The consumption of ‘grey’ content is not new. In Indian popular culture too, we have had movies where the key protagonists were either simply in the grey area, or clearly outside the law, which went on to become popular. Sometimes the movies used revenge as justification for transcending the law and the extent of cruelty that was being avenged as a means to ‘justify’ the unlawful actions – whether it was Amitabh Bachchan in Kaalia or Shah Rukh Khan in Baazigar. But there have been others such as Satya which simply depicted human characters in an essentially lawless world.

There is no justification for the lawlessness of Satya or Bhiku Mhatre. It’s just what or who they are. But the film’s popularity wasn’t because of the violence, but in spite of that. Bhiku’s and Satya’s loyalty to each other, the romance between Bhiku and his wife are all emotions the audience could relate to.

The violence and lawlessness is just the tense raw backdrop against which all this happens. Closer in time, we now have another kind of grey: The protagonist who struggles to do well or find himself.

In the 1970s there was a lot of ‘Maa main BA pass ho gaya’ and then a story of the struggle to get a job. Now it’s a main character who doesn’t do well in studies because his heart lies elsewhere – he doesn’t pass, to begin with.

Whether it is Ranbir’s character in Wake Up Sid, or Madhavan’s or Sharman Joshi’s of Three Idiots. As content consumption grows, across screens, it automatically demands a broader variety of story constructs and themes.

And these stories were less about glorifying not doing well in your studies or your job, or attempting suicide because of that. They were more about following your heart and what you were meant to be or meant to do. It’s that trail of thought and not the failing in studies that is attracting audiences.

It is also okay for Akshaye Khanna to romance an older Dimple in Dil Chahta Hai. Earlier the older men were stepping beyond boundaries in Shaukeen to romance a younger woman (or to think they were romancing a younger woman) but viewers seem to perfectly accept it when Bachchan does the same in Cheeni Kum a few decades later. And we understand when Rani Mukherjee becomes an escort in Laga Chunari Mein Daag and feel for her more, with our ire against her family for letting it happen.

In the end you can have only so much sweetness before cloying. A bit of spice may be just the right thing to liven things up. Real world, real characters – not artificial, perfect ones. Indeed, going back to our epics, we find our main characters having flaws or doing questionable things – in the Mahabharata, Yudhishtra pawning his wife in a game of dice, the ‘Ashwathama is dead’ ruse to weaken Drona in the war, Bhima hitting Duryodhana below the thighs, and in the Ramayana, Rama killing Vali from a hidden place, and so on.

For marketers this is a more fertile territory to tell their brand stories. No need to stick with just a caring mother, or straightforward romance between boy and girl. But again this is not new. Back in the 1970s, Sholay became a landmark film with deeply etched characters. Yet when Britannia sought an endorsement for its Glucose-D biscuits, it was as ‘Gabbar ki asli pasand’.

Not the actor Amjad Khan but the villain character he played, Gabbar. Not the heroes of Sholay, Thakur or Jai or Viru, but Gabbar. As with everything else, this can’t be a formula but an opportunity to be applied judiciously.

Shireesh Joshi is the head – Strategic Marketing Group, Godrej

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