Bollywood Star Research Articles

“Blockbuster movie, blockbuster location”: cineturismo e costruzione dell’immagine dell’Italia per il pubblico indiano

Combining the reputation of the Italian cultural heritage with the popularity of the Indian Film Industry, Italy and India have been collaborating to strengthen their economic relationships using the media as a spur for cultural exchange and a key-tool to enlarge the tourist market target. Many Italian Film Commissions have invested in supporting Indian productions, understanding the benefits of film-induced tourism. Specialised supplies and equipment have been provided to facilitate the incoming of Indian companies and organize educational tours to promote the locations of the Italian Peninsula. On the Indian side, the Made in Italy brand fascinates the upper-middle class interested in luxury products and the Italian life style. The settings of romantic movies promote the idea of Italy as a land to fulfil one’s own love story imitating the Bollywood stars. It is no surprise that honeymoon holiday packages are nowadays very popular and many sumptuous Indian weddings are celebrated in Italy. The paper analyses the representation strategies of Italy for the Indian audience as used both by tour operators, to enhance film-induced tourism, and by institutions, to enhance the cultural and economic exchanges between our countries.

Indian aesthetics: balancing budgets for Bollywood beauty

With both surgical and non-surgical cosmetic procedures on the rise worldwide, aesthetic nursing is becoming an increasingly popular profession. In this new series, Aysha Mendes examines aesthetic nursing practices and cultural perceptions of beauty across the globe by focusing on a different country every month. This article explores the impact of aesthetic surgery and Bollywood stars in India

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan: from Miss World to world star

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is one of only a handful of transnational Bollywood stars. Having established herself as Bollywood’s top female star in 2002, the model-turned-actress began to make films in the West in 2004 with Bride & Prejudice (Gurinder Chadha, 2004), followed by The Mistress of Spices (Paul Mayeda Berger, 2005), Provoked: A True Story (Jag Mundhra, 2006), The Last Legion (Doug Lefler, 2007) and The Pink Panther 2 (Harald Zwatt). With these international co-productions, Rai Bachchan achieved a greater level of international exposure than any other Bollywood star during the 2000s. This article explores Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s roles and performances in all five of her non-Bollywood productions, exploring the ways in which these Anglo-American, Anglo-Indian, European and Hollywood co-productions have enabled her to expand her range of characters and performance methods.

REPRESENTATION OF SIKHS IN BOLLYWOOD CINEMA

Like other ethnic minorities, Sikhs have been conventionally represented in popular Hindi cinema either as brave warriors or as uncouth rustics. In the nationalist text in which the imagined subject was an urban North Indian, Hindu male, Sikh characters were displaced and made to provide comic relief. Since the mid-1990s, Hindi filmmakers have genuflected to the rising economic and political power of the Sikh diaspora through token inclusions of Sikhs. Although 1990s films like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) included attractive images of Sikhs, Hindi cinema could introduce a Sikh protagonist only in the new millennium in Ghadar: Ek Prem Katha (2001) and featured a turbaned Sikh as a protagonist only two decades later in the film Singh is Kinng (2009). Ever since the film became a superhit, top Bollywood stars such as Akshay Kumar, Saif Ali Khan, Ranbir Kapoor and even Rani Mukherjee have played Sikh characters in films like Love Aaj Kal (2009), Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year (2009) and Dil Bole Hadippa (2009). Even though Bollywood stars have donned the turban to turn Sikh cool, Sikhs view the representation of the community in Hindi cinema as demeaning and have attempted to revive the Punjabi film industry as an attempt at authentic self-representation. This paper examines images of Sikhs in new Bollywood films to inquire if the romanticization of Sikhs as representing rustic authenticity is a clever marketing tactic used by the film industry to capitalize on the increasing power of the Sikh diaspora or if it is an indulgence in diasporic techno-nostalgia that converges on the Sikh body as the site for non-technologized rusticity. It argues that despite the exoticization of Sikhs in the new Bollywood film, the Sikh subject continues to be displaced in the Indian nation.

‘The show of the millennium’: screening the big-money quiz show and the Bollywood superstar

The phenomenal success of Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC), the Indian franchise of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, underlines not only the successful adaptation of a global format show, but also its role in reinforcing and reiterating the nation's transition from a socialist ethos to a consumerist ontology. For millennial India, grappling with the contentious issues of tradition and modernity in a rapidly globalizing milieu, the show's ‘aspirational consumerism’ offered its viewers a new value system – an espousal that was further reaffirmed by its host, Bollywood legend, Amitabh Bachchan. Bachchan's professional reincarnation, from a fading film star to a transmedia celebrity, and the subsequent reinvention of his star image, from a socialist icon to a capitalist endorser, embodied the new ideology of consumerism. This article examines the unique meanings engendered by the format show in the Indian context, and consequently, enumerates the cultural currency of the Bollywood star as a site of mediation and articulation. Incorporating a detailed discussion of KBC's production history and reception, and Amitabh Bachchan's star text, it engages with both the recent shifts in the Indian mediascape and contemporary discourses of Hindi film stardom.

Bollywood and the Indian Premier League (IPL): the political economy of Bollywood's new blockbuster

This paper interrogates the interrelationships between sports and popular culture to facilitate an understanding of the converging areas between political and economic forces and cultural practices operative in the global marketplace. Using a critical political economy approach, it examines the innovatively formatted and media-friendly Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament and the Bollywood stars who are involved as owners and promoters of the league. The profit-generating capacity of cricket has increased the interest of the corporate sector and the entertainment industries, resulting in the spectaclization, commercialization, and corporatization of the popular sport.

‘You don't do it in public’: racism, respectability and responsibility in Celebrity Big Brother

The 2007 run of Celebrity Big Brother (UK) resulted in an unprecedented international focus on the series itself and on the issue of British race politics. This was due to a series of incidents of alleged racist bullying perpetuated against Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty by three of the British housemates. Subsequent academic analyses of the incidents have focused almost exclusively upon the actions of one of the British housemates – Jade Goody – and have explored how racism was denied or otherwise accounted for by Goody. In contrast, what has been given little attention are the accounts provided by Shetty herself after winning the series and leaving the Celebrity Big Brother house. In this article, we examine one particular interview conducted with Shetty, and in so doing we explore the very specific ways in which Shetty accounted for racism, and the relationship between this and her identity claims as an Indian celebrity. We conclude that while at first pass it may appear that Shetty denied the existence of racism in the Big Brother household, it may instead be suggested that she produced a very complex and nuanced account of oblique ways in which it can subtly manifest itself. In so doing, not only did she maintain an image of herself as a responsible and ‘respectable’ Indian woman, but she was also able to state that racism is unacceptable and requires ongoing attention. In this way, Shetty potentially opened up a space that would otherwise have been unavailable had she simply responded ‘yes’ to the question ‘were the actions of the British housemates racist?’.

The Pleasures of Excess

The Pleasures of Excess

“Starring” Madhuri as Durga: The Madhuri Dixit Temple and Performative Fan-Bhakti of Pappu Sardar

Even in March 2008, the sweltering heat of Tatanagar was overwhelming. This was my second visit to the city after being here three years ago in 2005. My objective was to visit the Dixit Temple dedicated to Bollywood film star, Dixit, and to follow up on the second round of interviews with its owner cum priest, Pappu Sardar. As I stepped out of the cab, a beaming Pappu Sardar greeted me. I was still exchanging pleasantries, when out of nowhere a group of journalists armed with cameras started clicking my photographs with him. Seeing the bewilderment on my face, Pappu Sardar calmly said, There are five news channels and ten newspaper journalists waiting to interview you. Considering my humble academic background, I could not understand any reason why the press would be interested in interviewing me: except for the fact that I was conducting research on Pappu Sardar' s temple. In three years, his celebrity status and the Dixit Temple have acquired national proportion. As I politely refused the news channels, an enthusiastic reporter from the Telegraph came and sat next to me and said, It's strange that you come all the way from US to do research on Pappu Sardar! To be frank, he is weird and does weird things in the name of Madhuri. In fact, he is only popular among the masses, the elite of the city think he is crazy. The next day's Telegraph flashed the story, Madhuri Mania Inspires US Researcher.2 As I read the article, I was taken aback to find out how I had been (mis)quoted for speaking about Pappu Sardar' s activities as absurd and about his persisting eccentricities. I remembered the uneasiness of the journalist and her description of Pappu Sardar as weird, and yet by publishing the story, she was aiding his popularity. The media has played a significant role in sensationalizing Pappu Sardar' s public worshiping of a Bollywood star as a Hindu goddess.3 The Dixit Temple is actually an eatery or a chaat-shop4 owned by Pappu Sardar, which also functions as a space to conduct his devotional activities for his cinematic

Nurse writes songs for Bollywood stars

Nurse writes songs for Bollywood stars

Superhit hunk heroes for sale: Globalization and Bollywood's gender politics

This paper looks at the role of the Bollywood star and the significance of Hindi films for the India diaspora. It examines the processes that mobilize the circulation of popular Hindi films across national, cultural and linguistic barriers, and looks in particular at the representational politics of the male star.