Hook Steps: Is Tollywood Crossing The Line?

Is established the fact that Tollywood is a largely commercialised industry, and most of our films need to have certain commercial ingredients to cater to the masses. One of these commercial ingredients is mass songs and mass dance steps on the leading actors.

However, in what could be considered an alarming trend that is becoming increasingly mainstream in recent times, these mass steps that are being displayed are crossing the line.

Recently, it was the case of the hook step in Mr Bachchan where Ravi Teja is seen putting his hands in the attire of Bhagyashree Borse. This supposed hook step became a huge controversy back in the day and there was severe criticism on director Harish Shankar for approving something like this.

Again, this is followed by another hook step in the recently released Daaku Maharaj which has this mass song on Balakrishna and Urvashi Rautela. There’s this one step of Balayya beating Urvashi on the behind that caught the ire on social media. There were complaints about the novelty and the core composition of this step.

Now we have another new entry to the list in the form of the newly released song from Robinhood. This song is picture and actress Kritika Sharma, who will be seen in the special dance number.

The video version of the song was released a short while back and it has extensive shot composition on the navel region of the actress while she is seen dancing in a flowery dress. Thu has also drawn a mixed response.

The common factor in these songs is that all of them have overt s*xualisation of the female actresses. There’s an increased demand to curb such visuals in the future as these hook steps are crossing the line and only vulgarity is there to be seen here.