FWICE demands withdrawal of Ghooskhor Pandat title, warns of strict action

The controversy around the upcoming Netflix film Ghooskhor Pandat, produced by Neeraj Pandey and starring Manoj Bajpayee, grew more intense this week after the Federation of Western India Cine Employees (FWICE) formally objected to its title and urged the makers to withdraw it, warning of significant industry action if the demand is not met. The dispute began soon after the film’s announcement and teaser release, with many viewers and various organisations criticising the title Ghooskhor Pandat as offensive and potentially derogatory toward a specific community. The title combines ghooskhor — a colloquial Hindi term for someone who takes bribes — with Pandat, commonly associated with the Brahmin community. Critics argued that this linkage could perpetuate stereotypes and hurt sentiments. FWICE’s Objection and Warning FWICE, a body representing workers, technicians and artists across more than three dozen affiliated associations, sent a letter to producers’ bodies and major OTT platfor...

Tod Browning: the film-maker who brought the carnival to Hollywood

A new retrospective offers another chance to appreciate the daring and often deranged films made by a director who was once the centre of a moral panic

When a kid threatens to run away and join the circus, perhaps upon being forced to eat broccoli or go to bed, they’re fantasizing about more than just independence. The traveling carnival offered an alternative way of life that appealed specifically to those uninvested in the politenesses of the grownup world. No one can make a carny shower, wear a tie or go to church. This liberation from the strictures of civilized society was a must for an ethically spotty line of work reliant on a mix of trickery, hucksterism, prurience and morbid fascination, a low art form that attracted a certain kind of scuzzy personality. The tents of the sideshow provided a home to thieves, oddballs, creeps, chiselers, dope fiends, conmen, women of ill repute, leches, lushes and any other species of degenerate in need of a paycheck. If vaudevillians were the rock stars of the pre-cinema era, then circus folk were van-dweller punks cutting a swath of blithe misbehavior from gig to gig.

Just before the turn of the 20th century, at the ripe age of 16, a bricklayer’s son named Charles Albert Browning Jr decided that these were his people and abandoned his well-heeled family to join their grubby ranks. He would spend 10 years cutting his teeth as a barker, song-and-dance man, clown and contortionist before rechristening himself Tod, the German word for “death”, conferring a ghastly gravitas. Three years later, he’d take leave of the stage with sights set on the burgeoning silent film industry, but he’d carry the lurid spirit of the big top with him through the rest of an illustrious, disreputable career.

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