A few days after criticizing the “Pathaan” song Besharam Rang for the green and saffron costumes that Deepika Padukone and Shah Rukh Khan wore in it, Madhya Pradesh’s home minister Narottam Mishra, King Khan on Thursday delivered a message of hope at the start of the Kolkata International Film Festival 2022.
In his address, SRK made the following statements without making any reference to the Besharam Rang scandal: “The primary means of articulating human experience and emotion today is a film, as well as the development of social media platforms. Contrary to popular assumption, the expansion of social media has not had a detrimental impact on the film. Social media has influenced the collective narrative of our day.”
He added, “I believe cinema has a more important role to play now. Social media is often driven by a certain narrowness of view that limits human nature…I read somewhere negativity increases social media consumption and thereby increases its commercial value as well…Such pursuits enclose collective narrative making it divisive and destructive.”
“Cinema exposes the vulnerability of human nature by telling stories in the simplest form as they are lived. It allows us to know each other better in a way it is best placed to sustain a collective counter-narrative that speaks to the larger nature of humankind,” SRK continued.
Shah Rukh revised his Pathaan conversation to encourage listeners to focus on the positive after he finished speaking.
