Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Racist ruminations

Leonardo DiCaprio is living. The 41-year-old isn't presently shooting or signed up any film project since The Revenant (2015). Being the classic role model for work-hard-party-hardest, DiCaprio is nowadays in the news either for his humanitarian causes or bohemian excursions. And this peaceful boat was disturbed yesterday when the news (rumours?) of him being approached to play Rumi surfaced on the Internet. The initial reaction to this piece of possibility has been explicitly negative. How can a white guy with an American accent portray a Persian poet/philosopher/thatguywhosaideverythingawesomely? Fair enough. But, here's what i think should be the ideal case: DiCaprio takes up the project and plays Rumi regardless of what the online world thinks. Later, everybody would be able to throw in their one cent on whether he did a good job or not. Until and unless a biopic happens, our racist apprehensions are nothing but that. After all, didn't a dude who couldn't even speak an Indian language—let alone appear desi—portray Gandhi so bloody brilliantly? 

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