When citizens become consumers first, alarm bells should start to ring
Never has Amitabh Bachchan seemed more ubiquitous than now when he picks up the broom, hammers home Government schemes, oils his head or even pushes toddler carts with cranky babies. His paterfamilias act has made him a real time Mr India, breathing a virtual participant in our everyday moments. Such is the pervasive celebrity culture in our country today of which Bachchan is just an illustration that Andy Warhol's prophecy of "15 minutes of fame" has leapt to 24-hour highs. The star/icon has seeped so insidiously under our skin that we now almost have a conversational relationship with him/her and claim to be their palliative and even their significant other and only half-jokingly. Hrithik Roshan got two hours of prime time on national news channels to absolve himself of any guilt in his spat with Kangana Ranaut and then it was thinking actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui's turn to spill his grisly bedroom secrets via a tell-all book earlier this week - the audiences lapped it up. Even Pooja Bhatt has pledged to tell-all on TV on her battle with alcoholism. The celebrity confessional is the new tool of trade used by protagonists to seek instant redemption by virtue of being, for want of a better word, human, and the platform is provided by the mass media platform of our age, television. So, one can err and get by, even flourish. Even celebrities' irreverence is a matter of consumer reverence. And we, as a nation, seem to have transferred the weight of our expectations on to their lives, taking a prurient interest in their private pursuits.
As society has become more consumerist, the celebrity, too, has moved away from being a role model by virtue of his/her meritorious achievements to one whose exploits, imagined or real, are consumable and aspirational, largely fuelled by media involvement. Be it positive or negative publicity, the media has promoted, created, commodified, deified and even sullied celebrities from entertainment and sports to media and corporates. This extravagant commercial value attached to the cult of celebrity — and we are talking big bucks here — has empowered their fans as legitimate stakeholders in deciding their idols' destinies in multiple and media spaces. So much so that today celebrities are considered functional equivalents of leaders who are just "being human". And they have made inroads in conventional media too. Popstar Madonna began selling her "material girl" image in the late 1980s, promising to be as see-through about her life choices as the media wanted as long as it kept her in the limelight. This Faustian Pact, of sorts, has now reached critical mass and there are signs of an imminent explosion. Celebrity projections do make for instant headline grabs in a very transient mindspace and are, understandably, the go-to option for those seeking to place their brands or sell their products. And celebrities too do have a fundamental right to earn their living. But the risk is that the citizen is fast-becoming only a consumer which is a dangerous trend in myriad ways.