Location: LIB-011 (CITL)
Abstract:
The MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region has long been a site of Hindi film consumption and circulation, with countries like the UAE emerging in recent years as a potent hub for Bollywood’s overseas distribution and marketing. However, the popularity and dissemination of Bollywood is not just limited to its films but also extends to its larger-than-life stars. Hindi film stars like Raj Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan, Mithun Chakraborty and more recently, Shah Rukh Khan, have essayed a crucial role in Hindi cinema’s global consumption among foreign audiences. The popularity and deification of Bollywood stars by non-Indian and non-diasporic cinephiles underline discourses of soft power, political affinity, and transnational cultural flows, particularly in non-Western contexts. By examining the popularity and cultural currency of Shah Rukh Khan in the Middle East, particularly the UAE, this paper analyses how he is deployed to consolidate the ideas of ‘Brand India’ and ‘Brand Dubai’. Consequently, it underlines how Khan’s transnational stardom in the Middle East functions to counteract the precarity and vulnerability of his star stature in contemporary India, where the emergent right-wing, Hindutva political rhetoric have rendered him incapable of embodying the national imaginary.