Since the shift toward neo-liberal economic policies in India in the early 1990s, commoditized, branded clothing has multiplied in the marketplace, and is increasingly featured in films. Equally notable here is the role film-stardom plays in rendering moral authority through the trope of the sacrificial.Īs scholarly interest in consumption has risen, little attention has been paid to productive consumption, or the acquisition and use of commodities within production processes. The paper also enquires how and why the show compels narrative ingenuity towards what Aditya Nigam calls the ‘implosion of the political’-the erasure of the public from the street and its re-inscription in the studio. As television becomes the site of articulating moral authority, ritual participation and demanding social change, the political is re-assembled through Khan’s stardom. The show has not only generated public debate, it also invites the public to return to a performative innocence. In so doing, Khan converts crime news into emotional truths. Grappling with the broad contours of the cultural economy of justice on national television in India, I suggest that the star descends upon television as an avatar promising empathy to a variety of victims of social injustice. This paper attempts to make sense of Satyamev Jayate, a popular Indian television show hosted by film star Aamir Khan, in terms of its politics, Khan’s stardom and the attempt to reframe the social on television.
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