Deciphering Kangana Ranaut: Hate Her, Love Her, But You Must Acknowledge Her

It is great time to be Kangana Ranaut. Social media begets her the prominence her considerable acting prowess would never have. Her every single tweet is dog-whistle for hounds on the new media to attack and maul any target of her choosing. She plays many roles – whistle-blower, rabble-rouser, morality keeper and disrupter – with the finesse that defines her as an actor. She backs it up with the right choice of like-minded friends beyond the universe of films. She surely knows how to create a ruckus, and make it count.

As the one-woman army taking on big, bad Bollywood, and pretty much everything else, she knows how to take the battle to the opposite camp. She does much more than ruffle well-groomed feathers; she plucks them out with certain indelicateness. The targets, hurt in the wrong place, usually frown and bear. The likes of Karan Johar and Aditya Chopra wouldn’t like to dignify her with a response to her allegations, but they surely feel the heat. She may not be right everytime, but she knows her target audience well, particularly its level of intelligence and manipulatability. She is clever enough to understand that she has more loyal supporters than detractors on the social media and the real world.

People may love Kangana, may hate Kangana, but there’s no way they can refuse to acknowledge her, no matter where they stand on issues she raises.

They love her because she can be what they cannot. She has the guts and gumption to take on the powerful. Don’t we all love to see the powerful humbled and humiliated? She is irreverent to the influence they wield and their capacity to cause professional damage to her. She projects their practices as fundamentally unfair and them as unaccountable. While doing so, she reflects exactly the sentiments of millions in other professions as well as her’s. The distrust of those who exercise power and authority runs deep in every sphere. The Johars and Chopras could well be top bosses and managers in any organisation or even proprietors of establishments of all sizes. They are generally perceived to be evil, indulge as they do in nepotism, favouritism, corruption and whatnot, thereby crushing those who deserve better. The leftouts lack the courage to speak out; Kangana articulates their pent up bitterness through her accusations.

She is the outsider trying to break the barriers erected by privileged insiders. She might not have succeeded in that, or may not ever, but she has done a good enough job of scribbling ugly, angry graffiti on the exterior. Whoever passes by, can have a derisive laugh at those residing inside and their ways. She seeks revenge in exposing the high and the mighty in the filmdom. Aren’t most people outsiders in some way confronting gangs, camps, cliques and in-groups in all professions? How would they love to be in her shoes! But again, they are timid souls, lacking in courage, and that in-your-face attitude. When she hurls muck across the high fences, she slakes certain collective thirst for retribution. Yes, they love her for being brave.

The hate she generates because she resembles an arsonist with Thor’s hammer, hitting out with abandon. The sense of impunity with which she crosses the lines of civility and professional courtesy rankles, as does her capacity to be mean. Only the arrogant would certify their colleagues in the profession B grade, the spiteful would demean the abilities of rank newcomers, and the malicious would throw wild hints of moral turpitude in others with such casualness. But she does it with ruthlessness. At times it’s unclear whether she is fighting for a cause or just being a loose cannon.

An outsider who crashed into reckoning on her own, she would be expected to be generous to others like her. She hardly is. She would take on a Taapsee Pannu, Swara Bhashkar or Anurag Kashyap with no qualms. As a woman who has faced misogyny and harassment in the industry, she would be expected to be more sympathetic towards someone like Rhea Chakraborty. But she appears to have added force to the collective misogyny apparent in the Sushant Singh case. She would tell before the media loudly that the dead actor got into depression after getting into a relationship with Rhea. Despite evidence that he was under medication for mental health issues, she would claim on television that he had no such problem. Curiously, as it emerges now, she hardly knew him personally.

Kangana has been contradictions galore. It’s difficult at this point to gauge what she loves more, the cause or the noise. She sure can stir a Hornets’ nest, but the act eludes a sense of purpose. It may appear morally dubious even. But whatever it is, she is enjoying the attention. It is her time in the sun. No one should grudge that.

What does all this tell about us? The dog-whistle phenomenon is an interesting feature of recent times. Someone believable just needs to point a finger and whistle; and there would be many to pounce on any target. The social media, which embue people with a sense of power, also provide scope for their manipulation. We live in the age of churn. This is the time for emotions over reason, fiction over facts, popular vote over reality, and above all, entertainment over everything else. When the usual notions of truth and moral judgement stand confused, sentiment dictates judgement. Smart players can use this to their benefit. A few television anchors have been doing this for sometime now: whipping up emotions and reducing truth into a matter of sentiment bereft of the considerations of morality and factuality.

Since Kangana Ranaut is both likeable and indecipherable, and she appears to be on the right side of a cause, it’s not easy to charge her with deliberately manipulating people. But she is smart. Whatever the case, it is the best time to be Kangana.