Film poster
Credit: X/@_SanjayGupta
Bengaluru: A Malayalam film Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra has triggered an outrage on social media for using derogatory terms to represent girls from Bengaluru.
One of the characters in the film addresses Bengaluru women as ‘dagar’, a Kannada colloquial term which means a promiscuous woman.
Wayfarer Films, the film’s producers, on Tuesday, issued a statement that they will remove the contended dialogue from the film immediately. “It has come to our attention that a dialogue delivered by one of the characters in our film has unintentionally hurt the sentiments of people from Karnataka,” the statement said.
"In the film, the dialogue is delivered by a character called Nachiyappa Gowda, who is a bad guy, shown as a god-fearing, entitled male who (we can assume) looks at free-spirited women as someone having bad character. His boss is a woman and he hates her ordering him around. So as a creative choice, the line holds, and the slur comes naturally,” said a cinephile who watched the movie.
Origin of the word
Interestingly, the usage of the word in a sexual connotation has its roots in Kannada cinema. “It’s not a Kannada word. There is no specific etymology,” well-known linguist Meti Mallikarjun told DH. The word has been in usage only for the last 20 to 30 years after Jaggesh and Upendra popularised it in their films.
“Even the word ‘figure’, an English word, is used figuratively in a negative or sexual connotation against women. It is noted that terms like this when used to address men don’t have a negative connotation,” Mallikarjun noted.
The said word has also been used on social media as a means of character assasination against female actors. In 2022, actor Rashmika Mandanna called out trolls for addressing her with the derogatory term on social media.
The Malayalam film has also faced backlash for "not representing Kannadigas authentically".
Meanwhile, Bengaluru city police commissioner Seemant Kumar Singh on Tuesday said that police would investigate the matter. “We will check it. The Central Crime Branch (CCB) will examine it and take necessary action,” he added.