*Gere embraced the 31-year-old Shetty – winner of Britain’s Celebrity Big Brother reality show – and planted several kisses on her cheek in front of thousands of onlookers at the AIDS function in the Indian capital New Delhi earlier this month.
The incident triggered a public storm in India, known for its chaste public behaviour despite Bollywood’s sexually suggestive song-and-dance routines.*
Yo’ India! You’ve got semi-naked deities fondling each other on your temples!
You worship at shrines of lingams and yonis! And you’re outraged over Richard Gere’s cheek-smooch!?! A kiss that wouldn’t even offend Fred Phelps! Get over it!
FriarTed, the Kama Sutra and the Sun Temple in Konark were several centuries ago. Indian society has become a lot more conservative and close-minded since then, especially since the arrival of fundamentalist religious politics (you hear a lot more of “this isn’t our culture” these days). Even in urban India, public displays of affection are severely frowned upon.
I’m not condoning it, and I think the whole thing (the lawsuit, not the kiss) is an idiotic exercise in publicity-whoring, but them are the facts.
Hand-holding among heterosexual couples is about the limit of what is tolerated in public (funnily enough, though, male friends holding hands and walking with arms around each other is perfectly acceptable). Even that can have severe repercussions, with self-appointed morality police threatening to tell parents and call the police - who, sadly, are all too willing to participate. I think it’s become far more of an issue lately, with politics more and more polarised - the Hindu-fundamentalist BJP has got quite a presence nationally, and doesn’t pass up any opportunity to trumpet “Indian virtues and morality”. Never mind the fact that one of their MPs was recently caught trying to smuggle a woman out of the country on his wife’s diplomatic passport. But I digress.
I think it’s a storm in a teacup, making mountains out of molehills, and many other tired cliches. Not quite sure what to do about it, though.
More scary than outrageous was what I saw on CNN, where they showed a group of protesters, admittedly only about 200 or so*, marching and demanding “death to Shetty” and burning her in effigy along with Gere. Oddly, I can’t find many people protesting as loudly the calls for murdering a woman over a kiss. I guess I need help from a Gooooooooooogle expert.
“Sources say the judge then retired to his chamber alone with a hand towel and a large container of ghee, and “re-evaluated” the obscene footage for the next hour and a half.”
I totally overlooked that the arrest warrant was for her also! :smack: However, the news story I read didn’t mention that she also was burned in effigy. Of course I protest that- it’s worse because she’s there in the country & thus in real potential danger, as distinct from Gere.
Richard Gere is a pretty clumsy public figure. All this really means is that now the TWO most populous countries in the world hate his guts. For the longest time, it was just China.
He says it was to entertain the truck drivers to whom they were giving a talk on AIDS awareness.
You’d see far worse in any Bollywood potboiler, but apparently because it was done by Those Loose-Moraled Westerners to Our Saintly Indian Woman it’s much, much worse. :rolleyes:
Yes, fundamentalist idiots piss me off. Apparently in India it’s now acceptable to take out any sort of greivance against the person who upsets you. Example: cricketers get booted out of World Cup, fans attack house. Disgusts me beyond belief.
Certainly boorish and a bad idea, and she did look uncomfortable. But isn’t the reaction a bit extreme? It’s not like Gere suggested a beauty pageant contestant would make a good wife for Mohammed, or something similarly riot-worthy.
Even the one comment on that video site can’t resist the mad rush to symbolize, with Gere as the post-colonialist White Man defiling the “daughter of India,” and suggesting Gere should “pay the ultimate price” (death, I guess, unless there’s some worse penalty I’m not aware of?)
Here’s an idea: why don’t we let Shetty decide whether or not it was a big deal to her? She’s already stated it wasn’t and wants to move past it, so as far as I’m concerned the rest of the hoopla is just a lot of people with pre-existing grudge hammers riling themselves up over having found another suitable nail.
Wow. Putting aside that that was one of the least funny TDS bit I’ve ever seen (save the Sharpton bit at the end), what the hell was Gere doing?! Looks like a drunk guy at last call on Saturday night.
Actually, no, I haven’t seen the video. The account I read described it as “friendly kisses on the cheek,” like what two presenters at an awards show would do.
Sure, the reaction is extreme. Burning effigies, calls for death, arrest warrants—it’s all ridiculous.
One could condemn the reaction unequivocally, and call them all a bunch of backward troglodytes, at the risk of being labeled a cultural imperialist. One could shrug and say, “Who are we to judge their culture?”, at the risk of being labeled a cultural relativist. I chose simply to focus on Gere’s initial actions.
Sure, Shetty gets to decide how she feels about it. Absolutely.
But the fact that she chooses to move past it doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a bonehead and inappropriate move in the first place. Even if she’s happy to forgive, it’s still clear from the video that she was very uncomfortable with it. I have no particular grudge against Richard Gere; i was just amazed at how idiotically he acted.
Well, go back to my previous post and click on the link. You can judge for yourself.