Now Guys, Imagine If Somebody Were to Roast Tanmay’s Tan

Comedians like Tanmay Bhat can be hilarious but professionals should never get personal, writes Khalid Mohamed.

Till the Sunday gone by, Tanmay Bhat was an acquired taste – or tastelessness –depending on your threshold of tolerance. Today he’s featured on the top fold of the nation’s highest circulated front pages.  An overnight cause celebre his facial close-ups, in an abject state of contortion, have had to be digested with the breakfast bowl of cornflakes.

Tanmay’s rock-steady girlfriend Rega Jha, described as “the feisty and funny 24-year-old Indian ed head for one of the world’s largest content sites” is out of the backroom, too. She’s smiling pretty with All-India Bakchod’s co-founder Tanmay as he pouts away on Page 2 of Mumbai Mirror which serves delicious chatter on A-lister socialites, sport stars, politicos and Bollywood celebrities.

The irreverent funnyman has arrived with a Snapchat video posted on his Facebook page. The 28-year-old won’t be forgotten for lampooning the living legends Lata Mangeshkar and Sachin Tendulkar, in an imaginary expletive-packed conversation on the batting skills of Virat Kohli.

Obviously, the backlash faced earlier by the AIB for the predictably f-word littered ‘Roast’ involving film personalities, wasn’t sufficient to ensure a permanent place in the hall of ill-fame.

Truly, there’s nothing like bad publicity in the entertainment world. Indeed, when films like Fanaa, Rang De Basanti and now Uddta Punjab spark controversies, the brouhaha turns out to be heaven-sent. A hopelessly scabrous film – Girlfriend (2004) – on a same-gender liaison, had inadvertently become a cushy cash-earner only after an offended political group had smashed the window panes of Mumbai’s New Empire cinema.

Moral of the story: even the heftiest publicity budget cannot buy public curiosity the way a full-blown controversy does. And if right-wing politicians are part of the protesting brigade, that turns out to be a perfect opportunity to bring up the convoluted notion of freedom of expression.

Raj Thackeray’s MNS has filed two police complaints against the beleaguered funster, the BJP has addressed Mumbai’s police commissioner, while the Shiv Sena has expressed its outrage by emailing Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

Meanwhile, Lata Mangeshkar has retained her dignity by stating, “I don’t know who Tanmay Bhat is.” Now she does.

So was Tanmay Bhat right in mocking the two undisputed jewels of India, so to speak? Is it enough to add a disclaimer on the video saying, “I make nonsense on my Snapchat. Also, I obviously love Lata and Sachin?”

Going by the tsunami of indignant comments on Twitter, the public reaction has been overwhelmingly loaded against the comedian who crossed the lines of decency.  Morally and ethically – two fast-fading qualities today – Bhat’s lampoon affirms that no individual is free to run amok with an attention-seeking Facebook post under the pretext of humour.

Indeed, stand-up comedians since the last few years have been cracking sexist jokes, infallibly against the clichéd, kitchen-bound housewife, justifying why their husbands are entitled to adultery. Stammering, body or tan defects, obesity and an assorted number of physical disabilities are ha-ha material, as they are on exceedingly popular TV shows.

Vis-a-vis the overload of offensive personal remarks better known as trolls on  social media networks sites, these have become just one of those to-be-shrugged-off hazards. For instance, Rishi Kapoor states that whenever he is trolled, no-viciousness-barred, he blocks the ranter.

In principle though, censorship isn’t desirable at all – a point which has been emphasised by Shyam Benegal as the head of the central government’s committee appointed on the muddled state of film censorship. Yet, at the same time, I would think there has to be a ‘watch dog’ to avoid a state of anarchy.

A semblance of this anarchy can be evidenced in Tanmay Bhat’s attitude. Say what you want to, dude, but please don’t get personal. Pick on peccadilloes and scams which are fact-based, no one can be exempt from those. Still, a professional stance is a must. In fact in criticism, or in its extensions be it a lampoon, spoof or satire, America’s Mad magazine continues to be an ideal example. Hilarious but never asinine.

As it happens largely the world over, hyper-ventilating and extremism work today. When provocation borders on slander, that’s where the ‘fun’ or controversies begin.

In retrospect, I can rewind to an entirely unrelated incident. At the Evening News of India, its news editor who occasionally wrote film reviews, had disparaged Premnath for his performance in Johnny Mera Naam. The editor had objected to Premnath’s “cauliflower-shaped nose.” All hell broke loose. Premnath wasn’t offended, but the editor’s colleagues and readers were. The editor admitted his mistake and never reviewed a film again.

Maybe it’s a generational thing. Would Tanmay Bhat admit his mistake and quit getting personal? Who knows? After all, today a mistake of the acrimonious kind is the route for hitting the headlines. And achieving infinitely much more than 15 minutes of fame.

(The writer is a film critic, filmmaker, theatre director and a weekend painter)