Salman Khan is not much of an actor, nor can he dance. He may be good looking and charming and the way he has worked on keeping fit and muscle-bound seems to endlessly fascinate his fans. What I cannot fathom, however, is the fact that he has this vast and staunch fan-following quite unlike anything else. So, yesterday the fans were celebrating more than three decades of Salman Khan with #31GoldenYearsOfSalmanKhan, I had to ask myself, how have we tolerated and even enjoyed this man's films for 30 years?
They are loyal and their devotion is quite unshakeable. For them, Khan can do no wrong, and every film of his is marvellous no matter how outrageous or mediocre it may actually be.
The Salman fan is a breed of his own. He is unapologetic and completely single-minded in sort of faith he reposes in the man and his movies.
Salman Khan fans do not judge him. They believe in him. When he is arrested they are sad. When he gets bail they are ecstatic. His guilt or lack thereof is immaterial.
Salman Khan’s larger than life image means that he always has the sympathy of his fans; no matter how heinous a crime he is accused of.
He may have mown down innocents in a drunken stupor, implicated others for his crimes, he may have shot and killed endangered species. However, in the Salman-Khan-fandom, he can do no wrong.
His fans want him to get married. Other fans want him to live life king size as a bachelor. Either way his love life is the cynosure of all eyes and the subject matter of intense scrutiny and conjecture.
The fans of SRK are also legion. However, they are not quite in the same class as the near-fanatical Salman fan.
… it doesn’t need other inconsequential stuff such as a plausible story, a coherent script, believable characters. Salman Khan is the only prerequisite for a Salman Khan film.
Like I said before, the man's acting skills are strictly limited; he cannot really dance or emote. Yes, he has muscles and he beats baddies to a pulp. And that apparently is all you need to do if you're Salman Khan.
The fatal lure of The Salman is unfathomable for the rest of us. As someone once said to me, if Salman Khan does nothing except flex his muscles and fart in one of his movies, it will still be a hit. I think this may well be true.
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