Celebrity, Media and Politics: an Indian Perspective
Celebrity, Media and Politics: An Indian Perspective BY JAIDEEP MUKHERJEE IN the summer of 2003, the massive media coverage of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s announcement of his gubernatorial ambitions, juxta- posed against the concurrent, but limited, media attention on Glenda Jackson’s scathing attacks on Blairite politics, policies and path to the Iraq war present an interesting set of parallels, reFecting the media’s obsession with celebrity — including news of it within what is considered ‘political’— in the annual silly-season that blights the British news media. Whilst Schwarzenegger’s plunge into the race to become California’s ‘Gubernator’ (as The Economist termed the position, in reference to the Terminator series of flms and his campaign promise to eliminate the state’s budget defcit) attracted an incredible, perhaps undeserved, volume of media scrutiny for a fading star; yet Glenda Jackson’s attack on Blair, perhaps representative of many disaffected Labour supporters and most of the Opposition, seemed to get media coverage more for who she was and less for what she was saying (a former actress and winner of two Academy Awards. She is presently Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate (London) and ran an unsuccessful campaign for Mayor of London in 1999). In the midst of such maelstroms of media attention and academic analyses that invariably follow, the evolving role of ‘celebrity’ within Indian politics has remained woefully under represented. In ffty-six years of independence, the world’s most populous democracy has elected over ffty actors and actresses, twenty sportspersons, hundreds of India’s erstwhile royals and one infamous ‘bandit queen’ to offce.
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