India’s Poster Plagiarism Controversy
Indian filmmaker and actor Vijay Devarakonda is slated to release his upcoming film, currently entitled VD 12, shortly. However, earlier this week, he released the first poster for the film, which fans initially seemed to find both interesting and enjoyable.
However, some began to draw comparisons between the VD 12 poster and a poster for the 2012 film Argo, which was directed by and starred Ben Affleck.
The similarities between the two posters are obvious. Both posters feature a black and white image of the film’s protagonist at the top of the poster, with the image cut into strips as if it had been run through a paper shredder.
That has led to some on social media to wonder if the poster drew a bit too much inspiration from Argo. That concern also spilled onto the film itself, with some wondering how much inspiration and influence VD 12 took from Argo.
One of VD 12’s producers, Naga Vamsi, took to Twitter to respond to the controversy. Saying that, “Shredding or stripping identities concept is as old as the secret agencies. Kindly, refrain from temptations of passing judgement without proper basis.”
He also provided a series of example posters that had similar motifs, including the 1981 film Agantuk, the 2019 film Kaithi, both of which are from India, and the 2012 American film The Bourne Legacy.
The responses to that tweet were mixed, with many supporting Vamsi’s arguments, while others claimed it only highlighted the similarities between the two original posters.
So, is this much ado about nothing, or is there something that those behind VD 12 should feel ashamed for? To understand, we have to first look at some background.
Background and Foreground
For much of its history, the Indian film industry has been best known internationally for both its musicals and its plagiarism. The industry would routinely take stories, characters and concepts from Hollywood films and repurpose them.
This was so common that it’s easy to find lists of dozens of Indian films beside their earlier Hollywood counterparts. The plagiarism and copyright infringement were equally brazen and rarely carried any repercussions.
However, that’s begun to change over the past few decades. India has established itself as a film giant, one that tells its own stories, releases its own films and has its own voice.
With that shift has come an increasing focus on originality and plagiarism. We’ve talked about a few of those stories on this site, including the 2021 story where a 1996 Indian film was accused of plagiarizing the Israeli national anthem and a 2022 story where famous director Asghar Farhadi is accused of having plagiarized one of his former students.
However, there have been countless other examples of films being accused of plagiarism. As Indian films have reached a broader audience and have become more financially successful, these stories have had increasingly large social and legal ramifications, including seeing more film studios seeking permission to do official remakes.
It’s in that shadow that this story has begun to make the rounds and, with that nuance, it’s easy to see why it became such a large story.
Looking at the Posters
On the surface, it’s easy to see why many consider the posters to be incredibly similar. The visual focus on both posters is on the image of a man, the films’ protagonists, whose image looks like it has been partially shredded.
It’s a compelling and striking visual. Both posters use similar images, both images are in black and white, and the images are both partially shredded.
However, when you start to look past that, the posters also have significant differences. The VD 12 poster focuses solely on the character’s eyes, not featuring anything below his nose. Meanwhile, the Argo poster features the character’s full face and covers the eyes with the film’s logo.
Because of that, the VD 12 poster only features the image in the top third, where the Argo one has the image take up nearly the whole poster. Likewise, the VD 12 image appears to be more of a charcoal drawing, where the Argo one looks more like a photograph.
Yes, the two posters share the same concept, namely the use of an image of a face that appears to have been shredded, but the posters differ drastically when looking at what they put focus on, the overall color scheme and the layout of the posters.
Simply put, these are two very different posters that share a single, albeit striking, element in common.
None of this is to say that the poster designer didn’t copy or wasn’t inspired by Argo. The only person who can speak to that is the designer. However, this is an idea that could have easily been thought of by two different people independently of one another. It’s not significant proof of copying, especially considering it’s a trope of these kinds of films (as Vamsi pointed out).
However, even if it were, it’s unlikely that it would rise to the level of copyright infringement. Though the idea is similar, ideas cannot be protected by copyright and the expression of the idea, the part that is protectable, is very different between the works.
Bottom Line
For me, the real test will be after the film comes out. If the film does borrow heavily from Argo, then it puts this similarity in a new light.
Right now, all that we have are two separate posters with similar “big ideas”. It’s an idea that’s based on a trope of the genre and, as the producer pointed out, has been replicated by other films over the decades.
There’s just no proof that this wasn’t simply two works with similar ideas that were independently created. This type of similarity can easily be a coincidence.
More information may change that and frame this similarity differently, but right now, it’s probably best to note the similarities and not much more.
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