In the age of the almost-famous, is anyone really famous anymore? Has the democratisation of fame led to fame being devalued? Has the word ‘fame’ come to mean something else entirely in contemporary times?
In my definition, being famous means that just about everybody has heard of you. Mind you, my definition casts the net wide. As I write this in the last week of the year, the two most famous entities are Santa Claus and Omicron. Gods and politicians have an unfair advantage because societies don’t have an option: You have to know your religious figurehead and head of state. Vegetables and fruits can be famous too, in terms of being universally recognisable and known. Apples and oranges, potatoes and tomatoes are ‘famous’ in a way that Brussels sprouts and the green brinjal (hara baingan) are not.
On the face of it, India, given the size of its population, seems to have a serious paucity of national celebrities. If one looks at advertising, four film stars dominate: Amitabh Bachchan and the three Khans. Very occasionally, space is made for an odd new actor, like Alia Bhatt. Our most loved author is Ruskin Bond. Put together Devdatt Patnaik, Shashi Tharoor, Gulzar and Javed Akhtar, and lo and behold you have the toolkit for a litfest. Any marketing person will tell you, Virat Kohli, Sachin Tendulkar and MS Dhoni are the only three cricketers with brand value.
Let’s call this list ‘legacy famous’. (It must be pointed out that India, owing to its diversity, has a thriving number of regional celebrities — a different world, and column). Barbados, being a tiny island, had it much easier when it became a free republic, promptly naming Rihanna their ‘National Hero’. There was little competition.
But remember, we also live in an age of the almost-famous. A better and more accurate way of putting this is that we live in a time when everybody is famous. Wander into any social media tunnel, and one finds millions of anonymous people, even cats and dogs, all with millions of followers and millions of likes. Everyone has their own country, their own currency. It’s the great wilderness of fame, the great outback of thumbs-up grotesquery. We are condemned to seeking childish approval all our lives; there is no incentive to escape because the juvenility is monetised. And at times, it’s not even monetised; virtual celebrity doesn’t translate into sales. An Indian author can have hundreds of likes on a social media handle, but, as the publisher will tell you, the author’s lifetime sales are not even a tiny fraction of the total number of likes.
Perhaps, only our children can save us now. Maybe the next generation will turn its back on phone-y fame. A bit like the present one has gone off the trend of wireless earphones and returned to the comforts of old-fashioned wired ones. New generations though tend to forget what came before them.
A few years ago there was panic in the Western world because a majority of school-going children didn’t know who the Beatles was. Indians growing up in the 1980s were not allowed to forget our popular past, the famous actors from a different era. We saw new movies in theatres or on VCRs; on Sundays, we watched, on Doordarshan, the lone state channel, the films our parents had seen.
In the past, only a handful of personalities became famous, and you didn’t have to do much to get there. A one-off television commercial did the job, unlike nowadays when social media stars and influencers have to be at it day in and day out, 24x7. For instance, to be successful on Twitter, you have to follow the formula: Stick to one side of the argument, tweet every two hours, keep stating the obvious like a mantra. All Karan Kapoor had to do was appear in a Bombay Dyeing advertisement, and he was stamped on the nation’s consciousness, much like the father (Jayant Kriplani) and daughter in the ad for Vicks-ki-goli.
We remember the original Lalitaji from the Surf TVC, not the later Lalitajis who appeared in times of information overload. Pooja Bedi is best-known for her Kamasutra condom commercials. As Gore Vidal said, “Never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television.”
Another way of being famous was to appear in a newspaper. There was a cute camp quality to this. As the band Bros sang disarmingly on a song, “When will I, will I, be famous/ When will I get my picture in the papers?” When you did get that picture in the papers, you rushed straight to the newsagent to pick up copies for your folks. As the country-rock band Dr Hook sang, “We take all kinds of pills that give us all kind of thrills/ But the thrill we've never known/ Is the thrill that'll getcha when you get your picture/ On the cover of the Rollin' Stone/ Wanna see my picture on the cover/ (Stone) Wanna buy five copies for my mother (Yes)/ (Stone)/ Wanna see my smilin' face/ On the cover of the Rollin' Stone (That's a very very good idea).” The magazine finally obliged and Dr Hook did appear on its cover in 1973.
One knew one was legit famous if newspapers had archived your obituary in advance. In non-digital times newspapers had limited space, and would, from time to time, clear out some obituaries to make room for more relevant files on the office shelf. If your obit was thrown out, you knew that you’d been denigrated from ‘national figure’ to ‘common man’.
Different societies have different markers of fame. In South India, you know you are a really famous actor if they erect a temple in your name. In America, the markers of fame include writing a book, preferably a children’s book. It helps if you can adopt plenty of children, ideally from less privileged societies. You must also launch a line of clothing, make-up, shoes or perfume; a couple of restaurants to your name can do no harm to your aura and pocket. The latest fad is to have your own line of cannabis products.
American celebrities, especially singers, are also fond of turning their backs on fame. By the fourth album, fame begins to ‘suck’. The downside of fame — being mobbed, not being able to move about freely — starts forming the lyrical content of songs. Everyone from Kurt Cobain to Eminem has done the ‘I hate fame’ routine.
On ‘Not for You’, Pearl Jam sings, “Small my table, sits just two/ Got so crowded, I can't make room/ Oh, where did they come from? Stormed my room/And you dare say it belongs to you/ This is not for you/ This is not for you/ Oh, never was for you.”
We Indians, on the whole, embrace fame with few complaints. There is a gnawing worry Indian celebrities have: If I stop being in the public eye, I’ll be forgotten. On the other hand, in England, guitarists of famous bands have been known to quit at 40 and do other things to make a living, like open an antique shop.
Fame has the stultifying effect of trapping a star in his or her own image. Jackie Chan jokingly complained that he’s tired of people spontaneously erupting into a flurry of karate moves on seeing him. Whenever Chan is spotted, the fan chops the air with his palms and fists, and screams, “Jackie Chan!” pointing him out to a friend. Chan would prefer them to be less clownish, and more reverential, like when they spot Robert De Niro.
It turns out that famous people also go chasing after famous people, not just fans. On YouTube, Shah Rukh Khan flirts with Lady Gaga over the course of one long interview (he’s interviewing her). Mathew Perry of Friends fame has a story to tell, where he meets director M Night Shyamalan at a restaurant. The night grows old and the two spend hours talking about this and that. Perry asks him for a role; M Night glares at him and disappears into the washroom. A friend who is passing by points out his error to Perry: That it’s not M Night Shyamalan, just an Indian gentleman who looks like him, a classic case of mistaking Anand Amritraj for Vijay Amritraj.
Personally, I haven’t met too many famous people. Or maybe I have but I haven’t realised that they are famous, like my father, a poet and critic. I was innocent of his fame until a pattern of behaviour started repeating itself in society. Anyone I’d meet would fixate his eyes on the ceiling fan, point a steady forefinger at the fan and say in hushed tones “your father”.
For a long time, I thought my father was a ceiling fan, and so I’d argue back that this was factually incorrect, that he was, in reality, a pedestal fan. Over time I realised that the person was in awe of him, (which means my father is reasonably famous, despite low lifetime book sales), and was merely saying that my father was at a much much higher level...than who? Nowadays, I’ve become smarter; conversations go something like this:
Person/fan (pointing to the ceiling fan): “Your father.”
Me (pointing to the ceiling fan): “Yes, my father.”
And then we go our separate ways.
I think the only internationally famous person I’ve met would be Thom Yorke, the lead vocalist for the English band, Radiohead. I saw him in a cafe in Oxford, went in, said something silly like, “I saw you first on my parents’ black and white TV in Allahabad when I was 16-years-old.” Thom asked me to find a napkin for an autograph; I did the cool anti-fan thing. I said, “F**k it, nice meeting you...all the best” and fled the scene.
Unless one counts the time at Delhi’s T3 when a friend clutched my arm in alarm and whispered, “See, see, Gautam Gambhir!” I peered and peered into the sea of faces and saw nothing. The friend insisted, “Idiot, there, there, can’t you see” as if we’d spotted a rare bird. I never caught a glimpse of him but to this day, when I am peering into a crowd, waiting for a friend, I see Gautam in every stranger’s face.
The writer is author of ‘The Butterfly Generation: A Personal Journey into the Passions and Follies of India’s Technicolor Youth’. Views expressed are personal.
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