Bollywood learns to Laugh (at itself)

At one point, stand-up comic Aditi Mittal thanked Padukone, seated in the front row of the audience, to have kept Singh “off the streets”, thus making other women feel safe. Kapoor was mocked for being the “most untalented” from a film family that already has Sonam and Sanjay Kapoor, apart from being constantly reminded that he flunked Class 12. In this slinging match, no one was spared. Johar, despite being the host, was subjected to all kinds of jokes on his much-debated sexual preferences.

All these played out, not for a select-audience, but in a ticketed public event. Nearly 4,000 people had turned up that at the NSCI
Auditorium in Worli for All India Bakchod (AIB) Knockout aka The Roast of Arjun Kapoor and Ranveer Singh — an evening of “insult comedy”, a popular comedy concept in the West, where a celebrity is invited to be a punching bag.

To their credit, the two young Bollywood leading men played along showing a sporting spirit rarely seen in the Hindi film industry. “You upper middle-class idiots, you spent Rs 4,000 to see us getting insulted,” Kapoor said to the audience. “You could have watched Gunday 25 times with that money and saved us a flop,” he said, referring to the 2014 dud, in which he and Kapoor appeared together. The event, in a way, celebrated the year that has gone by, when old, stuffy Bollywood loosened up a bit and showed its ability to laugh at itself.

BOLLYWOOD’S CHANGING

This attitudinal change can be attributed to the growing popularity of spoofs and parodies made by comedy collectives such as AIB and The Viral Fever (TVF) and their expanding reach on the internet.

If AIB’s event was remarkable for the unabashed Bollywood bashing, TVF pulled off a coup by getting superstar Shah Rukh Khan in their spoof talk show Barely Speaking with Arnub. In the guise of jokes, the superstar had to face some tough questions, like does he really buy the Best Actor awards? One of this year’s biggest viral hits was AIB’s Genius of the Year featuring promising young actor Alia Bhatt. It showed Bhatt parodying her dumb actor public persona following her disastrous performance in the general knowledge round of Koffee with Karan.

YOUNG AND IRREVERENT

Almost everyone links this change to the breed of young actors, who are internet savvy and don’t have the insecurities of their previous generation. Film critic Rajeev Masand, who was one of the panelists in the AIB Knockout, says, “Fame and popularity is all about the instant impact you make today.

The younger breed of actors are smart and they capitalise on that.” According to AIB member Gursimran Khamba, these young actors’ sensibilities are similar to the comedians and the target audience they cater to. They have seen foreign comedy shows such as Saturday Night Live and have no problems in associating themselves with such shows.

“I believe in crying for people and laughing at myself. AIB is super talented and we just decided to have some fun,” Bhatt had said after her video with AIB went viral in August. It worked wonders in salvaging Bhatt’s image — the same people who laughed at the jokes earlier, lauded her for being a sport. “Actors have understood that the internet is a different ballgame from TV, where they can’t go with their manufactured image as in a Comedy Nights with Kapil. Here, irreverence and honesty will be appreciated,” says TVF chief Arunabh Kumar.

GROWING UP

In 2013, after Tips took TVF’s parody of the Race 2 trailer off YouTube and Yash Raj Films (YRF) refused to allow AIB’s spoof of the trailer of Dhoom 3, AIB reacted with a video — “An Open Plea to Bollywood”.

This was a scathing satire of Bollywood’s insecurity shown through the parody of a popular song. YRF shared the video on their Facebook page, complimenting it. YRF’s move made many warm up to the idea of self-deprecating humour, says Khamba. Later, in 2014, even though AIB was approached by several big production houses to make promotional videos for their films, they declined on principle. TVF, however, came up with videos on Red Chillies Entertainment’s Happy New Year and YRF’s Kill Dil. “Bollywood has always been a parasite for successful ventures. These comedy collectives make them cool in the eyes of people who look down upon Bollywood,”says Masand.

It’s easy to associate the trend with young actors, but the most important lesson Bollywood seems to have learnt this year is summed up by veteran actor Alok Nath. Early in 2014, Nath suddenly found a series of jokes targetting his onscreen persona of sanskari bauji of ’90s family entertainers. The 58-year-old actor, who at first was unable to understand how to deal with the cruelty of the internet, realised that the medium could be empowering when he appeared in a self-parodying cameo in AIB’s viral hit Nayak 2: The Common Man Rises. “We celebrities have stiff upper-lips. It showed up a little late in my life but acting in the AIB spoof was therapeutic. Once I started seeing the jokes from others’ point of view, I laughed at them too,” said Nath.

Even as Bollywood shows its inclination for such comedy, the comedians are cautious about not getting co-opted by the industry. “If you do anything with a celebrity here, people tend to think there is some agenda behind it. Whereas in the West, they do it for fun. We are trying to set up that culture here,” says Khamba.

sankhayan.ghosh@expressindia.com