Kabir Singh..Should the actor have refused to play this role?

A movie recently released in India has raised a storm. The movie, Kabir Singh, portrays a dysfunctional character’s obsessive love for a girl and the mayhem that unspools when she gets married to another man.

The hero, is reprehensible in every way, and wreaks havoc with his macho, misogynist behavior. Love story or Horror story? That is the moot point. Critics have panned the movie on the ground that it endorses misogyny and skewed cavemen notions of masculinity. Yet the movie is doing great business. What does this say?

I have not seen the movie and have no desire to. Yet on the basis of the trailers and reviews, have understood that it is a very out-of-the- box offering for the audience and that the performance by the lead actor, Shahid Kapoor is compelling. The radical shift from traditional fare may have resonated.

The hero’s maniacal obsession with the girl and the losing of her, disassembles him completely. His self-destructive tendencies are unleashed in macabre dark splendor, and he feels no obligation to remorse or guilt of any kind.

Not pretty at all. What is most objectionable is the shameless glorifying of the hero’s persona and the meek pliant simpering acceptance of the heroine to this toxic behavior. If the heroine had matching fire and a stronger personality with some aberrant streaks of her own, it would be more acceptable. It would be more dismissable as – “Each to his own – they deserve each other!” But, the tame passive character of the heroine sends a dastardly message to rogue men out there, of which there are a-plenty.

However, the point is, can you censure an actor for accepting an assignment like this? His job is to be true to his craft of acting. Where does an actor’s moral responsibility begin and end? Is not a monstrous, obnoxious man who fashions hell out of passion and ‘love,’ a slice of life – albeit a slice of toxic life, which is quite the norm today? There are millions of TV shows and movies doing the rounds in which all kinds of muck is flying around, presenting the worst in human behavior. Dystopian is the new normal in films and literature. If the moral question of toxicity of content holds, then 90 percent of the stuff being doled out today, doesn’t pass muster. So, why single out this one movie?

I shudder to think that guys like Kabir may exist. See him on screen if you must, but, if you come within sniffing distance of one such in real life – be advised to run a mile in the opposite direction. Dear women – it’s not romantic to be loved like this – it’s psychotic and scary! Take to your heels and recommend the guy to a therapist. Save him and yourself!