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It is at the promo of an upcoming Salman Khan film that we hear some truly tasteless, unfunny ‘jokes’. The film is Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan and the show is that old suspect, The Kapil Sharma Show. The so-called ‘jokes’ are the usual ghisa-pita, trite ones about the ‘conniving’, ‘man-eating’ woman getting into relationships purely for selfish reasons…
Check out the trailer of the film and the video clip of the promo and its ridiculously puerile banter.
Suffice it to say that this is a Salman Khan film: oodles of gratuitous violence with bones crunching and blood spurting. The OTT emotions, OTT action, OTT heroism, OTT villainy, utterly implausible story (what story?) the complete absence of subtlety and wall to wall absurdity.
So the film’s name has the word ‘jaan’ in it and we must therefore endure a lot of utterly banal wordplay on the word that essentially means ‘beloved’. Sometime in the middle of the clip we see the male lead speak about said ‘jaan’ who will apparently prey on and take the life of the man she has lured into a relationship. It is all about that old trope of the vixen leaving her bloodless victim after she has got her claws into the poor hapless man — for the nth nauseating time. All this while the female lead titters coyly in the background.
In the promo show mentioned earlier, the audience, including Archana Puran Singh can be seen laughing uproariously at bhai being bhai and there is only one thought in my head – how is this funny? And how is this still funny outside of the common or garden WhatsApp uncle group?
The Sony TV Official Instagram page posted Salman’s short video from the show, with the comment “#SalmanKhan toh har ladke ki dil ki baat keh rahe hain!” (he tells the story of every boy). In the comments of the post we had a bunch of people ‘sympathising’ with the actor for all the supposed love-em-leave-em types of relationships he has been (the victim) in. The commentators seem completely oblivious to the fact that Khan has been accused of abuse repeatedly.
This is a bit rich.
Somy Ali has alleged years of abuse by Salman. There have been stories about Salman having slapped other women he was in relationships with such as Katrina Kaif, Aishwarya Rai as well as others from the film industry such as Shah Rukh Khan, Ranbir Kapoor and others. For him to now position himself as some sort of “victim of female harpies out to exploit him” or even to imply that this is a common occurrence is a bit rich.
Don't understand how this is #SalmanMisquoted this is clearly #SalmanKhan being insensitive! He MUST say sorry. pic.twitter.com/9elhm290SB — Rashi (@rashi_kakkar) June 21, 2016
Don't understand how this is #SalmanMisquoted this is clearly #SalmanKhan being insensitive! He MUST say sorry. pic.twitter.com/9elhm290SB
— Rashi (@rashi_kakkar) June 21, 2016
Salman Khan’s list of gaffes is long – they range from the plainly ignorant to the actually offensive. He compared training for a film about wrestling with being raped. He pooh-poohed mental illness and dismissed it as some sort of indulgence of malingerers.
Coming back to the ‘jaan jokes,’ it is dismaying how many people think it is funny to denigrate women as grasping, lazy and opportunistic. It is all very well to riff off the title of a film and make puns, but this is just in poor taste in a country that is overwhelmingly and systemically patriarchal.
Women rarely have the agency to make decisions of their own, are often deliberately disempowered economically, and are forced to stay on in unhappy relationships. Our judicial system still does not recognize marital rape. In India, up to 30% women face domestic violence.
While there certainly may be men who are the victims of abuse and exploitation, those are the exception and not the rule. So called men’s rights activists are deliberately wily when they overlook the systemic problems that cause widespread violence against women, and concentrate on individual exceptions to make their demands.
Khan’s ‘jokes’ certainly emit those MRA vibes. He wins no prizes for empathy with his conduct, but his adoring fans keep him insulated from the kind of growing up he never got around to doing.
From the trailer, Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan promises to be as appalling as the average bhai film. It is most likely that the film-going public will lap this up as well – and reward this done-to-death piece of mediocrity with average if not above average business. Such a pity that all his legions of fans don’t catch Salman Khan by the scruff and tell him, Jaan, do better!
A former lawyer, now freelance writer, fauji wife, mother, singer, knitter and lover of my own cooking, I have altogether too many opinions and too few convictions. The more I learn the more I am read more...
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