In these films from his younger days, the thought of a topless romantic lead would have been out of place, perhaps even unseemly, as he was not an object of spectaclebut instead the gazer who with one look would fall in love with the heroine and then spend the rest of the film either realizing he had fallen in love with her ( Pardes (Subhash Ghai, 1997), Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (Karan Johar, 1998)), or convincing her that she too had fallen in love with him ( Dil Se (Mani Ratnam, 1998), Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gham (Karan Johar, 2001)).

In his 1990s NRI Indian blockbusters, SRK won over the audiences with his romantic gestures and exemplary upholding of Indian values and traditions in the face of devious modernization/westernization.

SRK has transformed over the years from the lovable, if sometimes annoyingly childish, hero with a heart of gold into the ultimate body for sale. Behold: Turning the Gaze on the Male Body Though engaging heavily with concepts elaborated on and now often associated with Mulvey in film theory, this essay will not be engaging with her psychoanalytical readings of these concepts and instead will be asking the very important gender power debates that originally spurred MulveyвЂ™s arguments and are still being negotiated forty years after her publication. Finally it will be asked how this image of a retained male dominance clashes with the position of the film as one directed by a female who, working in the patriarchal Hindi film industry, herself challenges the traditional male controlled gaze behind the camera. This examination will be challenged by a closer look at the complications of this power reversal in which the male lead is both the object being observed as well as that which retains his traditional position of male power to not only, as Mulvey suggests, dominate by holding the power of looking, but in driving the narrative as well. Instead, the position of SRK and the male body in this female-directed film provides a conflicting representation in which the male is objectified yet still retains the power to objectify.Дirector Farah Khan steps out from behind the camera to gaze upon SRKвЂ™s body.Дefying the traditional position of the female as the object of spectacle, this essay will examine how superstar SRK has been transformed in Happy New Year from the endearing hero of his 1990 blockbusters to a consumable body. However while this pleasurable scrutiny of the superstarвЂ™s chiseled features might suggest a reversal of traditional gender roles in which the male has become objectified for the now female director, this scopophilic gaze is not a simple reversal of what Laura Mulvey conceptualises in relation to the objectified female in her quintessential essay вЂњVisual Pleasure and Narrative CinemaвЂќ.

Throughout this film about a group of вЂњlosersвЂќ who pull off a brilliant heist plan comically disguised as a dance team, SRKвЂ™s body has been meticulously dissected and gazed upon, a spectacle in itself, and this licentious, though humorous, stare at the end only serves to confirm his position as a body to be beholden. In the closing credits to Farah KhanвЂ™s blockbuster Happy New Year (2014), the filmвЂ™s main hero, Bollywood legend Shah Rukh Khan (SRK), seductively lowers his shirt to reveal his muscular back tattooed with the words вЂњJust For FarahвЂќ.

Happy new year movie