All the World is A Stage

Cheer Up Will Smith! you have joined legends such as Dileep Kumar and Marlon Brando, the Don Corleone, by virtue of that slap, yes the same which will echo in the Academy Awards for generations. I wonder if Will Smith had watched Dileep Kumar, the Indian thespian slap Dr Dang the character played by Anupam Kher in "Karma" presuming he would have watched "Godfather" for sure, for inspiration. Chris Rock doesn't seem to a fan of Bhai, else his repartee would have gone something like, "Man I am not scared of a mere slap, its the love which scares the sh*t out of me!" That is how Sonakshi the “Dabang" girl responded to Bhai Salman Khan.

Imagine walking up to the host slapping him hard in on stage on a live TV event. The amazing part was not just getting away with it but actually earning a standing ovation for his award in just a short while after this event. But dance drama are a par for the course, just an essential part of the “theatre of absurd” which is played out day in and day out by their characters. The reel life starts to imitate the real life sooner or later. But well the slaps are not restricted to the entertainment industry alone, the other major actors in life, yes, you guessed it, the politicians too have been at the receiving end at times with friend Mr Arvind Kejriwal topping the list. Our Turbanator Bhajji, Harbhajan too belongs to this illustrious league, some of you would recall his resounding slap on Sreesanth in IPL 2008. 

In India, slaps were a regular feature in the households, in fact we were so used to it that a day without one was a blue moon event, a rarity, with any and everyone exercising their birthright, so if it was not the parents, it could be elder siblings, teachers, bullies in the class, seniors in the academies, just about anyone. Getting physical had nothing in common with physics and it even defied the Newton's third law,"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction", I am sure some of us can still recall that bit of Physics. These slaps did not elicit any reaction at all, just some expletives muttered under our breath, but equal and opposite no way! 

Controversy pays; and it pays big time. Dr Thomas Roulet of Cambridge Judge Business School in his new book "The Power of Being Divisive: Understanding Negative Social Evaluations"  outlines how generating negative feedback can be beneficial. Kejriwal or Bhajji have both benefitted from these no doubt. Any publicity, positive or negative is good for marketing, as any Marketing Guru will agree.  In fact, many of us fondly recall the Devil in the Onida TV commercials of yester years. Chris Rock reportedly had   houseful stand up shows , so the million dollar question is, could it have been staged??All is fair in love and war!