Clamour for glamour- do film celebs click with the junta?

Considering the plethora of celluloid-celebs that contest/campaign, only few go back with victories/good memories election year after election year. The people have made wild swings between euphoric support to the proverbial foot in the A**. Take for example Shekhar Suman who lost this time or Sunil Dutt who won emphatically enough for the people to transfer their allegiance to his daughter just as trustingly.

On the other hand, the story of a glamorous actress of the 70s being hounded by the public during a promotional rally for her father is well known. Apparently the people blocked highways for kms around the venue to catch a glimse of her but eventually her late father lost even his deposit. Hence the people saw ‘the kaano ki baali, gallon ki laali and Bengal ki sari’ and went back to choose the guy they thought would work best for them!

So stars and star value obviously does not guarantee or even bolster the chances of a victory, their own or anothers. But every election national and regional parties try to woo film and t.v. stars for what?

Ideological bankruptcy? Is anyone still flogging this long dead cat? So what replaces this void….development and movie stars? Ad guru Suhel Seth says, "Today, every hero wants to be a neta and every villain in politics wants to be a hero. The Sabarmati Ashram has been replaced by Film City as the politician's temple of worship. The tragedy is that Ayodhya and development have sadly got less media mileage than Dhanno and Basanti! It shows the political parties in poor light, almost as if they were ideologically bankrupt!"
Eye Candy? Well for one film stars can do what politicians are exceedingly failing at (despite the daroo, damdi and danda on offer), they bring in crowds. One film star guarantees a large opening, after that it’s the politicians who have to make or break the situation. Celina Jaitley, Madhuri Dixit, Brangelina, Denzel Washington, Halle Berry all endorsed one candidate or the other.
A touch of stardust? A little sprinkling of this dust may sometimes equal box office bonanza. Salman Khan not only pulled in the crowds but also proved lucky for 5 of the 7 candidates he campaigned for, so there must be some strength in the film star=victory conviction. Matinee queen, multi-millionaire Oprah Winfrey (who has made a career out of endorsing) put her rather substantial might behind the then one of the two democrat aspirants, Barrack Obama. It did not hurt that she has quite the pull with the ladies and African Americans that definitely converted into very large financial contributions to the Obama nomination campaign and very probably to votes towards his election.
Media savvy? Years of being harried and hounded by the media gives them the savvy to shadow box with layered, irksome and down right pesky questions and people. This however may not be consistent with all as seen in the foot in mouth disease that constantly afflicts our most famous ex-bahurani, Smriti Irani as also with Dharmendra who made the gaffe of his political career by being quoted as ‘I don’t know about the BJP ideology is but if made a dictator of this country, I’ll clean up this mess’, it took him sometime to clean that mess up!

Pop star at 47, a fairy tale in the making?

A dowdy, matronly, apparently virginal cat lady from the backwaters of Scotland has done it! Susan Boyle has become the talk of the town (yet not Indian towns) and topic of water cooler gossip around the world.

As a participant of Britain’s Got Talent, a talent hunt show in UK, she generated a collective gasp of appreciation from a skeptical audience and panel of judges waiting to tear her to pieces. And why would THAT generate this mass hysteria, you may ask with genuine wonder. And I might agree with you whole heartedly but for the fact that critics and admirers across the seven seas have been waxing eloquent over her for the past 2 weeks.

Well check out her photograph and you’ll accept that she looks more like a frumpy, middle-aged couch potato than an aspiring professional singer. And that’s where the audience, used to the vocal driveling of pretty plastic pop aspirants, got the surprise of their lives when she serenaded them with her spectacular rendition of ‘I Dream A Dream’ from Les Miserables. To the audience and judges credit, there was a long round of heart felt applause and well deserved coining of the “NEXT SINGING SENSATION”, a title so far reserved for wannabe Miley Cyruses (Britney Spears having gone out of Teen favor).

The producers must be patting their ego-laden backs for having casually presented the world with such a ‘discovery’, though obviously they knew what a rough (only in appearance) diamond they had on their hands since all participants have to go through a screening process. Yet they predictably tried to make this a grand ‘onscreen’ discovery (what else in this age of reality TV) by presenting her as part of the notional group of misfits and weirdoes that are specially selected for entertainment in between the serious business of Talent Hunt.

The in studio audience and the acerbic Simon C. looked down their noses at this frumpy woman and nearly booed her before being flabbergasted by her voice. This raises two questions:

As much as Susan Boyle is being promoted as a singing sensation, her looks are getting plenty attention too (quite a few observers already suggesting an extreme makeover). The fact that she is 47 and noones idea of pretty stumps everyone, enough to show how we now expect all packages to be complete, pretty face=pretty voice or vice versa. Hence the first question, would there be as much celebration for Susan Boyle (in just a preliminary round of talent hunt) if she were another pretty young thing? Does skill matter more when the skilled is marred or ugly because it warms our heart to see beauty (of voice) juxtaposed with ugliness (of face and body)?


Also Susans’ deprived background (she is barely trained, never employed and has for the past few decades solely looked after her ailing mother, hence no boyfriend) is being bandied about as much as praise for her voice. This leads to the second question, does her humble background add/lead to the aura around her obvious skill? Would everyone be as awestruck if she sang like a nightingale AND was a silk stocking trust fund kid? Do we tend to romanticize struggle, refer Kailash Kher and Rabbi Shergill?

Despite the discomfort of these questions, Susan qualifies to be called a Jewel, deserving the 50 million hits to her Youtube video (historical) and is the object of adoration of the many fan sites devoted to her. Whatever the result of the show, she has temporarily won the hearts of the public, Oprah Winfrey AND Good Morning America producers among others.

Defying all logic she has stayed in public memory for more than a week. It is to be seen if she manages to compete with elections and IPL to attract the attention of Indian media soon. Just remembered Abhijeet Sawant….where art thou?

PS: check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk