Movie Review Telugu S PYDER G LORIFICATION OF SNOOPING ON UNASSUMING COMMON MAN IS THE ESSENCE OF S PYDER
by Meena Yeggina
life.
doctor heroine who after watching hours of porn, gets all hot and is on a prowl for a friend with "benefits," meaning no-strings- attached sex. Maheshbabu, snooping offi- cially on her private telephone
Starring: Maheshbabu, Rakul Preet Singh, SJ Surya Direction: Murugadas Music: Harris Jayaraj Glorification of snooping on unassuming com- mon man is the essence of Spyder Coming from one of the
However, a bigger blow to my hopes of watching a balanced movie is yet to come from another unexpected quarter that no- body seem to notice or care: The vigilante heroism celebrated in the name of humanity.
While sexist misogyny is common in all Indian and Bollywood movies and more so predominantly in south Indian movies (see my review of Arjun Reddy) but what is shell shocking is the casual and exalted treatment of vigilantism in Spyder. It is glorified to such an ex- tent of adoration and ad- miration that it becomes extremely scary. Used to a society that is already bowing down to poverty, caste intolerance, corrup- tion and sex discrimina-
calm and seemingly trend-set- ting heroes of Indian cinema today, Maheshbabu's Spyder is a movie I had some expectations of, no not of style and slickness which come in abundance, but of some shining social values, negligent stereotyping and gen- der discrimination. Why you ask? Two reasons. One: Amidst over-whelm- ing praise from well-known di- rectors for the trash movie of the century calledArjun Reddy, Ma- heshbabu stood out opposing the drug and booze glorification and said he would never do so. As a mother of two, I was thank-
tion viewers tend to accept it as common and okay for another person to snoop in on their private lives. Activists in India are vigorously fight- ing against several potential dangers of Aadhar card data (what a name by the pa- triarchal BJP! Imagine Social Security cards being called Dependency Cards!) being misused and individual privacy abused if leaked, this movie takes personal data ex- ploitation to a different level altogether in the name of "protecting" people. What a horror it is if somebody is constantly listen- ing in on you and has all your information from your bank accounts to your social se- curity! Mahesh Babu is a gentleman and has good intentions and supposedly does no harm to anyone with private information in hand but what if such information and per- sonal data falls into the hands of a bad guy within IB? A blackmailer? A rapist? A ter- rorist in disguise? What then?
conversations, as is his normal routine, swoops in, stalks her and takes advantage of this comfy set up. Yes a real cool spy this man is! Disturbingly, most movie reviewers from top-notch newspapers termed the heroine Rakul Preet Singh a good 'diver- sion, relief,' from an otherwise dark plot. Is that what a woman is supposed to be in a film? A mere relief to all MCPs? Sick com- ing from reviewers even. The absolute ig- norance, sidelining and normalization of using women as props in Indian movies is too bizarre to miss. It's as if a private con- versation is going on between the males in the movie and their counterparts in the au- dience. Women are just peripheral distur- bances like food or water, to quench a temporary but necessary thirst. No wonder women don't go to the theatres anymore and leave the patriotic, caste, and misogy- nistic super stud movies to men and find entertainment in other interesting things in
ful that at least one well-known face had the guts to criticize a bad movie for what it is - hence the expectation of higher moral standards from his latest venture Spyder that appeared affable and slick. Maybe Ma- heshbabu matured as a father and moved on from movies like Business Man. Two: Mahesh is definitely an eye candy and a pleasure to watch on the screen a la Prabhas. To some extent he does comes through, at least, to start with: I don't remember any scenes of substance abuse in Spyder. This in itself is an important achievement consid- ering the fact that movies are almost like re- ligion to Indian youth who follow their idols blindly. The biggest blessing to me, however, came in disguise: NO ITEM SONGS. Too good to be true? Sadly yes, it was.
As if to make up for all the missing item songs, we are presented with a bimbette
34 www.indiaparentmagazine.org
November 2017
Made with FlippingBook Annual report