Sunny Leone — porn star, actor, mother, and all-round badass — is working on her upcoming film, Veeramahadevi, a period drama where she’s set to portray the warrior goddess on the big screen. But this week, members of the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike Yuva Sena, a right-wing youth group, decided to protest the film.
“If Sunny Leone plays this role, it will be an insult to our culture,” the president of KRV’s youth wing stated. “Veeramahadevi is our goddess, we will not allow this.” While Leone is the most Googled celebrity in India, apparently her previous career in adult films makes her unworthy of playing the character on screen.
In an odd performance of … loyalty(?) to their cause, some protesters cut their arms with blades, to “make people recognise” how very seriously they believe in their stance. On the upside, depression and anxiety might not be the only reason teens are cutting themselves.
While protesters burn effigies of Leone, we just want to point out one thing — both Veeramadevi and Leone are feminist icons. While one was a princess warrior who fought battles, Leone has been fighting her own, against stereotypes and discrimination. She moved from adult films to mainstream cinema, discusses her progressive views on gender equality in a way that not many other Bollywood actors do, and never apologizes for who she is.
In a previous interview about her role in this film, Leone said, “My character is extremely strong and I think if there is any representation of woman I would love to play, it’s Veeramadevi. She is a very determined and an independent woman.” And we’d have to agree.
In a country where we either deify women or debase them, perhaps holding them both , in one person, will allow us to think about women as more than just one thing. We’ll just have to wait for the youth wing to catch up.
