the line between what is right and what is wrong as she goes into a promotion drive. Deepika, in a viral TikTok video can be seen asking a make-up influencer to enact three of her best looks and gleefully asks her to enact her looks from the films Om Shanti Om, Piku and Chhapaak. Since when, for the actress, did an acid attack victim become just another ‘look’? This is not just cringeworthy but infuriating, the levels of silliness that Deepika has been hiding all this while. She has trivialised an acid attack victim’s face as a ‘look’ that anyone can switch to, and this is despicable, to say the least.
We know that her film flopped and by all means, it was really Deepika’s doing, with her JNU stunt where she stood by leftist student leaders and people like Kanhaiya, who is infamous for leading the ‘Break-India’ pack. She did a huge disservice to the cause and to Laxmi, the woman whom the film was based on. Even if it flopped, it is absolutely inane to engage in the film’s marketing with a cheap makeup tutorial trivialising and commercialising, almost turning the victim’s scars into a joke, and belittling the intensity of the crime and the tragedy that strikes an acid attack victim. A sign of a man’s urge to overpower the opposite sex, it’s not something that can be turned into a random look
Deepika, for whom an acid attack victim is just another means for a make-up challenge has laid bare her moral depravity and the fact that she’s truly a sick human being. Perhaps, even her portrayal of Lakshmi on the big screen is a part of a broader PR strategy which fits with her carefully crafted image of someone who always stands up for social causes. But this doesn’t change the fact that Deepika has done a huge disservice to Laxmi and doesn’t deserve to portray Laxmi on the big screen.
Deepika could have easily went to meet Nirbhaya’s parents instead of showing ‘solidarity’ with the communists of JNU students as on the same day Deepika stood with the JNU students, the verdict was passed to hang the rapists of Nirbhaya. Instead of debates around whether Deepika was right to stand with the JNU students, the debates should have been around women safety in India and whether India is a safer place for women post Nirbhaya.
Chhapaak was never about Deepika, it was always about the fight of Laxmi as she braved through every challenge of life. It was about a woman scarred for life. Deepika with her PR stunts made it about her and her make-up. Unfortunately for Lakshmi, her marks can’t be wiped off, unlike Deepika’s makeup. While one failure is unlikely to affect Deepika’s career as all the eyeballs will shift to “83” where she will be seen with her husband Ranveer Singh who would be portraying the role of Kapil Dev. While Lakshmi’s story continues to be untold and the cause of acid attack victims, severely hampered. Even in her biopic, Lakshmi is a victim — of Deepika’s selfishness and foolishness.
