Earlier this week the release of Khaali Peeli's son 'Beyonce Sharma Jayegi' didn't go quite as planned. The song featuring Ananya Panday and Ishaan Khatter in the lead received massive backlash online following its release.
The reason? Using Beyonce's name in the song had not gone down well with fans who flagged it for 'racism'. Now, makers have changed the song's name to 'Beyonse' hoping that this solves the issue.
Will using 'Beyonse' undo the implied meaning in the song?
Khaali Peeli's makers faced a wave of social media criticism when the used 'Beyonce' in their latest song 'Beyonce Sharma Jayegi'. Instead of dancing along to Ishaan Khatter and Ananya Panday in the Bollywood number, netizens took offence to the song's lyrics.
Many netizens found the song's intention racist, where the line appears, "Goriya tujhe dekh ke Beyonce sharma jayegi." When one hears it, the implied meaning is scary since it translates directly to, "Fair lady, seeing you Beyonce will be embarrassed." This is problematic especially since we've been discussing 'black lives matter' and that racism needs to go.
The director of the film Maqbool Khan had said on the issue, "First, without any hesitation or excuses we want to apologise to anyone offended. We assure you that the lyric in question was never intended racially. In fact, the term "goriya" has been so often and traditionally used in Indian songs to address a girl, that it didn't occur to any of us to interpret it in a literal manner."
Leaving the intention aside, Beyonce's name is a patented one, therefore to avoid the trouble that would be to come, makers have replaced the name. Not replaced, but tweaked it would be better terminology, calling the song 'Beyonse'. Even then the change of the alphabet is simply akin to a typo, it doesn't change the image of the person associated with the name itself.
The question is, does it make it any less problematic? Turning it into Beyonse doesn't change who and how the song is describing. For netizens too this seems like shirking responsibility, where there needs to be some. Perhaps, it's now time to retire 'goriya' as well, to avoid future confusion.
