Earlier today, actor Meryl Streep received the lifetime achievement award at this year’s Golden Globes Awards. In her acceptance speech, she said, “We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call him on the carpet for every outrage. That’s why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution, so I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists, because we’re going to need them going forward and they’ll need us to safeguard the truth.” The “him” she was referring to is Donald Trump, whom she didn’t name, but to whom she made very pointed references. Streep wasn’t the only one to express contempt for the President-elect. Hugh Laurie struck out with vicious humour at the value system that Trump champions. Accepting his award, Laurie announced he was happy to have won an award at the “last ever” Golden Globes. “I don’t mean to be gloomy,” he said. “It’s just that it has the words ‘Hollywood,’ ‘foreign’ and ‘press’ in the title.”

This is a bit of a contrast to what made headlines about Stardust Awards that were telecast last night. While Golden Globes became a trending hashtag because of Streep and Laurie laying out their political cards, Bollywood offered its fans Iulia Vantur’s debut, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan touching Amitabh Bachchan’s feet on stage and Shah Rukh Khan dancing to a medley of his previous hits.

And so it seemed that while all fluff is fluffy, some fluff is fluffier than other fluff. The fact that Bollywood stayed steadfastly apolitical while Hollywood’s finest made their anti-Trump stand unmistakable, made it clear that escapism isn’t limited to what is shown on screen in popular Hindi cinema. It’s off-screen too.

If you’re a Bollywood fan, this is the moment when you may feel a little disappointed by your favourite stars. You may well lament that not a single celebrity who appeared on Stardust Awards made even a peep that could be interpreted as idealistic.

But before you shake your head and wag your finger, there’s one phrase you should consider: safe spaces.

The idea of a safe space is one that allows you to relax, feel secure and express yourself without any fear of any consequences. A place like The Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles, where Golden Globes Awards were held; where the likes of Streep and Laurie could lash out at the President-elect of the United States of America, knowing that the most that would follow were irate tweets.

Safe spaces like that are hard to find in India, particularly for Bollywood celebrities. From Kishore Kumar’s songs being banned by the state broadcaster to Aamir Khan losing his contract with Snapdeal, the consequences of voicing criticism can be crippling. Being a celebrity is supposed to provide a certain amount of immunity. You’re a member of the elite, you ‘know’ people, you’re wealthy, you live in the public eye. Consequently, if the state takes you on, it technically risks bad publicity, which in turn can lead to more questions, and who wants to risk that? It’s the basis on which dissenters like Chinese artist Ai Weiwei thrive – to silence them is to risk the spotlight being turned on the Chinese government’s far-from-commendable track record in freedom of expression, and so the state grits its metaphorical teeth and tolerates the artist.

What we’ve seen in India over the years, however, is that celebrity does not offer protection. They’re only marginally less vulnerable than, for example, two girls who complained on Facebook about Mumbai shutting down because of Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray’s funeral or a professor who shared a cartoon mocking West Bengal’s chief minister Mamata Banerjee. The prominence that comes with being a superstar means the police may not get involved, but the fear of being attacked remains. In fact, sometimes the fact that one is a celebrity can be a disadvantage. After all, if you know that a Bollywood Khan, with all his privileges, can be victimised for making a political statement, then will you risk angering those who cut him down to size? Especially when you can’t rely upon the media to hold up its end of the deal since certain sections face threats of censorship and the current dispensation doesn’t precisely encourage questions.

Bollywood and politics have a complicated relationship. Until recently, it was quite common for an actor to join politics when they grew too old to be in movies, which is what explains the fact that the likes of Shatrughan Sinha and Jayaprada have political careers. In their prime, many have campaigned for political parties. Most, however, have remained determinedly uncaring of what happens in current affairs. The most glaring example of this was the cluelessness that Alia Bhatt and Varun Dhawan displayed in an episode of Koffee with Karan in which neither knew who the president of India was at the time. Maybe it’s bimbo behaviour, but just maybe it’s a defence mechanism that has at its heart the hope that this head-in-the-sand attitude will mean that regardless of the government in power, films will release and do business without resistance. It hasn’t always worked — Black Friday took years to release, Bombay faced protests, Haider had to carry a statement making clear its allegiance to India and its army — but by and large, Hindi popular cinema has muddled its way through. How? Because it’s been apolitical.   

Dissent is always difficult, but in India, it’s doubly so because we still have laws that a colonial government had drafted to control and trample those who opposed the state. From the sedition law to the ones that clamp down on hate speech, there are many legal ways to silence those who dare to criticise. Our courts have usually upheld freedom of speech, but that doesn’t change the fact that the laws exist and can be used to intimidate. As this 2016 Human Rights Watch report observed, “India’s hate speech laws are so broad in scope that they infringe on peaceful speech and fail to meet international standards. Intended to protect minorities and the powerless, these laws are often used at the behest of powerful individuals or groups, who claim that they have been offended, to silence speech they do not like. The state too often pursues such complaints, thereby leaving members of minority groups, writers, artists, and scholars facing threats of violence and legal action.”

Would it be heartening if someone at Stardust Awards had taken a swipe at demonetisation? Or if there had been a snarky comment about “Fawad-wapsi” and the way the government twiddled its thumbs while the industry was besieged by hatemongers? What if someone had cracked a joke about how it must be the age of nationalism since practically every hit movie of 2016 had more than one performance of the national anthem in it (one before the film, one in the film)?

Considering the times we live in, that is evidently a little too much fantasy for even Bollywood to deliver.