Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Dispersed across globalized media and live platforms, contemporary arenas for star and fan interaction in the case of SRK, ranging from twitter to sightings “in the flesh” in front of his house, have been the subject of recent work on his transnational celebrity that the film also incorporates. In the context of the global sub-genre of films about deranged fans that continue to shape perceptions of fandom in which the “fanatic” in “fan” dominates, SRK plays the double role of both star and (digitally altered) fan. In understanding global communities of fans, the film theorizes long-standing media paradoxes of ordinary/extraordinary, intimacy/distance, presence/absence, and access/inaccessibility that have always characterized the star-fan relationship in the context of global media circuits such as film screenings, social media, press conferences, awards ceremonies, and television appearances. Set in diverse locations such as Delhi, London, Mumbai, and Dubrovnik, the film illustrates the new seamless transnational space (per Saskia Sassen) that is home to the global elite and migrant classes in which both star and fan operate.