New Delhi: A restaurant in Pakistan has drawn severe criticism on social media after using a scene from the Bollywood movie Gangubai Kathiawadi featuring Alia Bhatt for promoting an offer for men.
The movie narrates the story of a prostitute named Gangubai who becomes an influential brothel owner. Alia Bhatt played the role of Gangubai in the film. The restaurant in Karachi advertised a scene from the movie where Alia Bhatt gestured to get her first customer. With the poster, the restaurant Swing announced Men’s Monday with a 25% discount for men.
The tagline of the advertisement said, “Aaja na Raja – what are you waiting for?”
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The ad showed Bhatt standing at the door and the billboard read 25% off on “Men’s Monday.” The restaurant captioned it, “Swings is calling out all the Rajas out there.”
However, soon the post started going around the social media and started attracting flack from the netizens. Several users considered it to be a bad taste and requested to put it down from the internet.
One of the users wrote, “You really need to look into what’s being put up here. To use a painful scene to justify whatever you’re offering is reeking of misogyny, ignorance,” while another wrote, “What a cheap marketing.” The third user stated, “If you guys think that this is some sort of marketing strategy and this will gain you some attention and customers then you’re sadly mistaken! Using a clip from a movie based on prostitution (which btw is based on someone’s real life) just shows how low and shallow you can get just for publicity.”
However, the restaurant instead of putting down the advertisement issued a clarification. It said that they have used it in terms of just a concept and did not mean to hurt anyone’s sentiment. “The movie and this post is based on a concept. Like before, we’re open to all and will be serving you with the same love like we always have,” it said.
The restaurant used a mock newspaper where the headline read, “Movie kare tou aag, restaurant kare tou paap?” Another headline in the paper also read, “Aray logon, itna dil pe kyun leliya?”
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Though the restaurant received flak, the restaurant was open to all, and one of their Instagram stories showed that the restaurant was “housefull.”
