Here’s why Vijay Deverakonda needs to distance himself from Puri Jagannadh's terrifying toxicity

Days before Vijay Deverakonda ’s much-hyped Liger hit the screen, a video clip from one of director Puri Jagannadh ’s recent Telugu films iSmart Shankar, featuring Ram Pothineni and Nabha Natesh, went viral. In the shocking footage, (only to those not familiar with Puri’s mythical misogyny) the man threatens to ‘rape’ the girl and she loves the thought.

Puri’s obnoxious, deeply offensive, gender-prejudiced and brain-challenged film in Telugu raked in the dough as though there was no tomorrow. The film hits rock-bottom of the creative barrel, churning out the kind of venomous toxic garbage which one thought Indian cinema was done with. But then, there is always those Puri ki Puri sexist misogynistic type of filmmakers who stop at nothing to provide the proverbial frontbenchers the cheap thrills that they are looking for outside their homes.

Indeed, iSmart Shankar is the commercial Telugu cinema’s equivalent of pornography. Women are treated as playthings to be enjoyed and abused as and when the lord and master, a.k.a Hero Sahib wishes. And men in the audience love it when the hero shouts at the heroine as though she is his slave. There are numerous sequences in this film where the heroine is manhandled and heckled.

Apparently that’s a very manly thing to do in Jagannath Puri’s kingdom of cinematic thrills.

But the one sequence that had me shell-shocked is the one where our hero Shankar (Ram Potheneni) barges in on the heroine ( Nidhhi Agerwal ), who by flaring nostrils, calls the cops on him for sexual harassment. But by the time the cops arrive, she has changed her mind. She is in love with her harasser.

So there we have it, the full-blown satire on the MeToo movement. Puri knows the real truth about women who shout out for sexual offences. If he had his way, Puri would let women be heckled, accosted, harassed and manhandled because that’s what they like it. Or so Jagannath Puri believes. And going by the box-office collections of iSmart Shankar, the moviegoing audiences believe in Puri’s thesis on gender dynamics. Empowering women in our cinema is a far cry when movies don’t even seem to respect them.

Had Vijay Deverakonda seen this film or or that matter any of Puri’s nakedly sexist, misogynist films like Temper, Rogue and Mehbooba (the last introduced Puri’s son to the world) before hopping on to Liger? Women in these films are roughed up, slapped around and manhandled by the heroes while audiences clap and cheese.

If Vijay Deverakonda had seen the collected cataclysm of Puri’s corny sexism, he would have run the other way, which Vijay should still do the soonest, and the fastest possible sprint out of the Puri porn factory. I hear the second Puri-Deverakonda project that was planned has been shelved. Thank God!

Interestingly, this director, who revels in his macho heroes hitting, heckling, harassing women, said in a Spotify interview titled ‘Puri Musings’, “There is a high number of rape cases per every one hour in India and according to some International reports, India is one of the country where the birth of female child is not at all considered a good happening. The certain section of media enjoys in publishing such type of rape news. There are many other things that they can do but they enjoy publishing on actors, drugs and other silly issues.”

No Mr Puri, it isn’t the media which enjoys “rape news”. It is you who seem to enjoy making “rape films”. What Liger has done to Vijay Deverakonda’s brilliant career is no less harmful humiliating and damaging than a sexual assault.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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