MUMBAI: There was an air of excitement in the crowd in the early 2000s as Abhishek Bachchan was about to make his debut. The idea that this generation of movies will have its very own Bachchan was the source of this frenzy, not Abhishek.

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The audience was there to support the son of the two finest stars in Hindi cinema, Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan, as he made his cinematic debut. They were there because they loved their parents. Although he suffered numerous setbacks in his early career, the public (as well as the producers at the time) welcomed him with open arms and endured the numerous bad films he created until he had hits to his credit.

Now, imagine this as if it were today, and Abhishek was making his premiere. It is unlikely that Abhishek would receive the same level of affection as he had in the past, and he would certainly not receive the same welcome.

Janhvi Kapoor has been left in charge of this end of the agreement. Janhvi, the daughter of Sridevi, had the spectacular debut that every debutante could hope for. However, one of the worst disasters that could happen to anyone also happened to her during this thrilling time in her life.

A few months before Janhvi's first movie, Dhadak was released, the world lost Sridevi, and there was a rush of support for the upstart. However, Janhvi made her debut amid a society that quickly lost interest in her mother's tradition and threw the term "nepotism" around carelessly.

When her next movie, Gunjan Saxena, came out, everyone was still mourning the loss of Sushant Singh Rajput. As is well known, at the time, a lot of social media was spreading the story that Sushant's passing had something to do with nepotism in the film business. There was no way Gunjan Saxena could have survived in this instability. The film's quality wasn't really the main focus here; rather, it arrived at a moment where it was certain to fail, and indeed it did.

In the consequent years, Janhvi stayed true to her course and chose films where she wasn’t being the ‘flower pot’, which was a bold choice for a newcomer making her way in a world where movies are designed with the male hero in mind. Her choices, which are reserved only for the privileged, didn’t earn her enough brownie points, thanks to her ‘nepo’ tag. In a film like Good Luck Jerry, which had a strong ensemble cast featuring Deepak Dobriyal, Mita Vashisht, Sushant Singh, Janhvi held her own and even though she wasn’t the strongest performer in the film, this was a strong addition to her filmography.

Mili, where she starred with Manoj Pahwa and Sunny Kaushal, was another decent film but as per Janhvi’s own admission, her social media followers (almost 24 million in March 2024) weren’t her screen-going audience here. Her appearance in Zoya Akhtar’s short in Ghost Stories was worth noticing but in hindsight, one can see that Janhvi doesn’t have an army of followers that builds her myth for strong parts but she does have a military of haters who like to pick on her when she makes a mistake.

In an interview with the popular news portal in December 2023, Janhvi broke down as she spoke about the “unfair advantage” she had over many others as she got an express entry into Bollywood because of her parents, Sridevi and producer Boney Kapoor.

“I am her daughter and I can’t run away from that truth,” she said with tears in her eyes. If it took over five years for Janhvi to stop feeling guilty about being her mother’s daughter, there is no way that the world would stop punishing her for it. The tag of nepotism casually hangs around Janhvi’s name. The moment she misspeaks or makes a misstep, she is bombarded with a slew of hate messages. But the strange part of it is, that Janhvi still gets the attention that she wants, just not for her movies.

Nepo kids are often criticized for the privilege they are born into, which they can’t help, but it gets worse when they flaunt that privilege in front of those who don’t even have a fraction of that and don’t even make it count.

Like recently, when Janhvi spoke about her education at an acting school in Los Angeles where she “learnt nothing” and realized that learning more about India would have been of bigger help. The idea that someone had enough and more resources at their disposal to get an expensive education abroad, and then discard it like it meant nothing was not appreciated by her potential audience. But a statement such as this would still get more eyeballs than her film Mili.

Indian cinema has been around for more than a century, and most of the mainstream sector is still managed by families. Despite having the same privileges as Janhvi, actors like Salman Khan, Kajol, and Sunny Deol are not linked to their parents' success or failures; instead, their achievements are solely their own.

Because the public has spent decades emotionally traveling with the nepo kids of the past, it is almost as if they are coming to peace with them. However, they are unable to invest the same level of passion in stories of privilege that are presented as "struggle stories." The nepo child label is occasionally applied to actors like Alia Bhatt and Ranbir Kapoor, who are frequently hailed as two of the greatest actors of their generation, but it isn't always associated with them the way it is with Janhvi or her peers Sara Ali Khan or Ananya Panday.

During Janhvi's five-year career, the majority of her films have been viewed (and enjoyed) by a select group of people who take films at face value. Janhvi is directly targeted by social media for as long as it doesn't find something else to criticize, such as another group of nepo youngsters. The nepo tag is like an albatross around her neck. Alternatively, there might be a movie that stops this noise, but that sounds a little too idealistic.

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Credit- The Indian express