Three Khans And The Changing Landscape

Art typically responds to social and political dimensions, and in a rustic wanting position fashions, movie stars typically play a double position. If Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor mirrored Nehruvian socialism of their movies, Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan emerged because the poster boys of Rajiv Gandhi’s tryst with globalisation. And there has all the time been a Dev Anand and Salman Khan who’ve merely relied on mass attraction.

In her newest guide, The Three Khans: And the Emergence of New India (Westland), senior journalist Kaveree Bamzai has juxtaposed the careers of the three Khans, Aamir, Shah Rukh, and Salman, with probably the most tumultuous instances within the historical past of the republic. It is a troublesome process however Bamzai has woven a crisp and compelling narrative that retains you intrigued.

Mythical auraHaving frolicked along with her topics as a part of her skilled profession, Bamzai is able to mirror on the legendary aura of the troika and separate the boys from their cultivated picture. She doesn’t search to search out clear solutions. Instead, she provides us a way of the socio-political churn — when ‘Saathi haath badhana’ gave method to ‘Dil maange more’, when secularism turned a nasty phrase and communalism was offered as nationalism — and the way the three Khans have navigated the terrain.

The guide has come out at a time when stardom as a time period is going through an existential disaster, with OTT platforms relying extra on content material than charisma. Interestingly, the three emerged on the scene when new know-how was about to choke cinema in India.

In the late 80s, when widespread Hindi cinema was sinking beneath the VCR wave, the Khans pulled household audiences again to theatres with Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, Maine Pyar Kiya, and Deewana. In the period of Hukumat and Tezaab, Aamir Khan introduced the arrival of the lovable hero. When he sang, ‘Papa kehte hain bada naam karega,’ he sang to a brand new demographic, which couldn’t determine with the ageing Dharmendra or the raucous Anil Kapoor. For a change, as Bamzai says, the hero was holding the guitar and the heroine made an entry using a horse. It is Juhi Chawla who checks out Aamir moderately than the opposite manner spherical.

Rise of the multiplex

Single display theatre house owners needed to clear their stinking urinals because the middle-class thronged theatres to look at the aspirations of a brand new, liberalised India. An India the place individualism was on the surge, the place nuclear households in dense metros have been in search of an American dream with out giving up on conservative values.

Unlike Aamir and Salman, Shah Rukh was an outsider and a skilled actor able to take dangers. Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman and Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa, the titles of his early movies, inadvertently mirrored his journey from Delhi to Mumbai. He began as an obsessive lover and stalker with Baazigar and Darr, however ultimately settled to mirror the NRI’s simple Western life with Indian roots.

Unlike the Bobby or Ek Duje Ke Liye template, in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge the lovers don’t run away from patriarchy, however the narrative cleverly subsumes patriarchy and presents it with a consumerist cowl, the place the beer-guzzling hero doesn’t benefit from the inebriated lady.

The demographic shift additionally meant that Hindi cinema more and more lower off from Bharat and mirrored solely shining India. The single screens gave method to a number of screens and the aam aadmi more and more felt undesirable in a state of affairs the place a packet of popcorn was as costly if no more than the ticket. It was through the Khans’ reign that the concept of silver jubilees and golden jubilees step by step vanished. All that mattered was the primary three days as, having grow to be co-producers, they bombarded theatres with 1000’s of prints.

In this universe, unemployment was seldom a problem and the hero was hardly anti-establishment. He represented these in the true world whose dependence on the state was more and more diminishing.

t was not that within the 90s India was socio-politically quiet. But in contrast to Amitabh Bachchan, who within the 70s channelised the angst of the youth towards the hollowness of slogans like ‘Garibi Hatao,’ the Khans seldom dived into the Mandal or Ram Janam Bhoomi motion and their attendant caste and communal politics. Unlike the Angry Young Man, their anguish was all private.

After a vibrant Rangeela, Aamir shifted gears on the flip of the millennium with Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai. The roles of a villager who takes on the British or the coming-of-age of a egocentric, suave man have been poles aside, however Aamir performed them with such gusto that he received each grassroots and international consideration. Right from Raakh, the movie he did earlier than QSQT, experimenting with seems and scripts is his methodology and he succeeds as a rule.

Shah Rukh has not been as fortunate with experiments. He lunged for change with Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se… and Ashutosh Gowarikar’s Swades and tried to reinvent himself with difficult topics like Asoka, Chak De! and My Name Is Khan. Of these, Chak De!, which handled the otherisation of Muslims, is probably his finest efficiency up to now, going past the Raj/Rahul template. The different two, mounted for international recognition, turned out to be considerably hole regardless of his efforts. Be it Paheli, Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani or Fan for that matter, box-office outcomes have typically compelled Shah Rukh to return to acquainted turf the place he spreads his arms and the viewers embraces him.

Meanwhile, combining machoism with vulnerability, Salman continued to pander to the fan base he cultivated after Tere Naam, a stylised model of a working-class hero, a far cry from the city romantic of Hum Aapke Hain Kaun and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. Critics continued to make enjoyable of Salman’s selections, dialogue supply and his brush with the regulation however it didn’t have an effect on his mass attraction.

Salman’s most important contribution got here with Bajrangi Bhaijaan, the place he performed the son of an RSS pracharak on a journey to take a mute lady again to her residence in Pakistan. It was an fascinating conflict of concepts at a time when the communal virus was getting contagious. Then, after all, got here Sultan, the place he performed a Muslim wrestler, however with out sporting faith on his sleeve.

But, as Bamzai rightly suggests, it’s not simply new platforms and the subsequent crop of actors and contemporaries like Akshay Kumar and Ajay Devgn on the fitting aspect of the institution who give the Khans stiff competitors. It’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, who has emerged as the brand new cultural icon for a lot of kids.