Thank Your Stars
Do the messages that actors communicate through ads and campaigns get drowned by their popularity?
Do the messages that actors communicate through ads and campaigns get drowned by their popularity?
Using a star to send out a message is always a tricky business. Will the star’s light shine brighter and hide it? Or will the message stick to the star, and become a life-long liability? Or will they intersect just right, both gaining traction?
I’ve been catching stray glimpses of Vidya Balan using the word shauchalya in a public service message which extols the virtue of toilets in homes. It is entirely possible, going by the almost stilted manner in which she says it, that she may never have used it before. To be fair, it is not a word any of us would use — it is heavy, formal, Sanskrit-ised, and tells us more about how messages are crafted in government offices, than about the vital importance of sanitation, and how having a toilet handy can change the lives of millions of women, and, by extension, the nation.
But Balan makes herself visible. She gets the message — even if heavy, clump-footed — across. And she does it because she is a bonafide star, who attracts our gaze just by being who she is.
Will talking about bodily excretions attach an odour to Balan? This is the actor who has regaled us with parts that demand a display of both self and skin, a star who has come into her own, with some misses, some hits. But most importantly, this is a star who is still looking. And that makes her a movable object: we can see her, in one frame, in chintz and sequins, shaking her stuff; we can see her in another, in simpler garb, talking about loos and cleanliness and health.
No, I don’t think we will wrinkle our noses at Balan, the star-actor who’s thrown her weight behind a cause most glamazons may not want to touch. Debilitating illnesses have had star ambassadors too, but it is one thing to remind parents about polio drops, it is quite another to talk about defecation. There is nothing genteel about it.
Amitabh Bachchan’s grizzly grandpa persona, exhorting people about getting their polio drops on time, melds with where he is at right now: he is playing his age; he can slicken himself up, or dowd himself down, depending upon what he is required to do. Being the brand ambassador for the eradication of polio is just one more thing in his portfolio, and we can draw a line between who he is, and what he is selling.
Which brings me to Deepika Padukone, girl of the moment. She’s recently outed herself, admitting to depression (which is about as far from “being depressed” as hell can be from a snowflake), and spoken about how hard it was for her, to wear a face on set and to fall apart behind it. Wearing masks is something actors do all the time, but this wasn’t that kind of masking: this was, she says, painful, and very debilitating.
It is not my case that Padukone is gorgeous, famous, wealthy and privileged and has two therapists on call, and a great supportive environment, and so she can’t really speak for all those with little or no access to help. Yes, she is all of these things, but anyone who has had to battle clinical depression will tell you that therapy and medication are crutches that you cannot do without, but you have to do the walking yourself. You have to admit you need help, you have to act upon it, you have to fight it. YOU have to do it. No one can step in for you.
No, it is not a disease, and no, it is not contagious. But will Padukone be able to walk away from this without being stigmatised? Being on a TV show with a celebrity anchor is a safe confessional space, where things are warm and fuzzy: you have to leave it and come to the real world. Where you can then choose to do a video, which will ratchet up your glamour quotient to the max, have your hair floating ethereally while you spout blank verse about women and choice and freedom and empowerment.
That video is a pretty artfully back-lit blur of stuff that is meant to be meaningful. There are better ways to articulate thoughts on these matters. There are truer thoughts than the ones that are strung through those lines. But I watched it because Padukone has just finished talking about a mental health issue we are happy to ignore. It has given her an outline that she didn’t have before.
I think both will gain, and I hope they do: the illness which needs awareness, and the star who spoke about it.
Source:: Indian Express
