When Shah Rukh Khan Celebrates His Own Stardom

For Shah Rukh Khan to come up with an entire film to validate one’s own stardom more than reveals the cracks.

With the release of Fan (2016) the sub-genre made popular by Shah Rukh Khan, one where self-depreciation drives the narrative and re-living off-screen persona through the characters on screen, has come a full circle. In the film where he plays a larger than life film star, Aryan Khanna, mostly inspired by his own life and his own greatest fan, Gaurav Chandna, one can’t figure out where the fiction stops and the reality takes over and vice versa.

In the past too, actors like Dharmendra and Jackie Shroff have played themselves in Guddi (1971) and Sapne Saajan Ke (1992) respectively. While the suspension of disbelief factor worked in the former, it failed in the latter. In Guddi Dharmendra’s real life was never shown beyond the studios where he worked and at the time even the public had limited access to an actor’s real life.

Therefore, while watching Guddi one was never distracted by details such as whether Dharmendra’s real wife played his onscreen wife as well, etc. but by the time Sapne Saajan Ke released fans knew everything about their favorite actors. Perhaps that’s why the onscreen Jackie Shroff played by real life Jackie Shroff didn’t feel real because when you see him in his home you wonder where is Ayesha Shroff hiding or would the then three-year-old Jai ‘Tiger’ Shroff make an appearance and when they don’t, you know something is incomplete.

Khan played almost similar characters in Billu (2009) and, to a great extent, even Om Shanti Om (2007) but with him playing his own self and his own greatest fan in Fan where the narrative places him on both sides of the story takes things to a completely new level.

For a few years now Khan’s films irrespective of the genre or the story somehow manage to infuse instances from his real life into the narrative. Intriguingly enough these aren’t instances from Shah Rukh Khan’s life but from the life of Shah Rukh Khan, the superstar. Take for instance the scene in Happy New Year (2014) where Charlie (Khan) looks at the South Korean dancing contingent and para-dubs their lines with dialogues from Mohabbatein (2000).

While he hasn’t always played himself in the truest sense of the word like he did in Fan, putting cultural references to his own existence into the characters he portrays isn’t something new for the actor – the jokes about his own films in Chennai Express (2013), Dilwale (2015). The time Chennai Express released critics and fans both equally lauded SRK’s capability to take potshots at his own self, laugh about his age but more than anything they hailed the oblique manner in which he broke the so-called imaginary fourth wall that exists between actors and audience.

The seeds for this self-referencing were sown almost a decade ago with Om Shanti Om (2007) and in a couple of years Billu, became Khan’s maiden Roman à clef. Nestled between the two films is Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008) a film where the jokes and innuendos that would go on to became a sub-genre with Chennai Express, Happy New Year, Dilwale and now Fan were first seen. In Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi Khan played a middle-aged man who marries someone from a generation who couldn’t connect with him (read new fan base) and in a bid to win over his younger wife (Anushka Sharma) his character, Suri, transforms into a mélange of SRK from yesteryears.

In the film, the older SRK tells a friend (read older fans) that while he can’t be what his wife wants (read a new version of himself for younger fans) but he would nonetheless try. He does succeed in making the wife fall in love with a younger version of himself, Raj, but when things come to a pass Suri, once again, tells his friend that his wife (new fans) would have to accept him ‘how he is.’ Since then the actor has rarely shied from using his films to fuel his off-screen persona like in the case of My Name is Khan (2010) where the film seemed to have been inspired by him being called upon as a spokesperson for the Indian Muslim community. In a piece called “Being a Khan” that appeared in Outlook magazine’s Turning Points (2013), Khan wrote:

A star regaling in his/ her own achievements, something that once upon a time was the bastion of the fan, is a very brave trope and there couldn’t be anyone as good as Khan when it comes to convincingly portray it on the big screen. But the other side of the argument is that if one looks deeper at Fan’s narrative it could be making a very poignant statement on stardom and the manner in which popular Hindi cinema icons deal with it.

Unlike a Rajinikanth whose stardom exists on an entirely different plane and one who has managed to clearly demarcate between his on and off screen avatars, contemporary Hindi superstars appear to be preoccupied with their image. This might be the first time in Hindi cinema where most leading men right from the Khans - Shah Rukh, Salman, and Aamir, to Akshay Kumar, are all using their films to fuel their off-screen image.

Look at how the heroine’s role has nearly been done away with in the recent films of the perennial bachelor boy Salman (Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015), Sultan (2016), a film that was halfway wrapped even before the heroine was announced), or how more than a handful of recent Akshay Kumar films have a strong element of nationalism (Holiday (2014), Baby (2015), Gabbar is Back (2015) and Airlift (2016) and how most of Aamir Khan’s films see him as the conscientious and somewhat elder voice of reason (Rang De Basanti (2006), Taare Zameen Par (2007), 3 Idiots (2009) and the soon to be released Dangal (2016) where he plays real-life wrestler Mahavir Singh Phogat, who taught wrestling to his daughters Babita Kumari and Geeta Phogat).

Even though he’s still considered to one of the biggest stars ever, there is no doubt about the dip in Shah Rukh Khan’s popularity, at least when compared to his own aura. The irony was highlighted by the dismal collections of Fan, a film that was meant to celebrate Khan’s stardom unlike never before. Made on a budget that could be pegged anywhere between Rs. 85 Cr. to Rs. 105 Cr., Fan struggled to cross the Rs. 100 Cr. mark well within its fifth week.

Considering its budget to be 100 Cr. Fan would have to make Rs. 150 Cr. to be considered a hit, something that’s least one would expect from a Shah Rukh Khan film. The manner in which Shah Rukh Khan seems to be trying to get his films to celebrate his own stardom is not only fine but even entertaining as long as it were a reference here or a comment there but to come up with an entire film to validate one’s own stardom more than reveals the cracks.