Ever since Animal released last month, director Sandeep Reddy Vanga and the team have spoken against criticism of the action drama. Now, Javed Akhtar’s observations have riled them.
During a recent event, the veteran lyricist shared that “the image of the hero should be created with an awareness of what is right and how it should be”.
Without naming the Ranbir Kapoor-starrer, he said, “If there’s a film in which a man asks a woman to lick his shoe or if a man says it’s okay to slap a woman… and the film is a super hit, that’s dangerous.”
Yesterday, the movie’s official social media handle tagged Akhtar, tweeting, “Writer of your calibre cannot understand the betrayal of a lover (between Ranbir and Triptii Dimri’s characters) then all your art form is big false. And if a woman (betrayed and fooled by a man in the name of love) would have said ‘lick my shoe’, then you guys would have celebrated it by calling it feminism.”
Stating that love should be left free from the politics of gender, the post further read, “Let’s call them lovers. Lover cheated and lied. Lover said ‘lick my shoe’. Period.”
Going by their post, it seems the Animal team is intolerant of any and every reasonable criticism too.