Mohenjo Daro's fashion faux pas sees Twitter unleashing history lessons

The trailer of Mohenjo Daro (see below), the much-awaited Ashutosh Gowariker film starring Hrithik Roshan and Pooja Hegde, is out and looks like it has messed up the still uncertain past with an Indian Fashion Week mash up.

Painfully stereotypical, gawdily borrowed from an array of fantasy and epic adventure movies such as Baahubali, Independence Day, Gladiator, Lord of the Rings, and even Jodha Akbar, Mohenjo Daro, at least from the trailer, is symptomatic of a Bollywoodised version of a cool past, all swords and leatherwear, stitched designer robes and feathers in the hair.

And Gowariker, despite his best intentions (he did consult a number of archaeologists and historians to score on the accuracy department), has faultered big time with his latest venture.

The trailer itself has epic ambition but ends up parading the worst excesses of a nation unable to comprehend the uncertainties of its past. Just like the present regime's harping on the putative Vedic Age, Mohenjo Daro, which claims to depict the Indus Valley Civilisation of 2016 BC as imagined in 2016 AD, mixes up its periods while claiming to be authentic.

Its idea of the yet undeciphered Harappan script is to showcase hieroglyphics from the ancient Egyptians, betraying an acute lack of a grip on world history.

2016 BC Indus Valley is shown to have white-skinned Caucasians, iron weapons, stitched clothes in cotton and leather, shoes and many more resounding errors that are just too glaring for any movie proclaiming historical faithfulness and rigour.

Just look at Hrithik's character in the "first look" poster, complete with a Tony and Guy haircut and a face too devoid of hair follicles to suit an age 4,000 years into the past.

Of course, Twitter has had a field day skewering Mohenjo Daro's pretentious take on history and its peddling of what many are calling "Bollywood Orientalism".

#MohenjoDaro means 'mound of the dead' in Sindhi. It was an archeological name given to the site when excavations began in the 1920's.

— Apurva M Asrani (@Apurvasrani) June 21, 2016

Interesting to see horses, silks & iron weapons in #MohenjoDaro. Must be a good reason, considering none of these existed in Indus Valley.

— Apurva M Asrani (@Apurvasrani) June 21, 2016

Gowarkar's Mohenjodaro trailer succumbs to the worst stereotypes of exotic orientalism. This isn't creative licence. It is low brow populism

— Party Martian (@paritoshZero) June 21, 2016

Someone on the team knows that the original name of the Indus age settlement was most probably not Mohenjodaro, right? :D

— Suchi (@suchitramac) June 21, 2016

what are these US immigrants doing in Mohenjodaro ? pic.twitter.com/8dF2HBAbPF

— Swagshank (@zZoker) June 20, 2016

Bae- come over.Me- no it's burning outside, i am in the bathtub.Bae- parents aren't homeMe- pic.twitter.com/AKeVeXWxlv

— Swagshank (@zZoker) June 20, 2016

Kangana is continuing her role from Krish 3. This time she will definitely kill Hrithik. #MohenjoDaroTrailer pic.twitter.com/8rwrR1NeAH

— Sagarcasm (@sagarcasm) June 20, 2016

Really excited about the Mohenjo Daro documentary

— Tanmay Bhat (@thetanmay) June 21, 2016

If the people in 2600 BC were made to watch Jodha Akbar & Lagaan back to back, they'd be done just in time for the release of Mohenjo Daro.

— Akshar (@AksharPathak) June 20, 2016

Crocodile in #MohenjoDaro era on being told that $1 will be equal to INR 40 in 2016. pic.twitter.com/9jgOycymzN

— Aisi Taisi Democracy (@AisiTaisiDemo) June 20, 2016

Hrithik ducking as Suzanne throws her Louis Vuitton original croc leather handbag at him. pic.twitter.com/Kg7jLS7uoo

— Roflindian (@Roflindian) June 20, 2016

Looks like Harappan women perfected that Cannes pose before Angelina Jolie did. #MohenjoDaro #Bollywood #Lol pic.twitter.com/W1A1IeUgfY

— Manoj Jacob Dhinagar (@MJDhinagar) June 21, 2016

I mean, there are literally hundreds of terracotta figurines depicting Harappan women. Take a cue?

— Ruchika Sharma (@tishasaroyan) June 16, 2016

Also, in all probability the Harappans were dark complexioned. Yeh kya fair and lovely bias hai?

— Ruchika Sharma (@tishasaroyan) June 16, 2016

Also half of those signs in the background are not from Harappan pictography. Some are hierogylphs. #Facepalm

— Ruchika Sharma (@tishasaroyan) June 16, 2016

Similarly, Mohenjo Daro's semi-medieval sartorial choices in the poster below, have been panned for their unbelievable idiocy.

It seems not just the Sangh Parivar, and its assorted followers in the government as well as the country, a blinkered, hotchpotch, video-game-like understanding of history shorn of every particularity and context is something that is widely shared even among those with the creative licence to mix and mismatch.

Since clothes and ambience are the main aspects caught in the trailer, Twitterati and the cognoscenti have unleashed their history lessons on the unimaginable faux pas of Mohenjo Daro's fashion quotient. A Pooja Hedge resembling a supermodel attending Cannes Film Festival is really the least of the film's worries.

Can Hrithik Roshan and Ashutosh Gowariker outrun the tch-tch'ing commentariat online? We'll know only in August this year.

Till then, it's Fantasia in the Mound of the Dead.