Mediated Cultures, Political Discourses, and the Celebrity

Swapna Gopinath is an Associate Professor of Film and Cultural Studies at Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication, Pune, India. She is a Fulbright fellow and has completed postdoctoral research on Urban spatiality and ideological dimensions in India. Ramna Walia is an Assistant Professor of Film and Television at FLAME University, Pune. She has published in peer-reviewed journals like Bioscope, Synoptique, and Studies in South Asian Film and Media.Rutuja Deshmukh is a visiting faculty of Film and Cultural studies at FLAME University. She also teaches Film at Savitribai Phule Pune University. Her research areas include early Marathi cinema and missing archives, popular cinema, popular cultures, and questions of gender and representation at the intersection of neoliberalism.

• Introduction 1. From Pan-Indian and Secular to Parochial and Hindutva: Tracing the evolution of the Hindi film hero (and star) in Modi’s India, Shreya Mitra2. Configuring Hashtag Activism: Celebrity Figures as Political Tool Kits, Amrita Biswas3. Embodying the Technocratic Gaze: Aamir Khan’s Stardom, Nationalism and Bollywood Cinema, Soumik Pal4. Starring the Region: Redefining Cine-Politics in South India, Pritha Chakrabarti5. The Circulation of Caste: Mediated Stardom and “Enjoy Enjaami”, Amrutha Kunapulli6. Born to be Stars: Celebrity kids, nepotism and the myth of neoliberal meritocracy, Namrata Rele Sathe7. On the Status of the Image Today: Iconoclasm and Iconophilia in Baahubali (2015), Jenson James8. Configuring the Slacker Subjectivity: A Study of Vijay Sethupathi’s Stardom in Tamil Cinema, B. Geetha9. The Curious Case of Becoming Manju Warrier: Problematic of Female Stardom in Malayalam Cinema, M.S. Mydhily10. Celestial Body: Shah Rukh Khan, the Digital Uncanny, and Other-Worldly Subjects, Damili KulkarniConclusionBibliographyIndex