The gloss and the gore

Glamorous or violent? The line is super-thin. Super luxury brand Dolce and Gabbana’s latest ad campaign has a sharp, good-looking woman, in a swimsuit and spiked heels, offering herself to a man. Four other men lurk in the background: clearly forming the scene of a gang rape, perhaps even a date rape. Following protests, the campaign has been pulled out in Italy and Spain, but the message it projects is clear: in popular culture we have become used to glamorised violence, the reason why ad campaigns spend huge sums of money on images that portray a casualness of intent that does not exist.

Speaking to Express, Anurag Kashyap, director of Black Friday, spoke about how violence should necessarily be deglamorised. In his gritty movie on the Bombay bomb blasts, the audience sees broken nails and an eerie red light during the interrogation sequences, the director’s take on the meaninglessness and chaos of violence. The purpose here however is not to argue how films attack or defend our sensibilities — the purpose is to take a hard look at images that show just how glammed-up violence can be. A couple of years ago, we had a cosmetic Bond in Pierce Brosnan, who made smooth moves to cruise out of any situation. Then we had the anti-hero in Vin Diesel’s XXX. Now, we have a new Bond in Daniel Craig, who gets more blows, but is a leaner and meaner. With both the hero and the anti-hero cults gaining strength, are any of these movies giving the right messages about violence? Perhaps not. With the health and beauty industry getting interlinked, you have a series of products that say you can feel good if you look good. Skin flick has become violence flick. And glamour, taken out of context, has become the sister to more nefarious things: like images of sexual sadism. Take a look at Dhoom II, touted as a fun flick. It’s fun enough to not show any blood, but the perfect bodies of the sleek protagonists speak volumes about how health and beauty — spiked with violence — have become one. In the cult film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the audience does not see any gore, but the battle scenes are superbly executed. With violence looking so beautiful, it does not mean anything any more when a Bollywood type says that “we are getting Hollywood experts to do the stunts for us”.

Fashion is often about shock value, yet it is borrowing the trappings of popular culture: a man’s strength, and then, a crime — albeit in a sophisticated way, to peddle clothes. And that is something that should indeed shock us, and make us remember to look long and hard at all that is glossy.