Salman-Ash-Abhishek

Somebody recently raised the following interesting question:

Q: What does it say about Indian people and preferences that Abhishek Bachchan a guy who supposedly respects women like Aishwarya Rai, and likes to think of himself as some gentleman is rejected time and again as a loser by Indians giving flops after flops, but Salman Khan who was supposedly slapping Aishwarya Rai around gives record breaking openings at the box office?

Nayak/Khalnayak, Nalayak nayak, and a Sita Imposter?

This is a question worth more than 2 line answer for it's very telling about the film industry personnel and their true stature in Indian society (as compared to what they may think of themselves) as well as relationship to the underlying culture and people of India.

So going back to the question above, why is a 'Dabangg' Salman Khan so popular despite Aishwarya Rai's claims of criminalizing him, trying to turn him into real Raavan basically? Is he that popular? Or did/does the Indian public think Aishwarya Rai was a liar or a tramp in context of Salman Khan? And is the current husband, the largely Bengali Abhishek Bachchan, infact a soft, naive 'loser' as the stereotype goes? That apart, much like Vivek Oberoi, Abhishek Jr's career and expectations have been said to have entered a downturn post Aishwarya Rai. And if you believe that, would the suggestion to fix and for improvement then be to follow from the original Salman Khan's example and start slapping Aishwarya Rai around before his every movie release for 'good luck' sake to turn his fortune around? Well...

Well, the real answer to these question is actually not a yes or no but rather first requires an understanding of mainstream Indian culture and Indian popular culture, and also the specific backgrounds of these folks.

India is a conservative society by and large with a preference for cinema as entertainment. The way it works is offscreen outside of deep south, they do not have high opinion of film industry people either way. To the contrary, in the much earlier past many film actresses like Aishwarya Rai had traditionally been viewed in reputation as maybe just above better paid escorts and 'umrao jaan' types. The refrain used to be respectworthy families' decent women don't end up in film line. That has changed somewhat over the years but even today, there are number of attractive, intelligent women in India who will not opt for the film line because of this.

But even by the standards of the film people, Aishwarya Rai's past has been scandalous and dubious. We'll spare the details here but anyone can find them; and the pristine dame-in-distress imagery she once put out does not add up. Moreover there have been a series of contradictions over the years involving the actress to muddle it all up even more.

And even on the screen in recent years, through efforts like Raavan (the film), Hindi public has become increasingly suspicious of this woman's bearings; as all this is done while the putting up pallus over her head while showing up in Uttar Pradesh somewhere essentially trying to insult public's intelligence; apart from all sorts of other decisions that don't really conform to the moderate/conservative sections of Indian society's expectations of decent married women. So though famous and marketed to westerners as something of emblematic of Indian women, Aishwarya Rai's not particularly well liked by large parts of the Indian people (including Indian women) themselves. Your typical Khan supporters don't like her and it is unclear how many of former Bachchan supporters do either. The rest in between probably don't care.

Don't believe it? Consider that even onscreen, unlike a Nargis or a Hema Malini, there isn't a single movie that depended on Aishwarya Rai as lead that has been a success or accepted by the public going back a decade, be it Choker Bali, Raincoat, Umrao Jaan, or Provoked that were made from her perspective. They were all rejected. And off the screen, the skeptical sections of the country which may have earlier given her the benefit of the doubt with regard to her accusations on Salman Khan, may believe she may have been lying there too in the past, and simply don't care about what she would have had to say either way regarding all that. So the conclusion then that stands out is that the relevance of an Aishwarya Rai for the public is primarily as naachne-gaanewali and that too till she's not looking like an old hag.

The irony here (thanks to the actress getting married to the latter's son few years back) is that the notion of a film actor as a 'hero of the masses' and a figure of relevance outside 70mm in Indian society probably only came about with the earlier-era Amitabh Bachchan during the 1970s/80s; due to certain types of cinema he was associated with, and partly due to his claimed association with a key part of Hindi India. Apart from Amitabh, there had been only a couple film individuals who might be taken seriously offscreen. But even that era ended a number of years ago and today the dynamics are different. India's public today at large doesn't look towards film actors as icons or cultural heroic symbols, more as mere entertainers to fill a 2 hour time slot, which many will argue is infact correct way to look at it.

That brings to issue the contradicting failures of Abhishek Bachchan then. As it turns out, the key separating traits of Amitabh which made him successful and at his peak enabled him to cross-over beyond cinema may not be there in the part-Bengali offspring; whose understanding of Uttar Pradesh seems limited to Amar Singh types and putting a gamcha over his shoulder at some stage event, who correctly or incorrectly, is perceived as out of touch, weak, and out of the Hindi mainstream. For example major misjudgements like Raavan apart in terms of theme, the latter even barely speaks Hindi onscreen mechanically, properly; not to mention his idea of Indian manhood, as projected, makes no sense to much of the public. An insight into this comes courtesy of the latter's 'friend' Karan Johar who plans to remake Agneepath, called a definitive Amitabh Bachchan movie (even the title was written by Amitabh's father), but Johar does not see Abhishek Bachchan fit for Agneepath but he does see him indeed fit as a homosexual (Dostana 1/2). Either Karan Johar also wants to insult Abhishek Bachchan or he genuinely does not believe Abhishek Bachchan can invoke the attention, let alone awe of mainstream India's Hindi diaspora. So in the case of 'Junior' Bachchan he's neither perceived as some 'alpha male' authentic figure offscreen by public or peers, nor is he considered greatly determined, let alone entertaining or captivating onscreen and ofcourse his movies flop more often than not. A neither-here-nor-there type disposition eventually ends up going nowhere.

Going back to Salman Khan then, he is not hugely respected in societal stature either. But insofar as cinema line is concerned, in terms of putting in work, even the layman in public can sense that nobody gets a physique being lazy; and he comes across as authentic atleast offscreen; apart from making entertaining enough cinema usually consistent with the hindi mass sensitivities onscreen, something an Abhishek Bachchan may not be able to have a grasp of without looking fake.

So all these things come together and that's what the public maybe going by all these years, and which then goes onto explain this apparent contradiction which may seems difficult for many to reconcile on facevalue, whereby an alleged woman beater of Aishwarya Rai is giving record openings and huge hits and opening TRPs and the wannabe Bengali 'gentleman' gets rejected and dismissed. It is not reflective of Hindi societal values at large. It is specific to these individuals in particular, to the the reputation of film industry personnel in general, and based on the the notion of what the public looks for in theaters in terms of returns on its entertainment rupees required in general.