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Lasting Screen Stars pp 11–25Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

From Angry Young Man to Icon of Neo-liberal India: Extra-cinematic Strategies that Make Amitabh Bachchan India’s Lasting Super-Star

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Abstract

Amitabh Bachchan is an Indian super-star who has commanded a presence on Indian screens for over four decades. Besides acting, Bachchan appears on television and has anchored the popular TV game show, Kaun Banega Crorepati (modeled on Who Wants to be a Millionaire). This chapter takes up the strategies working alongside Bachchan’s screen persona to examine the longevity of this super-star. It proposes a career arc for Bachchan that commences with his establishing a screen persona as the ‘angry young man’ in post-Emergency India (1970s–1990s) and goes on to a more recent phase in which, through films and other media, Bachchan aligns himself with India’s neo-liberal values. Bachchan’s persistence in India’s popular imaginary can thus be understood in terms of the star’s ability to align with dominant cultural and political sentiments.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Amitabh Bachchan’s relationship with the press has been marked by fractures throughout his career. Numerous media reports reference this. See, for example, http://gulfnews.com/arts-entertainment/film/amitabh-bachchan-s-love-hate-relationship-with-rann-1.575972. Also, see Mishra (2002).

  2. 2.

    Parallel cinema is a term used to refer to India’s art-house, non-commercial cinema. Acclaimed parallel cinema directors include Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Aparna Sen, Mrinal Sen, Mani Kaul, and Kumar Shahani, among others.

  3. 3.

    The Mahabharata is one of the two Sanskrit epics of ancient Indian literature. It focuses on the great war between the Kauravas and the Pandavas. A part of the Mahabharata is Krishna’s discourse of the Bhagvad Gita.

  4. 4.

    For detailed discussion of Bachchan’s alignment with Karna, see Mishra (2002) and Mazumdar (2007).

  5. 5.

    The global popularity of Bollywood is due to the growing visibility of Bollywood films at international film festivals and the constitution of Indian diasporic audiences as defined exhibition and distribution territories for films.

  6. 6.

    Many participants have expressed that their reason for participating in the show was not the prospect of winning it as much as that it offered them a chance to get face-to-face with the star.

  7. 7.

    Writer and activist Arundhati Roy has commented on the India Poised campaign, noting that Bachchan’s commentary in the advertisement divides India into the rich and the poor. According to Roy, the campaign presents the poor as having a choice to ‘become rich’. The campaign asserts, she adds, that if the poor choose not to ‘become rich’, ‘it’s because they are choosing pessimism over optimism, hesitation over confidence, want over hope’. Roy’s analysis of the campaign reflects Bachchan as aligning with a neo-liberal agenda in India (Roy, 2009, p. 166).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, UK

    Aparna Sharma

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  1. Aparna Sharma
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Languages, Linguistics and Fil, Queen Mary University of London, LONDON, United Kingdom

    Lucy Bolton

  2. Queen Mary University of London, School of Languages, Linguistics & Film, United Kingdom

    Julie Lobalzo Wright

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© 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)

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Sharma, A. (2016). From Angry Young Man to Icon of Neo-liberal India: Extra-cinematic Strategies that Make Amitabh Bachchan India’s Lasting Super-Star. In: Bolton, L., Wright, J. (eds) Lasting Screen Stars. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40733-7_2

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