Posterboys

The PK poster with its stark, shock inducing visual, stands out from the cookie cutter vinyls plastered across our skylines. In the colour splashed hand-painted billboards of yore, it would have been rather overpowering

Written by Priyanka Sinha Jha

Mumbai | Updated: August 8, 2014 04:42 PM IST

3 min read

Poster of PK that has created quite a stir.

Aamir Khan set the cat among the pigeons when he launched the poster of PK — the poster shows the actor without a stitch on him, with a strategically placed radio, that well, to use the time honoured phrase, covers his modesty. So far so good, just that the strategically released poster with its shock value has perhaps done precisely what it was meant to — generate a widespread buzz.

A lawyer in Kanpur is reported to have filed a case against the actor, director Rajkumar Hirani and producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra citing the negative influence this would have on young minds, given that Khan is in a position of social influencer, according to the complainant, the ‘obscene’ visual could even encourage crime against women!

It is one of the early indications that the poster has scored a bullseye just as giving a Ghajini haircut to ushers in cinema hall had. But there is more. The move has created quite a flutter on Facebook and on Twitter (it was trending too) with jokes and smart alecky comments, not all flattering. But, as specialists will tell you, when on social media, one has to be prepared to take the bad with the good. The good news is that as per the pronouncement of marketing gurus, there is no such thing as bad publicity. And now for that perfect film to ride the wave! They don’t call Aamir the marketing mastermind for nothing.

All the hulabulloo around PK’s film poster draws attention to the eventful journey of the humble film billboard! That one of India’s leading artists, Maqbool Fida Husain had his moorings in his early career of a film hoarding painter, is but a small testimony to the glorious past. Unfortunately, the early hand-painted beauties with highly exaggerated features that told a dramatic story of their own have all but disappeared.

These hand-crafted pieces of art history have now morphed into stylish slick mass produced versions that could be happily
substituted for one another. Fortunately, every once in a way, the vintage visuals show up at upscale restaurants with ‘Bollywood Theme’ decors or sometimes surface at museums and auctions, occasionally fetching a handsome price—a poster of Guide was reportedly sold for Rs.1.8 lakh at an Osian auction!

The evolution has obviously also marked the end of careers of renowned poster artsists like Dewakar Karkare, an alumnus of JJ school of Arts and Balakrishan Laxman Vaidya whose last consignment was creating eight posters for Lagaan, their studios having downed shutters over the years. Vanilla vinyls draped across our skyline are more in sync with our freshly acquired appetite for stylised realism.

But nothing can quite match the overpowering sensation of the kitschy, garishly painted billboards of yore—it was mandatory for them to be erected at a respectable distance from airports lest the pilots get distracted!

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Just imagine the PK poster interpreted by billboard artists in a riotuous burst of colours emblazoned across the city—now, that would truly have been an instance of ‘phataa poster, nikla hero!

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PK poster