Mumbai: The recently-released trailer of Siddhanth Chaturvedi and Triptii Dimri’s ‘Dhadak 2’ has sparked a ‘brownface’ debate online.
Netizens noticed in the trailer that the complexion of Siddhant, who portrays the character of a poor boy, in the film, has been darkened with makeup.
This didn’t go down well social media users, who slammed Bollywood filmmakers for discrimination.
“Even if they claim that poor people don’t have skincare routines and get tanned from not using sunscreen, why don’t they just cast an actual brown person instead of doing all this with makeup and weird stereotypes?” one Redditor expressed.
Another person wrote, “As per Bollywood, jinka colour fair hai wo gareeb kese ho sakta hai.”
“This has always been problematic,” read another opinion.
“Poor ko saavla dikhao.. rich ko gora – stereotypical mindset of Bollywood movies,” slammed a netizen, while another commented, “Constantly just showcasing one specific group as a skintone just gives me another ‘fair and lovely’ kinda stigma.”
One post went as, “That’s so horrible,” while someone else wrote, “I’ve also seen people criticise Janhvi’s clear skin in Good Luck Jerry, as if being poor automatically means you can’t have good skin or follow any kind of basic skincare routine. It’s wild how some expect poverty to be visually loud, dirt on the face, cracked lips, and dark circles, otherwise it’s ‘not believable’.”
When Bollywood makeup artists hear the word ‘poor’, they bring out the dirt palette!
byu/ActuallyBoring inBollyBlindsNGossip
At the trailer launch of ‘Dhadak 2’, Siddhant had said, “As an actor, I feel truly fortunate that Karan (Johar) sir had faith in me and chose me to portray a small-town character. Until now, most of the films I’ve done have been urban-centric, and since I come from a small town, Ballia, I was missing that kind of small-town story.”
Directed by Shazia Iqbal, the film is set to be released in theatres on August 1.