Two stars of the Hindi film industry passed away within a day of each other last week. Irrfan and Rishi Kapoor were both doyens of Bollywoo...
Two stars of the Hindi film industry passed away within a day of each other last week. Irrfan and Rishi Kapoor were both doyens of Bollywood – the first was a self-made thespian, the second the cute scion of the biggest dynasty of the industry.
Both were great actors. They have been memorialised variously and well over the past few days. This piece is not to memorialise them, but rather to try interrogate the parameters of memorialising dead stars.
The sixteenth-century French writer Montaigne, in his essay Of Friendship, made it incumbent on the friend to memorialise his deceased companion. It was an act of duty, or even debt owed to the deceased comrade. But what happens when we try remember deceased stars? What kind of a relationship does the fan have to the actor? Was Irrfan, who for most practical purposes dropped his surname Khan, more like a friend to his fans than the dynast Rishi Kapoor?
In his critical essay on fan bhakti, Madhava Prasad compares the fan’s relationship to his idol to that of a religious bhakt to his god. It is also a relationship of power, where the idol gains soft power through the multitude of his fans. The fans feel empowered...
