During the ICC World Cup match between India and Australia, a new commercial of a pan masala brand featuring Shah Rukh Khan, Ajay Devgn and Akshay Kumar aired for the first time. Kumar, who’s gone to great lengths to portray himself as a righteous patriot, recently apologised for promoting a tobacco brand, after getting viciously trolled on Twitter. Devgn, meanwhile, defended the ad. “If certain things are so wrong, they should not be sold. Promoting it is a personal choice,” said Devgn. The disastrous effects of tobacco are well known and all packaging includes graphic warnings. For a smoker, a cigarette represents a welcome break from the tedium of going about one’s day; and surely, adults are capable of choosing their vices. Besides, it’s impossible to miss the inherent inconsistencies in enforcing a ban on advertising a legal product.
Celebrity sells. There is no doubt that when a Hrithik Roshan or a Priyanka Chopra endorse Pepsi or Vimal Elaichi, their popularity ensures sales. Precisely because there’s an existing ban on direct tobacco advertisements companies need to spend on A-list Bollywood stars as a way of gaining credibility. Blaming stars for promoting cancer causing substances is more about our own morally (misplaced) even if liberal-minded notions. Sanctimonious thinking goes, they already have money, fame and security. Do they really need to stoop this low and model for just about anything to make more? Perhaps it’s entirely natural to fall for simplistic reasoning rather than address the warped way we evaluate evidence to arrive at a biased conclusion. Clearly, the government values the profit gains from taxing tobacco over the health of the nation but it’s the stars posing in these ads who become an easy target.
People are not trained to think deeply about ethical problems. Kumar or Khan have no grand plan to injure citizens by modeling for pan masala, it’s just that we live in times where the acquisition of wealth within the ambit of law is perfectly acceptable. Whether we know it or not, we subconsciously adhere to the prevalent moral standards followed by our peers. There is an argument in political philosophy that the state’s role, even if occasionally stern, is necessary for society to function because human existence is unavoidably wicked.
Part of growing up is developing an outlook to make sense of our often, bewildering environment. It is worth wading into thought, not judgment while thinking about the irritating contradictions we face, daily. Some years ago, the Woody Allen film Blue Jasmine wasn’t released in India because the producers, citing artistic independence, refused to add “Smoking Kills” whenever the high strung protagonist lit up. It should strike everybody as odd that city airports have smoking rooms but when fictional characters are blowing smoke on a screen, it’s a problem.
At the same time, there’s data that suggests youth with high exposure to TV dramas showcasing smoking were three times more likely to start vaping compared to peers with no exposure. “Right” and “wrong”, if it even exists, is endlessly confusing, best understood by a mountaineering metaphor — the higher one climbs, the more one can see. But it’s also true that no matter what height one reaches, the horizon always bends out of view.
The writer is director, Hutkay Films
