Why Salman Khan's Sultan is the biggest film of the year
During each Eid in India, Salman Khan unfailingly becomes the unquestioned "Sultan" of the box office breaking all collection records. It was nothing different this year too, with the first day's collection of the film Sultan being a massive Rs 36.54 crore and that for the weekend more than Rs 100 crore.
It was a bonanza as big as Bajrangi Bhaijaan - another Salman starrer - last year. Salman's pre-eminence during Eid every year has become legendary, so much so that even his superstar colleagues like Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan postpone premiering their films to avoid a possible pasting at the box office.
This year, Shah Rukh had reportedly postponed the release of his film Raees to allow Salman to savour his supremacy during Eid. Some attribute this to Salman's religion.
But this argument seems hollow when you consider that Aamir and Shah Rukh have the same religion as Salman. Why don't they have the same pre-eminence that Salman has during Eid?
The reasons for this phenomenon need to be explored and examined separately.
Nonetheless, let's examine the reasons for the success of Sultan. Sultan depicts nothing new; its appeal lies in its ingenuity in integrating and amalgamating disparate subject lines and touching the lives of common people.
It is a masala movie that could connect emotionally to nearly all social segments - an essential pre-requisite for making a hit pan-India movie.
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| The pahelwan - a symbol of old Hindi films - has been reborn with Sultan. |
Sultan rehashes, repackages and reproduces some of the basic motifs of Bollywood - the quintessential Indian male machismo (the new avatar of a pahelwan as the main protagonist in the first half and a mixed-martial arts fighter in the second) besides the usual elements of romance and individual heroism.
The pahelwan - a symbol of old Hindi films - has been reborn. He typifies traditional society's attachment with "mitti" or "maati" (earth), both as the motherland, food provider as well as the ground on which traditional wrestling is practised; it's this "maati maanush" which appeals to the rural hinterland where the majority of India lives.
The other related and ubiquitous motif is the typical Indian (usually north Indian) machismo portrayed through strong physicality and mustachioed "mardangi" or manhood. Recall Salman's "mooch par taav" every time he floored an opponent in the film Sultan.
The mixed martial arts exponent in the latter half of the film is also a variant of male machismo in the urban context. Wrestling and mixed martial arts duels have been combined to make Sultan appealing to both rural and urban movie-goers.
Before independence, the Indians were emasculated by the British, so that they are not able to pose a challenge to the Raj (The British later regretted allowing Kismet's song "Door hatho ae duniawalon, Hindustan hamara hai").
Post independence, the famous trio of Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor) essayed the role primarily of lovers. In the 1950s and 1960s, the male machismo element was relegated to the so-called B-grade films and was portrayed by Dara Singh. He became an all-India macho male icon and entered the popular psyche so deeply that any mustachioed, muscular male came to be called Dara Singh all across north India.
In fact, Dara Singh also made wrestling famous by staging fights with famous international wrestlers.
However, the popularity of his films remained limited to the hinterland where the hold of patriarchy was quite strong and male machismo given a lot of importance.
Dharmendra appropriated the mantle of the macho man after baring his torso in that famous scene in which he bent over to cover a sleeping Meena Kumari in Phool and Patthar.
In the 1970s, this mantle was taken over by Amitabh Bachchan, who portrayed this more through dialogue than through physique. He played the title role in the film Mard in which incidentally an older Dara Singh played the role of his father. The film saw the coming together of two generations of the macho Indian male.
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| Anushka Sharma in a still from Sultan. |
In the 1990s, box office collections and the commercial success of a film came to be contributed chiefly by multiplexes in urban areas. Concomitantly, producers of commercial films started concentrating on subjects appealing to the urban classes and the concerns and themes of the countryside were conveniently cast aside.
Accordingly, the importance shifted from a big brawny one to a metrosexual hero, portrayed typically by the "Badshah of Bollywood" Shah Rukh Khan, in addition to Aamir Khan (except in Ghulam and Ghajini).
Salman and Sanjay Dutt are interesting cases of metamorphosis of lean, lanky, gawky lads, portraying soft heroes initially, into males with sculpted and chiselled bodies.
During the current decade, this machismo motif has been taken to greater heights by John Abraham. Interestingly, the obsession with the perfect male physical specimen has now become the basic qualification for an aspiring Hindi film hero - take cases of Tiger Shroff, Sooraj Pancholi and Vidyut Jamwal.
Now, let's turn our attention to the aspect of mixed martial arts in the film Sultan.
The blockbuster martial arts film Enter The Dragon hit theatres in the mid-1970s and immediately captured popular imagination and popularised Bruce Lee's brand of Ju Jitsu - a mix of judo, karate, taekwondo. The hit formula was appropriated by Hollywood and the following decades witnessed numerous films starring Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li and others.
This laid the groundwork for the acceptance of films of the mixed martial arts genre. The appeal of the genre skyrocketed and films like Race, Bombay Velvet, Happy New Year, Brothers contained scenes depicting such fights to primarily cater to an urban clientele.
In addition to wrestling and mixed martial arts, Sultan also incorporates elements of another popular urban sport known as "Parkour" and these moves are shown in scenes when Salman pursues kites in the village and in Delhi while jumping terraces with the Jama Masjid in the background.
The possession of a muscular body has been considered necessary for a hero to make himself desirable to a heroine and is a total volte face of the orientation of Hindi films earlier, where the heroine was required have a perfect body to make herself desirable.
But mere possession of a perfectly-chiselled body is not enough nor is the pummelling of a gang of villains or super villains to fill three hour frames of a film. What could be better than the body being used for a legitimate combative activity, and for this reason, films like Brothers and Sultan are being made.
Besides Dangal, another film which has Randeep Hooda performing mixed martial arts is also under production. Vidyut Jamwal has even tried to integrate Kerala's traditional martial arts Kalaripayattu into his fight sequences in an effort to replicate what was done by the Ong Bak film series by incorporating Thai martial arts.
One shouldn't also miss the strange coincidence of the simultaneous release of the English film The Legend of Tarzan and Sultan in the same week. Both films portray machismo in two different cultures though sharing almost an identical definition of a perfect male physique.
Films are instruments for the fulfilment of suppressed aspirations of the society and often depict heroic successes denied or difficult to obtain in reality. No wonder Hollywood continues to make films depicting unimaginable victories in Vietnam. Sultan, likewise, depicts the winning of an Olympic gold medal in wrestling when the stark reality is that it took India nearly five decades to win an individual gold in an Olympic event.
Though Indian wrestlers have won medals in Asiad and Commonwealth Games, it was Sushil Kumar's bronze medal in wrestling, coupled with Vijender Singh's bronze medal in boxing at Beijing Olympics that enabled these two sports to permeate popular consciousness like never before.
Sushil Kumar's silver at the London Olympics, coupled with May Kom's bronze, and the winning of Commonwealth Games gold and silver by the Phogat sisters have contributed to the incorporation of wrestling as a theme into films.
A film has already been made on Mary Kom's life and career, and Sultan too casts Anushka Sharma as a female wrestler and the Phogat sisters dominate the storyline of the upcoming Dangal. Aamir's Dangal will repeat the wrestling theme in December, portraying a patriarch protecting and training his daughters for fame and glory in a male-dominated sports and society.
It would be interesting to see, however, if Sultan snatches the element of novelty associated with Aamir's films). Sultan, is going to be a milestone in redefining the machismo of the Indian male by integrating the traditional rural sports of wrestling, ingrained in the psyche of the rural masses, with mixed martial arts duels patronised by the urban young and, while doing so, has hit the magic formula for an all-India hit which had set the cash registers ringing.
Sultan also uses vernacular language to appeal to the rural masses much like Tanu Weds Manu Returns, Rockstar, PK did in recent times and Ganga Jumna did in 1960s. Sultan takes this trend forward and is helping the process of bestowing cult status to Haryanvi language.
One must thank Manish Makhija (with a lathi and buffalo as fashion statement) who brilliantly used this dialect on MTV in the 1990s. The acceptance of a vernacular language at the national level is a great indicator of integration of cultures.
Sultan attempts to make a beginning in women empowerment by initially depicting Aarfaa (Anushka Sharma) as a strong girl with ambition to be an international celebrity but soon ends up portraying the usual role of sacrificing her career for marriage and motherhood. After all, one can only go as far as reality in rural Haryana or Bollywood allows.
Sultan also plays upon the rural population's unease with the English language when it uses words to bring humour.
In the true tradition of Bollywood films, the film excludes negative elements that accompany sports like wrestling and mixed martial arts. The ill effects of accumulating muscle mass aided by supplements, or the topic of injuries are completely overlooked.
Torn muscles or spinal injuries are common amongst mohalla gym-goers who imitate without guidance or care. But then, Sultan is an entertainment film not made for preaching about the ill effects of wrestling or martial arts.
Bollywood, unlike Hollywood, makes very few films directly depicting disability-related issues. It has made few films like Black and Taare Zamin Par on this issue but it still has to make films comparable to What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Rain Man, My Left Foot and so on.