Celebs and plagiarism: Malaika Arora joins the copy-paste opinion club
- The actress made an Instagram post on women’s safety about the molestations in Bengaluru, which was copied from another person.
- The incident continues the trend of celebrities habitually making statements on social issues.
- The media has also been at fault for being loose with background checks.
FollowWith the advent of social media, celebrities (real, retired or wannabe) have got a platform to express their views on anything under the sun, without being at the mercy of mainstream media sources. Bollywood actress Malaika Arora did just that on January 6 when she uploaded a post on her Instagram account reacting to the recent incidents of mass molestation in Bengaluru.
Arora’s post, which had a bare black image, won critical acclaim with several media organisations reporting on it. However, a few hours after the post went viral, social media users realised that the exact content was uploaded on Facebook by one Darshan Mondkar on January 3. To be fair to the actress, she may never have intended to plagiarise someone else’s comments and had only shared it. But as no credit was given to the original creator, Arora is facing lot of criticism.
This brings us to the issue of why celebrities take to expressing an opinion, even if they have little to say. Arora’s post followed similar statements on the Bengaluru molestations by the likes of Hrithik Roshan and Akshay Kumar. Social media has provided a new medium for constant publicity for celebrities outside of entertainment and advertisements. If Abhijeet Bhattacharya is now known more for his acerbic Twitter posts than his 1990s’ melodies, Ram Gopal Verma gets the oxygen of fame from Twitter that his movies are apparently failing to give.
However, more than the problem of plagiarism is the mainstream media’s obsession with celebrity “opinions” on social media. The opinions of actors on the Bengaluru incidents received prominent coverage on electronic media, but how relevant are these views on the ground? In addition, a symbiotic relationship has developed between celebrities and media, with both feeding off each other for publicity. This often results in background checks taking a backseat as in the case of Malaika Arora.
The plagiarism may not always be for personal fame. In December 2015, multiple Bollywood stars including Sonakshi Sinha, John Abraham and Parineeti Chopra posted identical messages on Twitter congratulating Reliance on the launch of its Jio initiative, raising suspicion that it was an unofficial marketing campaign.
A notable exception to recent unnoticed plagiarism was the embarrassment caused to incoming U.S. First Lady Melania Trump during the 2016 Republic National Convention, when it was revealed that large chunks of her speech were lifted from current First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech during her husband’s campaign in 2008. However, that incident appeared to have been orchestrated by Donald Trump’s opponents to embarrass him.
