A few years ago, at the height of the RRR craze, Wimbledon put up a poster showing Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz in the now-infamous Naatu Naatu pose. The innocuous post left a rather odd impression because SS Rajamouli’s magnum opus is a mockery of everything British. The Brits can’t dance, they can’t fight, they are comically evil and they can’t even handle a guy shooting arrows at them. The movie literally climaxes with the EBITDA-obsessed Governor Scott’s blood literally splattered on the Crown.
Get breaking news anytime, anywhere. Download the TOI app now!
If one were a Britisher, one would have been rather dismayed that a very British event that venerates Rudyard Kipling would use a meme from a movie that flagellates and mocks Britain’s greatest achievement: colonialism. Or perhaps it is the nature of modern British culture, where the apple has fallen so far from Kipling-Forsyth-Le Carré Albion nostalgia that it has become too apologetic about its past, when the nation’s great spirit was represented by scurrilous rogues who would sail the Seven Seas to sell opium.
