Kabir Singh, the Hindi remake of Telugu hit film Arjun Reddy released today and in no time Twitter was divided into two neat camps—one, the majority, hailing the film starring Shahid Kapoor as a modern cult, the other, made up mostly of women, trashing it as “problematic” and “misogynistic”.
Singh, like Reddy, is far from an ordinary love story. The eponymous ‘hero’ of the movie is an academic achiever but also a bully. Over the course of the film he evolves into a down and out pessimist, an alcoholic and drug addict.
Several women on Twitter decried the character as, among other things, “vile” and lambasted the film for “glorifying” stalking.
Flawed heroes have been a cinema staple for a long time, but it is only now that they are exposed to the extreme scrutiny of social justice warriors, who may judge a movie’s worth on the basis of its own code of morality. Still, how far this practice goes in affecting the long-term assessment of the movie is yet to be seen.
