Carpet diem!
Ranveer’s nudes shock and provoke our tired minds in all the right ways
As modern life shuttles endlessly between monotony and misery, few images stop our seen-it-all eyes in their tracks. Ranveer Singh, ever hungry for a reaction with his ghagras and nakhras, has managed to pull off a minor coup by making nudity feel new. Look, wardrobe trolls, no clothes! And the world watched with more interest than ever. (Though, admittedly, I did spend an inordinate amount of time wondering and worrying about that Turkish rug he had sprawled himself on with the confidence of a Viking.)
The pop culture factory
The décor company that made the rug is now smug in all the attention it’s been getting. But do spare a thought for the drycleaners the ill-treated carpet presumably ended up at after the shoot. They should get their share of the limelight, too, for their not insignificant pains. Moving on from my carpet obsession (perhaps because I’m currently looking to get one, preferably one without an ass print on it), there’s the matter of Ranveer’s bare body. Very nice, everything in place, good muscles and all. What I really loved about the shoot, though, was how swiftly it made the male form a subject of universal scrutiny. How refreshing, even for 2022! I doubt Singh’s motives had anything to do with feminism, but we could all do with such playful subversions of the (straight) male gaze.
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One can dissect the photographs down to every strand and sinew—what they reveal, how they conceal, and why it matters. That’s after we shamelessly gawk, of course. If popular culture can be likened to a factory, then Ranveer is one of its bestselling products—this column being a case in point. Addicted to attention, he consistently pushes his way into our consciousness using all the tricks of the trade, and then some. He’s like a moving Met Gala—equal parts fun and tiresome. Which is why I enjoy his photographs, where he’s performing the trick, not so much his interviews, where he explains it.
A man, a rug and a camera
If you think about it, it’s everywhere, the male nude. You see endless representations of the masculine form in western art, from Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man to Michelangelo’s David; Schiele’s transgressive ‘Red Men’ and Andy Warhol’s racy sketches. Nudity in the popular imagination, however, tends to presuppose a female subject and straight male audience, in a reflection of how power structures operate. Thankfully, we’re beginning to widen a
very narrow vocabulary of sexuality by admitting that men can be beautiful and women, desiring. And that a naked man lying on a rug can be interesting to viewers irrespective of their sexual preferences.
But is Ranveer desirable in those pictures? My first response was to laugh—but that could be a cover for prudishness. (Or my nervousness about the rug.) Also, it’s Ranveer, so one must first get the laughter out of the way to reach a meaningful response. Desirable or not, the images address desire, staged in a manner that strips them of any extraneous meaning. See how quietly eloquent I can also be, the loudly expressive Ranveer says, and we listen.
THE MALE NUDE IS EVERYWHERE BUT NUDITY WILL ALWAYS BE A TABOO IN OUR PURITANICAL SOCIETY, UNLESS YOU’RE MILIND SOMAN.
What are you staring at?
Mostly, it’s been such fun, everyone talking about these nude shots. A welcome change from the usual debates that populate our living-room discourse, guaranteed to kill an evening with a lethal combination of ignorance and virulence. Instead, we’ve been invited to look upon a familiar figure with new eyes. Nudity will always be a taboo in our puritanical society, unless you’re Milind Soman. But how long must one perfect body suffer the inexhaustible attention of millions?
The meme machinery thrives on these moments. And we all ravenously consume its offerings, plugging the holes in our lives with cued laughter. And so it has been with these photographs. But let’s not lose sight of the thing itself. If we’re cynical, we’ll see this as yet another celeb’s attempt at being sensational and look away, sweeping our real feelings under a (Turkish) rug. But if we allow ourselves to really look, and to look at ourselves looking, we might come away with a better understanding of what desire constitutes for us. It’s not just about Ranveer’s body, after all. And I’m trying to tell myself it’s not about the carpet either.