'Feeding homophobia to kids': Apurva Asrani, Onir slam top icecream brand; demand apology

Filmmaker Apurva Asrani on Saturday took to his Twitter handle to share a 'problematic' cartoon by a popular ice-cream brand. 'Feeding homophobia to kids,' Asrani wrote as he slammed the brand for spreading a message of 'disgust and disrespect'.

Filmmaker Onir came out in support of Apurva and demanded an apology from the brand. The cartoon shows two pictures — one where a guy is shown to be mesmerised by a person (looks like a girl from behind) but in the second picture when he goes closer it turns to be a man and the boy is shown to be 'shocked or disgusted'. Bollywood actor Gulshan Devaiah also wrote, "Another problem: So it’s kinda creepy for the man to just look at long hair and an effeminate demeanour and profess his love. That’s inappropriate behaviour!!!!" [sic]

To this, Asrani replied, "Oh yeah, I just understood your tweet. This stalking a stranger is a problem too. That too based on basic physical attributes. That's another whole discussion" [sic]

When a fan told Asrani that it was "just a joke", the director hit back saying, "Put things in perspective before you call this a harmless joke. The LGBTQ is a community that has been persecuted, humiliated & criminalised for 100s of years. Our people are dying lonely, our kids are committing suicide. We need to fix the homophobia before we make such jokes." [sic]

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