The making of Brand SRK

There must be a lesson in it somewhere. A young man with average looks and no connections comes to Mumbai to be a film star and succeeds beyond any expectations. Along the way, he marries his childhood sweetheart, stays happily married, dotes on his kids, builds a house where he dreamed he would and still remains the nation's undiminished favourite two decades on. Everything he touches seems to turn to gold, whether it has to do with films, television or cricket. He promotes himself, the brands he endorses, the team he buys and the films he makes relentlessly and no one can still have enough of him. He has become better looking with time and actually grew six-pack at the age of forty. He speaks with a shrewd combination of arrogance and disarming self-deprecation and never descends to being the caricature some celebrities become. No one calls him a great actor; he plays himself or more accurately plays Shah Rukh Khan playing the character in most films and again that is what people seem to want. Shah Rukh Khan strikes a chord with us in some deep unique way. He captures the spirit of the times effortlessly and plays it back to us in a compelling way. He is the mainstream hero who makes us feel good about ourselves. He makes us want to do more, lead a better life by showing us that it can not only be done, but enjoyed without paying any major price. You can have fame, fortune, success, a happy family; you can have it all. And it is easy.
Shah Rukh Khan is the market. He does not merely use market forces, he embodies them. He represents the market's best foot forward, he exemplifies what the market can do for us. He is a giant shining billboard for the market where glitter co-exists with good times and fame sits well with family. He sits so effortlessly with business because he makes it look good. We are seduced by his charm into wanting and buying. The market persona has been constructed, even if unconsciously out of all elements available to him. The roles he has played, especially the Raj/Rahul persona that made him a superstar were evangelists for modernity. In films like DDLJ, DTPH, Mohabattein and to a lesser extent, Pardes, he played the Pied Piper of modernity, showing us how the modern was nothing but a distillation of the traditional. Raj in DDLJ tells us how desire in its purest form can melt all forces of the past. In Mohabattein, his character is even more naked in his espousal of individual desire and it is fitting that he takes over from Amitabh Bachchan as the principal, signifying that the present has subsumed the past and is its legitimate representative. By dismantling the restrictive confines of the past, the individual is rendered free to seek definition through his desires. Even in off-beat roles exploring the darker side of desire, it is notable that his characters no larger try for legitimacy than the intensity of desire itself. In Baazigar the desire for revenge made him worse than his enemy and in Darr and Anjaam, the desire has no larger justification whatsoever. The individual in this films is driven because of desire and the audience is recruited to cheer. The recent roles of Shah Rukh have now evolved into a comfortable representation of the market. Om Shanti Om is the celebration of a market where the past is no longer a time, but a look. The individual is sufficiently detached from the past so as to be able to play with it. The past can be bought now as a shirt, then again as a hair style. If Amitabh Bachchan's Vijay was an individual seething in an effort to become one under the crushing weight of failed father figures, Shah Rukh's Rahul has rendered himself free of the past and lives in what someone has called an ever present. Add to this, his real life story and persona and you have a compelling portrait of man-as-market. Bereft of ideology, lacking a centre or core, brand SRK is the distillation of all that we want to be projected on the 70 mm screen called Shah Rukh Khan. Shah Rukh does not merely advertise brands, he is the best advertisement for where it all comes from the market.