Moving in with Malaika reduces Bollywood’s most desirable woman to a cliché

At 49, Malaika Arora seems to want to refute all the laws of aging. She still looks like the 20-year-old MTV VJ who embodied a thirst trap when she danced to Chaiyya Chaiyya on top of a moving train. Dressed in a backless choli and ghagra, Arora cut a steamy image, alternating between a suggestive heaving of her chest and a rhythmic rotation of her hips, single-handedly turning Chaiyya Chaiyya into the song of the decade. A sly smile is on her face every time she makes eye contact with the camera, as if she simultaneously knows the effect her body would have on the audience watching the song and enjoying the idea of ​​having them at her mercy. . It’s not like Hindi actresses haven’t turned into objects of desire before Chaiyya Chaiyya. The difference was that, contrary to the morality warnings that most actresses followed, Arora never pretended to be shy about weaponizing her sexuality.

It’s on full display in every article song Arora has graced, but especially in the cornea Munni Badnam Hui (2010) which has become shorthand for the heat and steam she is able to emanate in the blink of an eye. Dressed again in a choli and backless ghagra, Arora, then in her thirties, aimed to hypnotize with her twisted hips and electric charm. Its irresistible attraction in Munni Badnam Hui can best be summed up with a line from the song: Hai mere jhatke mein filmi mazaa (My movements are vaporous). Her delighted audience tends to agree. That is to say, Malaika Arora became Bollywood’s pin-up girl, not because the public saw her as one, but more so because she rarely considered the heat a burden.

Today, more than three decades after she began working in and around Bollywood, Arora remains as desired as she was 20 years ago. In this sense, the continued relevance of Aroras is both obvious and mysterious. Although she’s not an actress (her only acting role is in a forgettable flop movie), she continues to hold social currency in an industry that treats women as indispensable props, especially as they cross a certain age. . Maybe it has something to do with her stardom being impossible to label. Granted, she’s primarily known as an article dancer, but Arora is also a reality TV judge as well as a fashion and wellness entrepreneur. In this, she represents fame in its most unique form, someone who is in the limelight to be eternally compatible with fame.

It helps that Aroras’ unusual stardom (no other former VJ or object dancer commands the same sequel as her) is matched by the courage she displays in her personal life. It’s no secret that everything she does instantly makes headlines, whether it’s divorcing her husband, buying strawberries or dating a young actor. The country’s general interest in her life also means her choices are always under gender scrutiny. To say that Arora threatens the male ego of a conservative, patriarchal society would be an understatement. I say this not only because she seems unaffected by the patriarchal expectations of a single mother her age, but more so because she constantly insists on putting her own happiness first. After all, there is nothing that threatens Indian men more than a woman who refuses to feel any shame at having chosen the life she wants for herself.

Too bad then that Arora is reduced to a bland subject in Moving in with Malaika, her new Disney+ Hotstar reality show that gives audiences a direct view into her daily life. The format is directly inspired by Keeping Up With the Kardashians and the tone, intended to reproduce the guilty pleasures of The Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Brides. In the four episodes already released on Disney+ Hotstar, Moving in With Malaika doesn’t even come close to replicating the unfiltered absurdity of either of those shows.

For a, Moving in with Malaika doesn’t quite crack the aesthetic of a celebrity reality show. By this I mean that the series does not have its own voice or style. Both the opening credit sequence and the opening montage are tackily crafted, the treatment looks like a cheap knockoff of a generic video game (whether Disney+ Hotstar put it together without any oversight from quality is ridiculous). The lack of low-effort, low-stakes imagination is apparent from the first episode itself, which begins with a bizarre montage of Arora strolling around a swimming pool at night. A clumsy voiceover kicks in: She addresses the audience, promising us that the show will reveal a side of her that’s been lost amid the headlines. It’s not entirely clear why a bikini-clad Arora had to deliver this message, but the camera focusing its gaze on her underwater doesn’t exactly add up to anything other than cringe.

Reality TV works best when its subjects completely forget that the camera is following them. That never seems to be the case with Arora in these four episodes. Not only is she painfully aware that she is being filmed, but even worse, she goes out of her way to perform on camera in an utterly off-putting way. It then becomes so easy to see through the trickery of a starring celebrity in a scripted show that only offers the illusion of truth. For example, her close family members and friends appear either as talking heads praising her on camera or in two-minute video calls offering her advice, which in itself belies the intimate format of a such show.

As a result, we only come to know Arora through what others have to say about her and the narrative the series tells about her. For example, they were told certain things over and over again: Arora is made up of incredible strength, she’s not one to back down from a challenge, she was traumatized after being in a car accident earlier this year and that she was a victim of relentless sexism in the media. It’s intercut with shots of Arora looking at the camera and repeating the exact same things. If there was a secret recipe for making a reality show painfully boring, Moving in with Malaika definitely cracked.

The four-episode arc, which only exists for yaas-quen her bossgirl tendencies, also follows this structure: in the first episode, Farah Khan appears in Aroras’ living room to conduct a painfully scripted interview that touches on the divorce of Aroras with her husband Arbaaz. Khan, the debilitating effects of the car crash and his…strength. The second episode features a car commercial that Arora signs that forces her to overcome her fear of driving she says she won’t, not after the accident only to finally muster the strength to do so. Once that’s settled, we’re told about Arora’s other fear: playing. Farhad Samji appears out of nowhere to tell an absurd film. In between, Arora falls back on her sister Amrita Arora to give advice on video calls and her actress friend Neha Dhupia to discourage her from trying to stand. As expected, Arora naturally finds answers to all doubts, obstacles and phobias in five minutes. If it is not clear now, there is little rhyme or rhythm in any of the proceedings.

It also doesn’t help that Arora seems to carry a carefully curated personality throughout all four episodes, coming across as a cliche instead of a spunky woman who refuses to desexualize herself. She seems visibly hesitant to be vulnerable or close the distance between the audience and herself, which is the equivalent of asking someone to move in and then demanding that they stay in the guest room.

The lack of honesty is more palpable given that Arora doesn’t exactly possess a fun personality that can cut through the mediocrity dedicated to shows. The more I watched the show, the more I realized that Arora seemed so used to people speaking on her behalf that she forgot how to introduce herself. Even Aroras’ stand-up seemed like a tease an illusion of bravery on her part when in fact she’s not discussing anything about her life that isn’t already known (Arora takes a jab at her judgment come since she started dating Arjun Kapoor is always nice.)

In this, Moving in with Malaika feels like such a wasted opportunity simply because of the scarcity for women in Bollywood to have the ability to define their own narratives. Especially when she’s one of Bollywood’s most desirable women. To be fair, Moving In With Malaika doesn’t have the emotional clout or intellect to examine female stardom that feeds directly off male objectification. Imagine a reality show that made Bollywood’s most desirable woman think about desire? Or article songs? Or even the gossip tabloids that keep making up pregnancy rumors? Instead, all we get is a reality show that undermines Arora by simultaneously portraying her as a victim and an outsider. If her 30-year stay in the limelight is any proof, Malaika Arora is neither of those things.

Poulomi Das is a writer, critic and film and culture programmer. Follow more of his writings onTwitter.

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