As Salman Khan turns 51, understanding what fuels this phenomenon

What is it about Salman Khan that makes him tick with his massive fan base and even widen his appeal despite all the faults and black marks on his card? Few can read the pulse of the masses as well as him.

According to media theorist John Ellis, the paradox of stardom combines the ordinary and the extraordinary. The great source of Sallu’s appeal to his devoted fans lies in their belief in his image as a man’s man – to err is being human as long as his heart is in the right place. And it is. It does not matter what Salman Khan, the real person is, as long as the narrative arc he embodies is ‘common knowledge’ to the rest of us.

Following the superb launchpad of Maine Pyar Kiya in 1989, Khan delivered a series of notable hits, most notably through his Prems and Surajs through the nineties. His popularity broke new ground when he became Radhe in Tere Naam in 2003, a remake of the Tamil film Sethu, wherein he played a macho college guy with a kind heart who falls in love with the daughter of a temple priest. When she does not return his love, he kidnaps her and ‘forces’ her to recognise and return his passion for her. She has a change of heart, but soon after he is attacked by some local goons and ends up with permanent brain damage that cost him all memories. The movie, which surpassed all expectations and established Khan as the new phenomenon, was interestingly pitched as Khan’s own love story – fast at the heels of his 2002 hit-and-run case in which a pavement dweller lost his life and others were injured. The incident itself was perversely blamed on his depression from the heartbreak of losing his life’s love (then girlfriend, Aishwarya). In the ensuing transfer of emotions and sympathy from the audience, it became as if Khan were Radhe. Khan was later cleared of all charges in the hit-and-run case.

Just as Salman Khan, the name, could galvanize a Bajrangi Bhaijaan and a Sultan into becoming record-breaking hits, conversely his films have also been crucial to his star image as an actor – the bad boy with a goodish heart – an image that is incomplete without the identities of his characters in the film to cohere and enrich it. Khan often plays such characters that the members of the audience – among whom his movies are popular – can both identify with and idolise at the same time, be it Chulbul Pandey (Dabangg), Pawan Kumar Chaturvedi (Bajrangi Bhaijaan) or Sultan Ali Khan (Sultan). They are non-urban and none too refined or fluent in English but they are sincere, simple-hearted and straightforward men with morals. Even the catchy dance moves of his characters can be emulated by all – it is achievable, not a varsity league wow a la Hrithik Roshan.

In comparison to his contemporaries Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan who have ventured into quasi-cerebral, modern roles that primarily appeal to multiplex audiences, Bhai’s blockbusters are unapologetically packed with Bollywood masala entertainment and he himself appeals at an intuitive level. Like his character in Kick says, “Main dil mein aata hoon, samajh mein nahi.”

Khan has oft and repeatedly expressed, most recently with brothers Sohail and Arbaaz in the centennial episode of Koffee with Karan, that he owes his stardom-generating personality entirely to the contributions of his siblings and parents, whom he continues to live with. Rest, in his words, he just “lucked out”. The eligible superstar has always been a humble and a professed family man, in that sense. He prefers to live in a tiny house full of loving people over some big house that his star status evokes.

He is Bhai — someone at once distant and yet an approachable, emulation-worthy entity in his ordinary fans’ lives. Worshipped by many for his machismo and unique style statement, Khan wields his hyper-masculine physique with a flourish in almost every movie of his since he pioneered ripping biceps for Veergati in the mid-nineties. It has earned him novel adulation of his fans and sent scores of young men pan-India to their local gyms.

Through his cultivated persona, Khan appeals to and has in turn shaped a conservative brand of Indian masculinity that is liminal to the modernity that globalisation ushered into India’s metropolitan cities. His blockbusters like Dabangg and its sequel, laced with anti-establishment moves, are roaringly received in the hinterlands. In the documentary Being Bhaijaan, which explores the life of members of the ‘Jai Salman’ fan group in Nagpur and Chhindwara, one gets to see some of this thriving old-worldism that Khan champions in his persona. Shan Ghosh and Balram, two ardent fans of Bhai, find validation for their politically incorrect ideas of morality through his movies. Ghosh, for instance, shares that he wants to marry the kind of girl who dresses modestly in salwar-kameez and hasn’t had any boyfriends. “Kyun ki main itna modern nahi hoon,” he says. It is clear that the same rules don’t exactly apply to him, as he is allowed to dress in the latest fashion like Bhai, but he justifies his views by looking up to Khan for the kind of ‘old-fashioned’ morals his filmi persona adheres to – with nary a kissing scene till date in any of his movies.

Khan’s on screen and off screen personas constantly overflow and add to each other. In his appearance on Koffee with Karan in 2013, Khan had famously and cheekily claimed that he was still a virgin. Ghosh and Balram, both stated that they were convinced that Khan was telling the truth and read it as the superior endorsement to practising celibacy in their own lives. Thus pitting a “moral” form of pop culture against “hedonistic” desire seemingly sanctioned by the new worldism that they, as small towners, have been grappling with.

Bhai too has never quite been able to grasp the ways of the world – the political correctness, the cerebral kind of decision making, the diplomacy. He is “too emotional” for his own good, too ‘human’ to stay out of trouble. He does not apologise for this — it’s just who he is. “If you believe the narrative spun by his PR team, Khan’s family and the actor himself, there is always a tragic story, or a simple miscommunication behind every ‘setback’ in Salman’s life”, Nishita Jha eloquently summarises. In that context, ‘Being Human’ – the charity foundation as well as the lifestyle brand – has also been crucial to Khan’s image makeover. He has reportedly sported products of the brand everywhere – shooting sets, events and even his court hearings — to signal his changed self who does good work, humanitarian work.

On the sets of Koffee with Karan, the Khan bros recently spoke about the issue that celebrities are never allowed to get away with anything, when all they want is to be treated like any other person and given some space. As the Salman Khan the superstar turns 51, gains more distance from the legally embroiled past, and tastes sweeter box-office success, his narrative is only likely to grow more robust. Public memory, after all, fades and takes a backseat when all eyes are on the screen.