You may not exactly ‘get’ in what direction Ram Charan and Kiara Advani’s Game Changer is headed, solely off the basis of the choices director Shankar Shanamugham has made. But you definitely can’t ignore it. And the pan-India film’s latest drop, song Dhop, fits the bill of whatever vision the team tried to achieve.
First impressions and reactions from the internet dripped of shock and confusion but this was nowhere near as questionable as Kiara’s sudden throwback post to her first dance schedule from the song. The video merely shows her practicing the janky moves as the caption lists out all the people she was grateful to, for being able to deliver on the vision. Among them was choreographer Jani Master. Kiara may not have gone out of her way to say something kind about him — the excerpt reads, ” I remember seeing @alwaysjani masters choreography and thinking how are we going to do this, but that’s the beauty of our job , always learning something new..” — but the fact that she acknowledged his contribution, in light of the POCSO scandal he is embroiled in, has rubbed many the wrong way.
Comments expressing this read: “tone-deaf, especially when even his national award was taken back after the uproar over granting him bail”, “The actors seriously don’t care about anything”, “Literally. None of these so-called stars are innocent. They are all directly or indirectly involved with criminals and shady people”, “the so-called cream of the crop are truly built differently, they come across as tone-deaf and completely lacking morals” and “Well she is someone who till date supports the character of Preethi. So I’m not even shocked”.
It is worth mentioning that Jani Master has choreographed several keynote songs of recent times, stars from which also seem to be coming under fire for choosing to work with him.
These names include the likes of Stree 2 duo Rajkummar Rao and Shraddha Kapoor who were choreographed by him for the song Aayi Nai, as well as Varun Dhawan and Keerthy Suresh who worked under him for Baby John song Nain Matakka.
His past repertoire of work includes hits like Rashmika Mandanna’s Srivalli from Pushpa: The Rise (2021), Thalapathy Vijay and Pooja Hegde’s Arabic Kuthu from Beast (2022), Tamannaah and Rajinikanth’s Kaavaalaa from Jailer (2023) and Shahid Kapoor and Kriti Sanon’s Laal Peeli Akhiyaan from this year’s Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya.
As far as the case goes, Jani Master was booked under POCSO by the Narsingi police of the Cyberabad Commissionerate in September, for raping and mentally harassing a former female employee, who was 16 years old at the time. He was granted bail in October, which also prompted the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to suspend the National Film Award he had earned for his work on the song Megham Karukkatha from Tamil film Thiruchitrambalam (2022) featuring Dhanush. In the wake of all that has come to light, he was also asked to maintain a distance from all political party activities for Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena.
Coming back to the accountability stars of Kiara’s stature have, some reasoned with how stars don’t actually have an real authority per se, to bring about change: “when law itself hasn’t punished him and let him go,wt should these ppl do?”, read a comment.
Do you think Kiara is in the wrong?
