Karan Johar likes to surround himself with ‘beauty’. It is known.
And this ‘beauty’ has nothing to do with being in the eyes of a beholder, Johar famously caters to the visual glitz and the most shamelessly conventional meaning of ‘beauty’. Which means muscular men with six-pack abs and women showing off their perfect mid-riffs and well-squatted posteriors.
No, I’m not even using any imagination here, I’m simply referring to the Student Of The Year 2 posters that dropped yesterday:
This is us. The Class of 2018 #SOTY2 _@karanjohar @apoorvamehta18 @punitdmalhotra @DharmaMovies @foxstarhindi @SOTYOfficial pic.twitter.com/sawKXVSGgL
— Tiger Shroff (@iTIGERSHROFF) April 11, 2018
I think we can all agree, that these posters take the audience’s need for ‘suspension of disbelief’… too far. And a few people on Twitter chose to bring this to the notice of producer Karan Johar and director Punit Malhotra. Like this one…
Hi @karanjohar and @punitdmalhotra this is what a real student looks like. We’re a bunch of sad kids. #SOTY2 pic.twitter.com/FfY8qTKF9a
— Shinjini/Mithie (@RavenclawRoy) April 11, 2018
Bursting any bubbles that neither does the average boy does ‘thirkaa de beat pe booty’ at the drop of a shirt. Nor do most of the girls spend time posing for pictures that are later airbrushed to make them look like the ‘next big thing!’ Nope. Most Indian students are primarily sleep-deprived beings, trying to cram three textbooks on the night before an exam, so that they can find a job.
No, these are not kids with rich industrialist fathers (not for the 99% at least) with the surnames like Raichands, Nandas or Singhanias.
Some people joined her and tweeted this
. @karanjohar ‘s SOTY vs the real SOTY. pic.twitter.com/C2yGROqllw
— Unofficial Rofl Gandhi (@RoflGandhi_) April 11, 2018
This…
Hi @karanjohar and @punitdmalhotra this is what a real student looks like. We’re a bunch of sad kids. #SOTY2 pic.twitter.com/v5Bsos4i4B
— Sachin Londhe (@plaid_sachin) April 12, 2018
And this…
adding on to your picture, this is a photo of my classroom in college. do you see a single person smiling? pic.twitter.com/lol0lG3nxn
— Ankit Shrivastava (@Fundeywala) April 12, 2018
What Johar tends to forget (quite often) is how he manages to find these ‘star kids’ (Chunky Panday’s daughter Ananya is making her debut), for that ‘youth connect’. Sure, it’s a ‘Bollywood film’ so we’ll suspend our disbelief, but packaging these grown men & women as ‘students’ is painfully plastic.
No, you don’t have to make a ‘realistic’ film, but you can at least strive to make a film that doesn’t reek of such fake, impossible beauty standards from the latest issue of Vogue. MOST of the schools don’t have a Jhalak Dikhla Jaa-like competition (with cameos by Kajol, Farah Khan and others). No they don’t have ‘men’ pretending to be kids, pumping iron in a gym, lip-syncing to songs in Switzerland.
This Student Of The Year universe is EVEN MORE improbable than Star Wars – for the simple reason, fewer people want to a universe like this to actually exist. Kindly take note.
