Sunny Leone and the interview

“She is such an individual whose love and loath in equal measures in our country. She is someone who generates curiosity and hatred all at the same time….Some have often described as completely antithetical to what we perceive is the idea of an Indian woman. From porn star to being a Bollywood star, Sunny Leone, our guest on Hot Seat! “

An interview is considered to be a formal meeting where more information about a person is known. With the quoted lines as introduction, journalist Bhupindra Chaubey goes on to start the interview show which seemed more like a police interrogation. Throughout the interview, it is observed that Chaubey repetitively gets back to similar questions and reference is made to the ‘past’, ‘porn’, etc a number of times. From the introduction itself, Chaubey’s image of Sunny Leone is vivid and the areas of interest in him lies in just the controversy and least of anything else.

As the talk show starts, the interviewer goes on to having her name clarified whether it is ‘Karanjeet’ or “Karenjeet”. Even Sunny Leone seems delighted to answer at this point of time. From the very next question humiliation started and within 7 minutes, Sunny is seen as breaking down.  Just after having clarified her original name, Chaubey reveals the intention of the question as he did some research (to which Sunny admits he might have gone through a lot of crazy stuff) and intends to begin the interview asking “One thing that you regret?” To this Sunny expresses her grief for not getting home fast enough when her mother died and professionally, she admits to have made mistakes and also accepts that she learned from them. 

The interview not being satisfied with the answer turns round on the same question. “What kind of mistakes would you have made professionally, personally?”

Here, Sunny describes well and briefly about the cultural shock she observes in Bollywood. Cultural shock was indeed a nice topic which could have been discussed. As the laws of Canada permit the sale of hard core pornography to anyone over the age of eighteen, while persons below that age may have pornography in their possession, its sale to them is prohibited. And India is a country where kissing in the public is regarded as indecency. Unemployment has led to trafficking and prostitution, yet people freak out (or at least pretend to) at the word ‘porn’. Movies with a “U” certificate have also been reduced a lot, so had the interview been focused on the shifting times and Sunny’s opinions regarding the film industry or cultural shock or there would have been many fields to explore. But the interviewer had already set up in his mind that he needs to extract information regarding Sunny’s past. It makes me think of nothing but Eleanor Roosevelt’s words: Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people. A national television talk show can never be equal to a confession page on Facebook. They need to discuss ideas there; not people.

Not only this, Chaubey then goes on to mention “I hope you know that you are the most Googled person of India in 2015. You have overtaken even the Prime minister of India. There is something about Sunny Leone which generates a lot of curiosity.” Okay, now let me ask the readers a simple question.'From where did the comparison between Sunny Leone and Narendra Modi come from?' I mean, seriously? The comparison between two completely different people (similarity:- both are humans) was even blunter than comparing a toothpaste and a soap(similarity:- both help in cleaning). Such stupid question being asked on national television is the representation of degradation of Indian media. It is a common sense that the Prime Minister needs not be Google for the day of his victory in the elections; all news goes round him and his history. Now if somebody gets highlighted in the media all of a sudden, shouldn’t the audience be curious about the person? I didn’t know Sunny Leone was a porn star even when I watched Big Boss until the newspapers highlighted the fact. So did she generate the curiosity by herself or it was me who knew the fact through the news? Curiosity is good; it gives us knowledge but I perceived the interviewer’s perception as curiosity being the sole reason for rise in sexual crimes in India. Now back to my question- “Why will more people google the PM of India who is in the prestigious position as an aftermath of majority people in his support?”

Chaubey asks somewhere in the interview, “Do you get upset sometimes by all this curiosity or negative comments which sometime appear about you?” To this, Sunny gives a reply which I felt was not just reasonable but also a strong one. She said, “I am a human being and that a woman (laughs). I definitely get upset but I don’t show anybody that I am upset ever”.

Finally Chaubey puts down Sunny by mentioning the inhibitions of actors to work with her. Out of nowhere, even Aamir Khan dropped into his questions! “You think that Aamir Khan would have worked with you?” Sunny was low at this time as she replied, “Probably not…..because of my bad background.”

I took the screenshot of SunLeo's twitter account after Aamir Khan rubbished the inhibitions made in his name in the interview. 

The interview was not just getting embarrassing for Sunny Leone but also for the greater part of the audience. After some time, Chaubey winks looking at the camera and comes back to the same old point: “Do you not sometimes get affected by your past; your past as a porn queen will continue to haunt you or maybe continue to pull you back, maybe…..” Chaubey simultaneously poses a number of possibilities to which Sunny’s reply would have been like a slap on his face, “But you are the only person of media that says ‘holding back or haunt’.”

Indeed, what we see in interviews is offering respect and encouraging the people who are rising and not demoralizing them to fall down. I would say Sunny Leone is rising because she is seen in more number of films as compared to last year, and that too in different roles. Entertainment is for everybody and so are the laws which keep it under control. If I don’t like Bhupindra Chaubey’s interviews, I simply won’t watch them. Why would I go on asking him, “Do you look yourself as a journalist?” or “Are you running after TRP?” Of course that’s not my issue. But here Chaubey asks seriously unique questions like,

“Do you look yourself as an artist?”

“Are you an item girl?”

The whole show had many baseless allegations. For instance

1)   “There are some who believe if Sunny Leone is becoming brand ambassador of shorts of this new India, then it’s a very dangerous trend”

Will shorts be banned and become shorter then? Only he knows the hypothesis.

    2)    “There are many Indian married women who look at Sunny Leone as a threat towards their husbands and they believe that their husbands are all going to be taken away be Sunny Leone.”

I doubt whether the interviewer himself is not in that ‘some’! (No offence intended)

    3)    “Some viewers of mine who are saying that since your identity remains as that of your past, which is your association with pornography and pornstar, they believe that you are actually not an actor, that you are still not an actor and you do nothing else but…..some are accusing you literally of lowering of fine art of cinema”

Okay! Now cinema started having a fine art. Since when did this start happening?

India tops the chart in showing attractive women in its movies and as much as 35% of these female characters are shown with some nudity, finds a first-ever UN sponsored global study of female characters in popular films across the world. Now if Chaubey is still watching the fine art wala cinema, then of course Sunny Leone will be a curiosity to him!

    4)    “Ever since you made your entry to Big Boss, there is a significant rise of pornography in India. In fact, India is now the largest consumer of pornography in the world”.

Now that’s what I call ‘WOW”. Chaubey would definitely have killed the man who entered India with Ebola virus!

Sunny’s elegance as a human lies in her words which clearly depicts that she respects and honors her past. “I wasn’t abused, I wasn’t beaten, I wasn’t molested, I wasn’t raped!” Chaubey indirectly accuses Sunny of corrupting Indian minds and Indian morality. This was not only a humiliation to the actress but also his opinion on how he underestimates the Indian mindset. Somehow he forgets that he too is an Indian and is in no position to state the weaknesses of the people of his country. Further, the constant repetition of ‘some’ also depicts that his research on the interviewee lacks proper knowledge and statistics. This remains the entire controversy everywhere. Sunny justifies Chaubey’s opinions with “If you think about me so much in your day, you won’t put me in your speeches and you won’t blame me.”

Past is such a sensitive subject that if a person regrets it then it shouldn’t be raised. Our life teaches us that it is a short period and we can’t hold back things and oppose progress. To err is to human. The media often complains that it is limited in its freedom of expression. I believe it is true but with the present limitations, it is not being censored. So without correcting the present flaws, giving in more freedom is more harmful. Without coming out with positive feedbacks about the actress, where many big actors like Sanjay Dutt even praised Sunny, Chaubey finds it more significant that he takes in the view of the ‘some’. If this be the perception of the people who presents us with the happenings of the world, then it’s clear that whatever is our knowledge on world events is based on the newspaper we read and the channel we see.