The movie star as platitude-dispenser, and other thoughts on the celebrity circus

[Did this opinion piece for Elle magazine a few months ago, though it came out only in the July issue. In hindsight I wish I had kept clippings of Priyanka Chopra’s HT City columns – could easily do a book-length commentary on them sometime]

One of the highest-profile events at the Jaipur Literature Festival this year was the announcement of the winner of the DSC South Asian Literature Prize. As a crowd of authors, media-persons and book-lovers watched, the chief guest began his speech. “Writers are fountains of ideas,” said Kabir Bedi. A short, ponderous silence. “Their role in our lives is indispensable.”

Now this is a reasonable statement in a school-level sort of way, but consider the context. At one of the world’s largest book events – where far more nuanced thoughts about writers and writing were being expressed in discussions hour upon hour – here was a former movie and television star (and not someone who had occupied the highest rungs of his profession for that matter) as the cynosure of all eyes. Present on the dais was one of India’s best literary critics; in the audience were dozens of well-known writers, including Nobel laureates and Man Booker winners from India and elsewhere. Any of these people would have been a more appropriate choice to make this keynote speech.

To be fair to Bedi, he took the occasion seriously (even quoting Saul Bellow and alluding to Francis Bacon!) and refrained from playing to the gallery. I don’t know if the same can be said for other filmi performers who have been the plat du jour at book events in recent years – Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan at earlier editions of the Jaipur fest, for instance, or Goldie Hawn at the Kitab festival in Delhi a few years ago.

But as we know, movie stars – or movie have-beens – shine ever so brightly even when they are far outside their spheres of expertise. They take centrestage on TV shows that have nothing to do with acting, their sheen drowning out the efforts of “ordinary” people who deserve a brief moment in the spotlight. Thus, Akshay Kumar’s dubious culinary skills take pride of place on what is meant to be a serious cooking show. On song and dance contests, participants spend less time performing and more time gushing about what a privilege it is to meet their idol. Tushhar Kapoor appears on a pet-lovers' show and displays his empathy for other species by wondering aloud if gender differences even apply to animals. “I mean, a dog is a dog, right?”

For the ultimate testimony of our eagerness to cling to Bollywood’s coattails, consider how smoothly movie stars have turned into all-purpose columnists and advice gurus. Having given up on the main sections of newspapers a long time ago, much of my weekly dose of unintended humour in the past year came from a Priyanka Chopra column, full of unselfconscious banalities about “embracing the universe”, "just being yourself" and “going with the flow”. It is both amusing and in poor taste when people who owe a large part of their own fame and fortune to good luck – being in the right place at the right time – narcissistically inform their readers that “you can achieve anything if you seize the moment, like I did”. (News for you, Ms Chopra and others: the vast majority of us will never come close to achieving everything we desire, no matter how lovingly we scrutinise your platitudes.)

Of course, this ranting puts me in a tiny minority: these columns were more than justified by the market for them. They inspired hundreds of thousands of fan letters by devotees asking for advice on relationships or insights into the burning political topics of the days, or perhaps just sharing salacious gossip about a rival actor. Star-worshippers do tend to have a lot of free time on their hands.

Incidentally, one of the star columns I thought had promise was the one by Imran Khan, who – we kept being told – has a wacky sense of humour. Until something strange happened: every time Khan was about to write something even vaguely irreverent, he would preface it with a few lines asking that people shouldn’t get offended. More space was devoted to the pre-emptive apology than to the supposed cheekiness, and this brings us to another point about Bollywood stars: when you have to be constantly mindful about the views you hold on sensitive or potentially controversial subjects, how can you not settle into a bland public face, even if your default mode is to be blasé?

In India, movie stars quickly become spokespersons for safe, middle-of-the-road ideologies. Thus, even if their lifestyles are deemed racy by middle-class standards, they must be seen as upholders of tradition and culture in the areas where it Really Matters. For example, they must be photographed entering temples on special occasions. (In an interview a few years ago, the normally-diplomatic Bachchan was brusque with an interviewer who mentioned that his late father Harivanshrai had been an atheist – the tone of the superstar’s response almost suggested that his dad had been insulted.) When a star bride celebrates her first karva chauth, TV channels must park themselves outside the house for that precious exclusive shot of her sighting the moon from her window.

Frankly, much of this obsessing is unavoidable given the huge hold commercial cinema has on us. In a media-saturated time, you expect these hotties to be all over the place, gazing out of newspapers, wearing their carefully rehearsed “spontaneous” smiles or the tiny frowns that their public relations staff have told them are photogenic. It’s annoying, but one must live with it. Nor am I suggesting that all movie stars are unqualified to hold forth on subjects outside their immediate field – much less that they should be stopped from doing so. However, when disproportionate importance is attached to their views, when their frequently trite views are canonised as inspirational words of wisdom, when they are indiscriminately felicitated as youth icons even though some of them have records of law-breaking and cases pending against them – well, then it may be time to wonder why we are so starved of role models from other walks of life.