The New Indian CELEB

… is out there, high-wired and refreshingly ready to engage fans and critics in real time

Till about a month ago, Alia Bhatt was the up-and-coming star, with a handful of movies in which she’d displayed some decent acting chops to go with her lively screen presence. Then came an online video that changed her fortunes more effectively than two consecutive successful films had done for her. Alia Bhatt: Genius of the Year, created by the comedy outfit All India Bakchod (AIB), was seen and shared by everyone, even by those who may not have seen her movies. It created a whole lot of brouhaha, yet it’s obvious why that happened. It was a genuine instance of a celebrity acting beyond her prescribed limits. Made with no clear purpose of publicity or promotion, Alia’s video reached out and talked directly to her baiters who had created an internet meme out of her supposed dumbness. The online clip made its way to news channels that ran it endlessly in entertainment slots, and newspapers soon followed by writing lengthy odes to her coolness. The title of the video was a self-fulfilling prophecy: Alia Bhatt did turn out to be ‘the genius of the year’. The exercise did for her image what would have otherwise taken months, probably years, with a team of publicists working full time to ensure that she’s written about and seen in all the places that matter, all of it neatly tied in and timed with the release of her movies.

With that one stroke, Alia bypassed ‘the model of very carefully managed, very carefully orchestrated celebrity image’ as described by academic Alice Marwick in her book Status Update: Celebrity and Attention in Web 2.0, to one in which ‘you know it’s supposedly more authentic’. She became an entrant to the league of ‘the new celebrity’—who, as Marwick writes, is someone who understands that ‘celebrity is something you do rather than something you are’.

The new celebrity is actor Ranveer Singh, whose appearances outside of his movies are a lot more captivating than on screen. He is the guy who can dance in a costume in the middle of a busy street in Mumbai (the viral video of the ‘Bang Bang dare’ he took on Hrithik Roshan’s prodding last week, which is in itself a cleverly-disguised publicity stunt) and get away with it. He used it to suffuse his aura of an actor who is not defined solely by his work, who makes news for being who he is—interesting, funny and irreverent. He is the celebrity who will not wait for fame to be bestowed on him; instead, he will create a self that will be recognisable to all. He’s the guy who will endorse a condom brand and yet make the endorsement all about himself. ‘Do the Rex’, the catchy anthem for Durex that he penned, rapped and danced joyously to, was a departure from the tradition of celebrity endorsements where celebrities always appear oddly grafted to the product, no matter what they sell, chips, cars or watches.

The new celebrity is Deepika Padukone who opened up a discussion on the perception of women in media and in society when she vented her anger at India’s biggest news daily for something that is seemingly so routine, that people could not understand her anger. ‘Since when did focussing on the body parts of an actor become objectionable?’ asked some; ‘How is it that no other actor has ever raised this before?’ asked others. Deepika took a stand, which is uncommon for young female actors, and came across as someone with a mind who can speak up on an issue that has currency, the rights of women in our society. She will take this newly empowered image up one step in a soon- to-be-released video on women’s rights.

It’s a tenuous concept. How is the new celebrity different from, say, the erstwhile celebrity? It is someone who understands that the age of Greta Garbo is long gone, says photographer Atul Kasbekar who runs Bling Entertainment Solutions, a celebrity management company whose roster of celebrities include sports, fashion and film stars. Garbo had famously stated, “I want to be left alone”, turning reclusiveness into an art form, never appearing in public, never interacting with fans, never giving interviews. These days, the relationship between celebrities and the public is defined by extreme parasocial (a sociological term for one-sided relationships in which one party knows a lot about the other but the other does not) interactions. We need to feel like we know our celebrities, be involved in their everyday lives, to know exactly what they think about issues that consume us. We need to consume them as much as we consume everything else, from television shows and movies to listicles and cat memes.

“Nobody gives a damn anymore,” says Kasbekar. “It’s simple. I must find you an intriguing prospect outside of your movies. I must find you interesting and relevant. You need to turn me on, or I have a lot else to entertain me.” It makes the job of the celebrity manager that much more challenging. Kasbekar’s agency handles Farhan Akhtar’s campaign — another celebrity attempt to engage society on a hot button issue—MARD (Men Against Rape and Discrimination), which aims to sensitise men and create awareness of women’s rights (although its formulation on what a ‘Real Man’ should be is tricky in itself). He recently released an anthem for women’s emancipation, Chhulein Aasman (literally, ‘Let’s touch the sky’), with musicians Salim Sulaiman, which has been receiving a fair amount of airtime on television and radio.

Not that any of this is extraordinarily inventive. Indian celebrities (in India celebs are severely limited to the world of movies) are merely following their Western counterparts. A survey that appeared in Variety in September found that the youth in America is more enamoured of social media stars than mainstream celebrities. The survey gets to the heart of the Justin Bieber celebrity conundrum; the singer’s fan base values qualities like ‘relatable’, ‘accessible’ and ‘communicative’ over ‘talent’. It makes him one of the biggest—and certainly the most talentless— celebrities in the world.

Social media has forced mainstream celebrities to adapt to this new idiom and digital language. It is not enough to be on social media websites to plug your work and put up endless streams of pictures, the way a lot of film stars in India tend to. On Web 2.0, the public demands constant engagement and entertainment from celebrities.

There was a time when it was possible to view celebrities only through the lens of the media; now the media is everywhere and people are the media. They are the ones who share and disseminate information. As media has changed, so have celebrities. Rohan Joshi, Mumbai- based stand-up comic and member of AIB, says that celebrities can no longer fake it. “As a celebrity, you can no longer be manufactured by your publicists, or control your image with generic bytes. Everyone can and does poke holes at celebrities. For example, there was no point in Alia pretending to be a rocket scientist when she’s not. So, she just owned up to who she is and had fun with it.”

AIB seems to run a regular celebrity image makeover project. Their advertisement could read as follows: ‘Need to appear cool, ironic and new to appeal to a wide and fickle audience? Collaborate with us.’ One of AIB’s first popular celebrity collaborations was a bitingly sarcastic video with Kalki Koechlin on rape and the culture of blaming women. It tapped into Koechlin’s image of free- spirited but politically conscious celebrity. Koechlin, who does offbeat films from time to time (her next, Margarita, with a Straw, is gathering rave reviews at festivals), is someone whose celebrity comes not so much from her movies as all the other things she does. Earlier this year, she transfixed fans with a video of a performance on Women’s Day, a poetic rumination on being a woman.

Last year, after the Supreme Court upheld homosexuality as a criminal offence, AIB went to Imran Khan, who had already proven himself an early adapter to the new form of celebrity when he campaigned against Maharashtra’s decision to raise the legal drinking age to 25 about a year earlier. In AIB’s video on Section 377, Imran Khan with his usual earnestness laced with irony, answers questions put to him by homophobic people, such as, ‘Why can’t gay people be un-gay?’ and ‘Is it true that AIDS was invented by gay people?’ What is the purpose of such a video? It gives the comics, who are purveyors of opinions in the new world order material that is sure to be viral, it burnishes the image of the cool celeb who speaks for a cause, and if a few people can take home the message along the way, then it works out to be an excellent bargain.

“The conventions of celebrityhood are different from what they were,” says Prabhat Choudhary of Spice PR in Mumbai, which handles publicity for Aamir Khan and Yash Raj Productions. “At one time, all interactions with celebrities would have a reason and an occasion. Now, with the younger lot of actors, the grammar of engagement is changing, it’s instinctive and natural. As the celebrity culture evolves in India, we will see more celebrities who stand up for something, who represent values that are identifiable. If you do not modify yourself to the new rules, you will be lost in a crowd.”

The successful new celebrity is the one who is the most social of all celebrities, one who can mine the power of social networks and new media to project an alternative image. This is often confused with a mere presence on social networking sites like Twitter and Instagram. The case of Priyanka Chopra shows us the difference. Priyanka Chopra was one of the earliest stars to take to Twitter, and is hyperactive on it. With her large number of followers, she regularly makes it to the lists of ‘the most influential stars’ on the site. Priyanka has never once used Twitter for anything other than to promote her films and her music albums. The one time she decided to veer off script was when she agreed for a live chat on Reddit that backfired on her. The ‘ask me anything’ format of the chat soon turned into her worst nightmare. She was asked discomfiting questions like, why she chooses to promote fairness creams, if beauty pageants are a bad influence on society and her frequent use of Auto-Tune to enhance her singing. Priyanka quickly exited the chat without answering any of these. A case of don’t enter the kitchen if you can’t stand the heat.

As the new celebrity has evolved, the relationship between celebrities and the public has dramatically altered. It is only in the digital world, with its anonymity and sense of equality, that people can pose the sort of hard-hitting questions that Priyanka Chopra was faced with in her Reddit chat. In this space, the hero- worship that film stars (like Rajinikanth and Bachchan and to an extent the Khans) have traditionally inspired in India is a thing of the past.

Gul Panag, the actor and politician who has built her image as the thinking person’s celebrity largely on social media where she has a spirited take on everything, says that she is a beneficiary of the new rules, but that it works in mysterious ways. “I was someone who existed in the alternative fringes of the film world, but social media made me mainstream. But, what it also does is that it devalues mainstream celebrities. People don’t take autographs anymore, they take selfies with celebs at airports and restaurants which they share on social media. We know everything to know about celebrities. People will never take celebrities as seriously as they did 10 years ago.”

A common theory about celebrities is that they are empty spaces or screens on which we project our fantasies. If we now have celebrities selling condoms, dancing on crowded streets, spoofing themselves in comedy videos and standing up for women’s rights, it is perhaps exactly what we desire.

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