Most social media savvy readers must be aware of the fact that The Family Man 2, the much-awaited sequel to Amazon Prime Video’s smash hit spy series, The Family Man, has run into rough weather. And all because the makers and scriptwriters of the show deemed it fit to label the bad guys in the series as ‘Tamil rebels’. Within hours of the trailer hitting the internet yesterday, netizens were up in arms against the discriminatory branding. “Tamils are not terrorists”; “don’t belittle the Tamilians’ struggle for their civil rights by labelling them terrorists”; and other such comments filled up Twitter-space. The hashtag #FamilyMan2_against_Tamils started trending on Twitter. And then the final call – “ban Family Man 2”, “ban Amazon Prime Video” began gaining ground.
However, before matters could get out of hand, like they did during the Tandav controversy, Amazon Prime Video has rushed in to set things right. The platform has posted a new, slightly different trailer from the one that was launched yesterday morning. This new trailer has deleted the term ‘Tamil rebels’ from the offending sequence. It simply uses the term ‘the rebels’ for the bad guys, instead of calling them ‘Tamil rebels’. Though Amazon Prime and makers Raj & DK edited the word ‘Tamil’ almost immediately after the controversy hit social media, looks like not many have noticed the change. The controversy is still raging, and the hashtag #FamilyMan2_against_Tamils is still trending on Twitter.
Amazon Prime Video, The Family Man 2, its makers, and its negative lead Samantha Akkineni, are all in a soup over the unfortunate though unintentional branding of the bad guys shown in the sequel. As per the trailer, The Family Man 2 shows Manoj Bajpayee‘s Shrikant Tiwari and his NIA team facing a double-edged enemy. Rebels (earlier called Tamil rebels – the show has desisted from giving their organisation a name) have joined hands with notorious and dangerous terrorist organisation ISI, to unleash an attack on India. South actress Samantha Akkineni portrays one of the highly-trained rebels, Raji, in the show.
This part of the trailer has not gone down well with certain sections of Tamils on Twitter. Even if the term ‘Tamil rebels’ is no longer used in the trailer, and no mention of the revered organisation LTTE is ever made, protestors want more. They are demanding all portions that show Raji as a Sri Lankan Tamil to be removed from the show.
In order to do that, the creators will have to modify major portions of the show – a tedious and time-consuming process. Not to say, the narrative is bound to lose some of its essence owing to random chopping off and modifications of sequences.
Maybe, the platform and the makers should release a disclaimer saying that they did not mean to hurt the sentiments of anyone, and any resemblance to any organisation is unintentional and a coincidence – like they do in the movies.
What will be the fate of The Family Man 2, no one knows. We can only hope that matters are sorted out amicably and the show is allowed to stream unhindered for the benefit of audiences. God knows, in these tough times, we need the refreshing humour and unadulterated thrill of shows like The Family Man.
Check out the new trailer, with the edit in place –
https://twitter.com/PrimeVideoIN/status/1394996238882246660?s=19
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