Oscar Awards 2023: What's behind RRR's spectacular rise around the globe

Ever since RRR’s Naatu Naatu won the Golden Globe for the best original song on January 10, the internet has gone into a tizzy with new stories flooding the web by the hour. From Jr NTR being trolled for putting up an American accent on the Golden Globe red carpet, James Cameron revealing that he’s watched the film twice, Rihanna congratulating the team on the historic win, western audiences dancing to the song in packed theatres, to the period spectacle taking home the coveted Critics Choice Award for the best foreign language film, it’s a deluge.

I remember being invigorated by Naatu Naatu when I first watched it. I must have seen it twice or thrice since and it never fails to impress. Prem Rakshith’s singular choreography, Chandrabose’s catchy lyrics, MM Keeravaani’s celebratory music, and Telugu superstars Jr NTR and Ram Charan’s rippling muscle energy and crackling chemistry at glorious display, what’s not to love?

But in spite of it all, in India, Naatu Naatu never quite became the rage like Raataan Lambiyan from Shershaah or Kesariya from Brahmastra: Part One — Shiva, or more recently, Besharam Rang from Pathaan. Even RRR, despite its jaw-dropping grandeur and hyperbolic storytelling, lacks the emotional gravitas and stirring character-building that so firmly grounds SS Rajamouli’s Baahubali films.

What, then, explains the film becoming the global behemoth that it has turned into? If you scratch the surface, you’ll find that the current RRR frenzy is not an overnight phenomenon, nor is a single factor responsible for it. The storm had been brewing ever since Naatu Naatu blew up on TikTok and Instagram much ahead of the film’s release, with netizens trying their versions of the hook step, inundating reels and orchestrating viral challenges, piquing the interest of western viewers.

Massive credit for its success also goes to its theatrical re-release in the US as “encoRRRe.” Reeling under franchise fatigue, the Americans hadn’t seen anything like it — a standalone two-hero film deeply rooted in its culture and mythology that’s also an underdog story about friendship and nationalism with staggering action, swaggering set pieces, and song and dance that makes you leap off your seats and forget its over three-hour runtime. Of course, they lapped it up.

The word of mouth for the film got so strong that despite being available on Netflix, RRR grossed over $14 million at the American box office. But then, it isn’t the first Rajamouli film to do wonders in the US. His Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (2017) raked in a whopping $20 million in the region. So a majority of Americans, even outside of the Indian diaspora, were familiar with Rajamouli’s work, enough to want to see his next at a theatre and not on a streamer.

Another major reason for Hollywood waking up to and acknowledging world cinema is Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (2019) taking home the Academy Award for best picture. In becoming the first non-English film to bag the honor, it opened the floodgates, long locked tight by white gatekeepers, making room for regional cinemas from the world over. It still isn’t a level playing field. In fact, far from it. But I’m glad at least someone broke through the glass ceiling.

RRR’s popularity with the western audience is hardly surprising. Because it subscribes to their idea of India and Indians with great dexterity. You don’t have to look too closely to realize that the film’s treatment of Bheem’s arc has strong influences of The Jungle Book. It isn’t without reason that Hollywood is still obsessed with Rudyard Kipling’s story which was originally published in 1894.

To add to it, RRR is set in the colonial India of the early 1920s struggling under British rule. There’s plenty of poverty, rusticity, wilderness, natives, racism, and a brutal fight for freedom. But all of it is just enough to stoke the white man’s guilt and yet ensure that at no point it gets too uncomfortable. This is the reason why only a certain kind of Indian films get seen in the Hollywood awards circuit. Whether it be Mother India, Salaam Bombay, now RRR, or even The Chhello Show, that’s made it to this year’s Oscars shortlist for the best international film. There’s a checklist. And RRR ticks every box.

Naatu Naatu has also made it to the Oscars shortlist for the best original song. Fourteen other songs including Nothing is Lost from Avatar: The Way of Water, Hold My Hand from Top Gun: Maverick, Lift Me Up from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Ciao Papa from Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio are also contesting in the same category. I would not be surprised if Naatu Naatu wins. It would be a landmark moment for Indian cinema, one which will legitimise the white gaze and racial stereotyping in a way that we may never be able to undo.