Tina's Troubles

By Rebecca Winters

To soul-music fans and leg men, TINA TURNER is already a goddess. But ISMAIL MERCHANT'S casting of Turner as a Hindu deity in his upcoming film The Goddess has outraged some British Hindus, who plan to picket the movie. (Did they learn nothing from protests against The Passion of the Christ, which did not exactly dent ticket sales?) Having Turner play Shakti--the personification of a female divinity who wears a necklace of men's skulls--reduces the goddess to a "musical joke," says a Hindu group. Of course, some who saw Turner's last try at a dramatic role in 1985's Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome may also protest.