An actor’s ego at times leads to unseemly situations at public places. ON the recent controversy where Shahrukh Khan allegedly misbehaved with the Wankhede stadium, Mumbai security staff after an IPL match.
This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever. For the popular medium of cinema and its artisans at least, I’d agree with what Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud says here, the man who gave us the discipline of psychoanalysis. It was at the time of Ketan Mehta’s "Maya Memsaab", around 1993. Shahrukh Khan threatened a journalist for writing an article about him, Deepa Sahi and Ketan Mehta booking a room in a hotel and rehearsing an intimate scene of the movie, later, which turned out to be the Maya Memsaab sex scene controversy. It was the only day of today’s King Khan’s life that he was jailed.
As if it wasn’t enough, he called that reporter and said something like this, “I’m going to come to your house right now and f*** you in front of your parents”, and he went, till the gates of his house, shouting and threatening. Don’t know about Tuesday’s Wankhede Stadium episode but the star was at best of his abusive language then. A year or two later Khan met with the same journalist at a party, hugging and saying sorry to him, realising that the article was written by someone else from the magazine.
I find it a curious case of ego. An artist’s ego. And if you don’t count cinema as an art, then call it an actor’s ego. If it creates ruckus at public places, it determines your ace on stage and before camera too. Remember Shia Labeouf, who was beaten to the ground by a shirtless man named Mike after a reported heated exchange inside a bar in Vancouver, Canada last October. It was said that Shia was pretty intoxicated, like it is being said about Shahrukh, which wasn’t proven by paparazzi though. The ego that got Shia punched in the head, made him the star actor of “Transformers: dark of the moon” too.
There is a long history, as to what we are talking about. Salman Khan and his on record brawls with media persons, charged by his artistic ego and anger were pretty regular until recently.
A few film journalists many times say about Amitabh Bachchan that you can’t be in talking terms and criticising him at the same time. He only likes the ones who admire him. You talk something that makes him unhappy and he’ll make sure you never get to interview him ever again.
This is with filmmakers too. Few days back, the director of "Char Din Ki Chandni" Samir Karnik lashed out at critics saying in saalon ko to bulana bhi nahi chahiye, in kutton ko to marna chahiye, mera hi popcorn khate hain aur meri hi film ko ek aur aadha star dete hain (these dogs and bastards must be beaten, must be banned, they eat my popcorn, watch my movie and give half or one star).
Neither Shahrukh nor Shia are bad human beings, it just that they have a responsibility in public sphere, which is time and again broken. And who’s accountable? Art, ego, stardom, human behaviour, consumerism, market, money or a highly intolerable society we’re living in? Maybe all. But, it doesn’t matter until we start talking about society as a whole, humanity as a whole. It all starts from here only.
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Gajendra Singh Bhati
