Salman Drug...: December 2013

Source Talking Movies.com

Yesterday Salman Khan released the first poster of his upcoming film “Jai Ho”, painted by himself. While many fans were thrilled to have this first look of the film, some were criticizing it for not showing anything beyond Salman’s face. Even neutral websites merely announced the release of the poster and reported on the fan excitement, but so far I haven’t seen anyone who has really analysed the poster to understand what it is communicating.

To begin with, the painting of the poster is very much in line with many of Salman’s personal paintings, where he conveys the theme of the painting visually. Many of his paintings have a theme of religious harmony, or the unity of all religious quests, or the equality of all human beings, no matter what religious label is put upon him. The following paintings illustrate what I mean by this.

But what do these paintings have to do with the Jai Ho poster? Simply this. In painting the Jai Ho poster, Salman has followed the same kind of thematic portrayal as in the above paintings, this time to convey the message and theme of the film.

Without giving anything away, the theme of the film is that of spreading mutual helpfulness, that one good action by one person can be multiplied many fold if the recipients of that good action take it upon themselves to help others in the same they have been helped; specifically, if they each commit to helping at least three others. And each of those three others help three others in turn, and so on. Now look at the poster that Salman has painted:

On first glance, what do we see? Just Salman’s face and the title of the film. This is where many have stopped. A second glance shows the tagline of the film on top, “People’s man.” Again many have stopped here. But look a little closer, and what do you see? You see stick figures of people, like the kind that children draw. Now why has Salman drawn these? He is capable of drawing very exact portraits of people, as he has shown many times before, in his paintings of Raj Kapoor or Aamir Khan, for example. So why has he reverted to this seemingly childish rendition?

Let us look at these representational human figures. What can we tell from them. Just that they are supposed to be human beings, but without any other identifying factor. They represent people in general, of any kind, of any demographic. We do not even know if they are male or female. So that is the first point to understand about the poster. It is dealing with people, as people, without any of the labels that are commonly used to discriminate and divide among them.

But now let us look closer. At the bottom, just above the film’s title, is one lone human figure. Above it is a row of three figures. Above that is a row of nine figures. Above that again is a row of 27 figures. Continuing counting each row of figures, and you will realize that each succeeding line has three times as many figures as the previous one. That is, we have a geometric progression like this:

1, 3, 9, 27, 81, 253, …

without end.

So the first idea that the poster communicates is that something started by one person, if followed by three people at a time, can spread and grow phenomenally. At the top the figures are so dense that we can no longer really count them.

But wait! There is more. We realize now that the face of Salman is composed of all these figures, in light or shade, to give the three dimensional effect. Now we see what the tagline means. The “people’s man” is indeed made up of all the people around him. Without them, he is not there.

And finally, let us come back down to the first lone human figure. Look closely, and you will realize that it forms the dot over the letter “i” in the name “Jai.” So the first single human figure represents the “I” who starts this movement. And the rest of the poster shows how this one single person can give rise to something that encompasses all the people around him. It is visually communicating the idea of the power of a single person.

In their every day lives, when confronted by social injustice or problems, people often say, “What can I do? One person can’t do anything!” This poster is thus visually proving what one single person can do, if he (or she) sets his mind to it, and can convince just three other people to follow that path. The poster shows that what are called “mass movements” all begin with a single individual with a powerful idea and complete dedication.

On the same day that the Jai Ho poster released, the world received news of the death of Nelson Mandela. Here was a man who took on an oppressive system, in which he was systematically rendered completely powerless by all the might of the law of the land and its government. He was oppressed, imprisoned, tortured. But he also led a movement through all those years, and that movement bore fruit in the ultimate dismantling of the blot of apartheid and the start of real democracy in South Africa. He did not do it alone. But he started alone.

Now I am not equating or even comparing Salman Khan to Nelson Mandela. I am merely giving Mr. Mandela as one example of the powerful idea communicated by the poster, of what one person can do to battle wrong, or correct a system. A power packed image, indeed! Now I await the film with eagerness.

Moimeme