When art becomes compliance, it is the death of creativity

Today is Rakhi. A festival of threads, laughter, and promises. Yet instead of tying knots of affection, we seem to be weaving rules around how festivities must look on screen. The recent Giva Raksha Bandhan ad controversy — Kriti Sanon’s neckline chatter, Kangana’s sharp comments, and the brand’s eventual withdrawal — is another reminder of how easily a festival can be hijacked by noise rather than celebrated for its meaning.

Excerpt from HT City Mumbai Edition dated 28th August 2026

The oldest trick in the book: throw in a disruptive comment, act offended, and suddenly the spotlight shifts. Creating something that makes people pause for its craft is far tougher than loosely criticising it and stirring up the internet. Creating is way more difficult than disturbing. And let’s be honest — the costume in question was hardly the stuff of legend. It would have been another festive film, doing its job over the next week before fading into the sea of festive advertising. The audiences would have moved on, instead the story of the ad has been replaced by the story of the neckline. Art can and should be critiqued. Questioning is healthy, even necessary. But critique and heckling are not the same. The former deserves space, the latter deserves reprimand. Giva’s decision to pull the ad perhaps showed maturity. By stepping back, they refused to let their brand become the stage for someone else’s performance of outrage. It wasn’t cowardice, it was pragmatism — a way of saying, “we won’t pay the price of your screen time.” Ironically, that vacuum only invited new allegations, fresh demands, and another round of noise. The pattern is clear. Disrupting gets more visibility than creating. The checklist culture is worrying because it reduces art to compliance. Diyas must be placed here, laddoos must be shown there, families must sit in a certain way. Tomorrow someone will demand that Holi ads show only gulal, not water balloons.

And this isn’t new. Mint had reported on the backlash against a Diwali ad by Tanishq in 2020, where the depiction of an interfaith family celebrating together was attacked online. The editorial noted how “the outrage was less about the ad itself and more about the opportunity to dominate the conversation.” Hindustan Times, writing about Surf Excel’s Holi campaign, pointed out that “a simple metaphor of colours crossing boundaries was twisted into a political statement.” The Hindu, in its coverage of Cadbury’s Diwali ad, highlighted how even the choice of food items shown became a point of contention, with critics demanding “authenticity” as if festivals were ISO‑certified events.

And here’s the irony. By writing about it, I too am giving the disruptors some more screen time. They don’t deserve it, but silence feels dishonest. You can’t dismiss an idea without talking about it. That’s the paradox of our times — the creators sweat to tell a story, the disruptors shout to steal the story, and the audience is left wondering what the story was in the first place.

So on Rakhi, while sisters tie threads and brothers promise protection, maybe we should also tie one around our art — to protect it from being reduced to a rulebook. Because if we let the checklist win, we’ll end up with ads that look perfect but feel empty. And festivals, of all things, deserve better.