Papers by Shalini Kakar
International Journal of Hindu Studies, 2009
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impactBooks by Shalini Kakar
Lexington Press (Rowman & Littlefield), 2023
Devotional Fanscapes: Bollywood Star Deities, Devotee-Fans, and Cultural Politics in India and ... more Devotional Fanscapes: Bollywood Star Deities, Devotee-Fans, and Cultural Politics in India and Beyond examines how fans worship film stars as deities. Focusing on temples dedicated to Bollywood (Hindi cinema) stars and the artifacts produced by Hindi and Tamil cinema fans, Shalini Kakar illustrates how the fan constructs their identity as a devotee and that of the star as a deity. Extending her research from India to the US, Kakar highlights the transnational dimensions of this phenomenon to demonstrate the degree to which devotional fan practices (fan-bhakti) and fan artifacts can help us rethink art, religion, and politics. With its interdisciplinary approach, this book addresses how fan-bhakti is performed in the global landscape, in the process augmenting new religious models and identities based on the idea of the “cinematic sacred.”
For more information, check out www.sacredfandom.com.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact " Devotional Fandom : The Madhuri Dixit Temple of Pappu Sardar", In John Zavos et ell (eds.), Sag... more " Devotional Fandom : The Madhuri Dixit Temple of Pappu Sardar", In John Zavos et ell (eds.), Sage Publications, 2012.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact Conference Presentations by Shalini Kakar
While the nexus between saffron-clad spiritual gurus of India with unaccountable wealth, politics... more While the nexus between saffron-clad spiritual gurus of India with unaccountable wealth, politics, and even sex scandals is not new, yet the self-styled fusion of a female guru into a la Bollywood style goddesses is a very recent phenomenon. This paper seeks to examine the construction of Radhe Maa, an ultra glamorized Mumbai-based guru who claims to be an avatar of Hindu goddess, Durga. In a country enamored with Bollywood and religion, Radhe Maa’s extravagant lifestyle, bridal designer ware, and diamond-studded jewelry are the hallmark of repackaging the traditional brand of a guru. Her spiritual histrionics range from floating on a forty-feet high udan khatola (“divine vessel”), through which she “descends on earth,” to her feisty “spiritual” dances laced with sexual undertones, moving to the beats of bhangra and Bollywood dance moves. This representation of the guru resonates with the gravity-defying entry of Bollywood stars on award shows.
In this talk, I explore the role of media and popular images in Radhe Maa’s transformation into a glamorous guru. By analyzing devotional artifacts/props (such as her “toy” trishul), I locate these images as visual negotiators in the interweaving of technology and gurudom. How do these objects aid in a collective performance of the guru as a Bollywood star, her disciples as spectacle watching bhakts, and the media (the 24-hour news channels) that orchestrate new circuits of spiritual consumption created at the crossroads of cinema and religion.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact 
In popular Western perception, the term Bollywood conjures up a constellation of images: melodram... more In popular Western perception, the term Bollywood conjures up a constellation of images: melodramatic performances rendered in a riot of colors, exotic locales, exaggerated gestures, and fantastic song and dance sequences. To challenge this dominant image of Bollywood, the objective of this panel is to offer alternate views that can help us examine popular Indian cinema from multiple perspectives. The visual culture of Bollywood, namely film posters, billboards, etc., circulates in myriad domains of the popular, creating novel forms that generate new meanings. Originating from the world of cinema, these artifacts from Bollywood penetrate, negotiate, and in the process alter contemporary art, religion, culture, and politics in India making it an omnipresent force in popular culture. In this symposium, we will examine these different sites in which the visual culture of Bollywood operates and the ways in which it transcends the film screen to become a part of everyday life both in India and its diaspora in the US.
By making Bollywood as the locus of intellectual inquiry and as an object of scholarly exploration, the main objective of this symposium is to engender a dialogue among the students and faculty in framing popular Indian cinema beyond its stereotypical image in the West as a colorful, boisterous, and in some ways, loud and frivolous form of cinema with little consequence beyond crass entertainment. Our discussion will engage with the visually complex subtext of Bollywood and its relation with religion, culture, art, politics, and transnational identity. We plan to pose the following questions for discussion:
1. How is the culture of Bollywood been represented in the West?
2. How could one use popular artifacts (such as film posters, banners, etc.) to create multiple narratives of Bollywood? How do these artifacts penetrate contemporary art, politics, and religion in India and what is their impact?
3. What is “Global Bollywood?” How do cinematic representations of “NRI’s” in Bollywood and the portrayals of their cultural identities both reflect and shape transnational communities in the US? How has this changed over the last two decades following the liberalization of the Indian economy?
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact South-Asian Visual Culture: “Views From 'Below”?
According to David Lloyd, “Popular is the su... more South-Asian Visual Culture: “Views From 'Below”?
According to David Lloyd, “Popular is the subaltern on the way to representation.” While there is a significant body of scholarship on popular prints, postcards, calendar art, film posters, and vehicular art from South Asia, why does the popular continue to be an elusive and nebulous category in mainstream art history? Can a sustained mediation of the popular help us rethink the themes of knowledge and authority in the production of colonial certitudes of art historical discourse? Rather than focus on a conventional archive of art history, this panel asks: is it possible to conceive of a historiography of South Asian visual culture with the popular as a point of departure? If so, what are the primary modes of inquiry that would help us identify, acknowledge, and, possibly “represent” the popular narratives in such a reconceptualized history of visual culture? That is, how can we approach, challenge and reframe the current parameters of the discipline through the lens of the popular? We propose to view the popular from a variety of perspectives, to consider whether allied concepts such as vernacular, subaltern, subjugated, outsider, or marginalized, may enable a more rigorous engagement with the production, circulation and consumption of South Asian visual culture.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact Talks by Shalini Kakar
This talk examines the contemporary ritual practices of fans who worship film stars as gods. Focu... more This talk examines the contemporary ritual practices of fans who worship film stars as gods. Focusing on public display of devotee-fan worship of South Indian film star Rajinikanth in India, and comparing it to fan practices followed by his fans in the US, Kakar seeks to address the transnational flows in devotional fandom. In 2010, during the release of Rajinikanth’s film Endhiran, devotee-fans in India and the US bathed huge images of Rajinikanth with milk, a ritual conducted for Hindu god images in temples. Paralleling the ritual frenzy exhibited by fans in India, Rajinikanth’s transnational fans engaged in euphoric dances, screaming, whistling and the ritual of performing arati for the screen image of their star deity in theatres across several cities in the US. How do fans across borders create a collective devotee-fan consciousness that transcends the territorial borders of the nation-state? What kind of a cultural landscape is produced when star deities cross borders, and their transnational devotee-fans occupy public spaces to display their devotion? Taking recourse to Bakhtin’s theory of chronotope as an analytical tool, Kakar proposes that the performative fan-bhakti of US Rajinikanth fans locates new forms of agency, creating a novel space for transnational politics.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact This presentation explores the devotional fandom centered around images of Bollywood film star Am... more This presentation explores the devotional fandom centered around images of Bollywood film star Amitabh Bachchan in the Amitabh Bachchan Fan Association (ABFA) in Kolkata, India. Kakar will investigate the ways in which members of the ABFA fuse fandom with Hindu modes of bhakti by reimagining their star deity as the Hindu god Ram. They center their worship practices primarily on the posters of the film star, which are invested with the status of murtis, ritual images of their star deity. These deified posters have been installed in the recently constructed Amitabh Bachchan Temple, where they are ritually venerated on a regular basis. The presentation will focus on the mechanisms through which a film poster, a mechanically produced object, is transformed by the ABFA into a star murti that is an object of devotion.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact Exhibition by Shalini Kakar
The Indian film industry is the world’s largest producer of films, releasing more than a thousand... more The Indian film industry is the world’s largest producer of films, releasing more than a thousand movies a year in multiple languages since the early 1900s. By the 1980s, Hindi language cinema generally came to be known as Bollywood. These films have a spectacular blend of romance, melodrama, fantasy, song, and dance extravaganza. This exhibition explores the visual history of Bollywood film posters and their influence on popular culture, religion, politics, and art.
The brightly colored Bollywood film poster has an aesthetic idiom of its own which dates back to the paintings of the artist Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906). He developed a distinct style of representing Hindu gods and goddesses by merging academic western realism with traditional Indian art forms. In 1894, Ravi Varma set up his printing press in Mumbai (Bombay), mass-producing his paintings in the form of oleograph prints. Characterized by sensuous feminine forms, frontal compositions, and vibrant colors, Ravi Varma’s style influenced consumer art forms such as calendar art and film posters.
D.J. Phalke (1870-1944), a photographer who worked as a draughtsman for Ravi Varma’s press, began making films in 1913. He produced the first silent Indian film, Raja Harishchandra, a story of a righteous king recounted in Hindu epics. The film drew upon Indian painting, Parsi theatre, music, oral performance, and the popular images of Ravi Varma to create a cinematic idiom. As the industry grew, posters, photographs, pamphlets, lobby cards, and song-synopsis booklets circulated as publicity materials. Gradually, film posters became the visual focal point for advertising films.
From the black and white poster of Shree 420 (1955), to the dramatic nationalist renditions in Mother India (1957), to the color saturated high intensity composition of Sholay (1975), the film poster has undergone thematic and stylistic changes during the 20th century. The tradition of hand painted posters is one of the most striking features of Indian film publicity. Not recognized as an art form in India, the film poster artists have largely remained anonymous. Notable among them are the stage backdrop artist, Baburao Painter, and the celebrated contemporary Indian artist, M.F. Husain, who began as a movie billboard painter but gained international recognition for his oil paintings.
Although the film poster began with the intent to launch the film and film stars to a mass audience, it circulates in unintended ways acquiring a life of its own. From being displayed outside cinemas as advertisement, to inspiring contemporary art, to being enshrined as sacred images in temples dedicated to Bollywood film stars, to customized Bollywood wedding posters, and more recently being globally showcased in museum spaces as objects of art, the Bollywood film poster operates in multiple domains. This exhibition presents these different sites to demonstrate how the Bollywood film poster becomes a highly charged yet malleable object of consumption.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact 
Uploads
Papers by Shalini Kakar
Books by Shalini Kakar
For more information, check out www.sacredfandom.com.
Conference Presentations by Shalini Kakar
In this talk, I explore the role of media and popular images in Radhe Maa’s transformation into a glamorous guru. By analyzing devotional artifacts/props (such as her “toy” trishul), I locate these images as visual negotiators in the interweaving of technology and gurudom. How do these objects aid in a collective performance of the guru as a Bollywood star, her disciples as spectacle watching bhakts, and the media (the 24-hour news channels) that orchestrate new circuits of spiritual consumption created at the crossroads of cinema and religion.
By making Bollywood as the locus of intellectual inquiry and as an object of scholarly exploration, the main objective of this symposium is to engender a dialogue among the students and faculty in framing popular Indian cinema beyond its stereotypical image in the West as a colorful, boisterous, and in some ways, loud and frivolous form of cinema with little consequence beyond crass entertainment. Our discussion will engage with the visually complex subtext of Bollywood and its relation with religion, culture, art, politics, and transnational identity. We plan to pose the following questions for discussion:
1. How is the culture of Bollywood been represented in the West?
2. How could one use popular artifacts (such as film posters, banners, etc.) to create multiple narratives of Bollywood? How do these artifacts penetrate contemporary art, politics, and religion in India and what is their impact?
3. What is “Global Bollywood?” How do cinematic representations of “NRI’s” in Bollywood and the portrayals of their cultural identities both reflect and shape transnational communities in the US? How has this changed over the last two decades following the liberalization of the Indian economy?
According to David Lloyd, “Popular is the subaltern on the way to representation.” While there is a significant body of scholarship on popular prints, postcards, calendar art, film posters, and vehicular art from South Asia, why does the popular continue to be an elusive and nebulous category in mainstream art history? Can a sustained mediation of the popular help us rethink the themes of knowledge and authority in the production of colonial certitudes of art historical discourse? Rather than focus on a conventional archive of art history, this panel asks: is it possible to conceive of a historiography of South Asian visual culture with the popular as a point of departure? If so, what are the primary modes of inquiry that would help us identify, acknowledge, and, possibly “represent” the popular narratives in such a reconceptualized history of visual culture? That is, how can we approach, challenge and reframe the current parameters of the discipline through the lens of the popular? We propose to view the popular from a variety of perspectives, to consider whether allied concepts such as vernacular, subaltern, subjugated, outsider, or marginalized, may enable a more rigorous engagement with the production, circulation and consumption of South Asian visual culture.
Talks by Shalini Kakar
Exhibition by Shalini Kakar
The brightly colored Bollywood film poster has an aesthetic idiom of its own which dates back to the paintings of the artist Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906). He developed a distinct style of representing Hindu gods and goddesses by merging academic western realism with traditional Indian art forms. In 1894, Ravi Varma set up his printing press in Mumbai (Bombay), mass-producing his paintings in the form of oleograph prints. Characterized by sensuous feminine forms, frontal compositions, and vibrant colors, Ravi Varma’s style influenced consumer art forms such as calendar art and film posters.
D.J. Phalke (1870-1944), a photographer who worked as a draughtsman for Ravi Varma’s press, began making films in 1913. He produced the first silent Indian film, Raja Harishchandra, a story of a righteous king recounted in Hindu epics. The film drew upon Indian painting, Parsi theatre, music, oral performance, and the popular images of Ravi Varma to create a cinematic idiom. As the industry grew, posters, photographs, pamphlets, lobby cards, and song-synopsis booklets circulated as publicity materials. Gradually, film posters became the visual focal point for advertising films.
From the black and white poster of Shree 420 (1955), to the dramatic nationalist renditions in Mother India (1957), to the color saturated high intensity composition of Sholay (1975), the film poster has undergone thematic and stylistic changes during the 20th century. The tradition of hand painted posters is one of the most striking features of Indian film publicity. Not recognized as an art form in India, the film poster artists have largely remained anonymous. Notable among them are the stage backdrop artist, Baburao Painter, and the celebrated contemporary Indian artist, M.F. Husain, who began as a movie billboard painter but gained international recognition for his oil paintings.
Although the film poster began with the intent to launch the film and film stars to a mass audience, it circulates in unintended ways acquiring a life of its own. From being displayed outside cinemas as advertisement, to inspiring contemporary art, to being enshrined as sacred images in temples dedicated to Bollywood film stars, to customized Bollywood wedding posters, and more recently being globally showcased in museum spaces as objects of art, the Bollywood film poster operates in multiple domains. This exhibition presents these different sites to demonstrate how the Bollywood film poster becomes a highly charged yet malleable object of consumption.
For more information, check out www.sacredfandom.com.
In this talk, I explore the role of media and popular images in Radhe Maa’s transformation into a glamorous guru. By analyzing devotional artifacts/props (such as her “toy” trishul), I locate these images as visual negotiators in the interweaving of technology and gurudom. How do these objects aid in a collective performance of the guru as a Bollywood star, her disciples as spectacle watching bhakts, and the media (the 24-hour news channels) that orchestrate new circuits of spiritual consumption created at the crossroads of cinema and religion.
By making Bollywood as the locus of intellectual inquiry and as an object of scholarly exploration, the main objective of this symposium is to engender a dialogue among the students and faculty in framing popular Indian cinema beyond its stereotypical image in the West as a colorful, boisterous, and in some ways, loud and frivolous form of cinema with little consequence beyond crass entertainment. Our discussion will engage with the visually complex subtext of Bollywood and its relation with religion, culture, art, politics, and transnational identity. We plan to pose the following questions for discussion:
1. How is the culture of Bollywood been represented in the West?
2. How could one use popular artifacts (such as film posters, banners, etc.) to create multiple narratives of Bollywood? How do these artifacts penetrate contemporary art, politics, and religion in India and what is their impact?
3. What is “Global Bollywood?” How do cinematic representations of “NRI’s” in Bollywood and the portrayals of their cultural identities both reflect and shape transnational communities in the US? How has this changed over the last two decades following the liberalization of the Indian economy?
According to David Lloyd, “Popular is the subaltern on the way to representation.” While there is a significant body of scholarship on popular prints, postcards, calendar art, film posters, and vehicular art from South Asia, why does the popular continue to be an elusive and nebulous category in mainstream art history? Can a sustained mediation of the popular help us rethink the themes of knowledge and authority in the production of colonial certitudes of art historical discourse? Rather than focus on a conventional archive of art history, this panel asks: is it possible to conceive of a historiography of South Asian visual culture with the popular as a point of departure? If so, what are the primary modes of inquiry that would help us identify, acknowledge, and, possibly “represent” the popular narratives in such a reconceptualized history of visual culture? That is, how can we approach, challenge and reframe the current parameters of the discipline through the lens of the popular? We propose to view the popular from a variety of perspectives, to consider whether allied concepts such as vernacular, subaltern, subjugated, outsider, or marginalized, may enable a more rigorous engagement with the production, circulation and consumption of South Asian visual culture.
The brightly colored Bollywood film poster has an aesthetic idiom of its own which dates back to the paintings of the artist Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906). He developed a distinct style of representing Hindu gods and goddesses by merging academic western realism with traditional Indian art forms. In 1894, Ravi Varma set up his printing press in Mumbai (Bombay), mass-producing his paintings in the form of oleograph prints. Characterized by sensuous feminine forms, frontal compositions, and vibrant colors, Ravi Varma’s style influenced consumer art forms such as calendar art and film posters.
D.J. Phalke (1870-1944), a photographer who worked as a draughtsman for Ravi Varma’s press, began making films in 1913. He produced the first silent Indian film, Raja Harishchandra, a story of a righteous king recounted in Hindu epics. The film drew upon Indian painting, Parsi theatre, music, oral performance, and the popular images of Ravi Varma to create a cinematic idiom. As the industry grew, posters, photographs, pamphlets, lobby cards, and song-synopsis booklets circulated as publicity materials. Gradually, film posters became the visual focal point for advertising films.
From the black and white poster of Shree 420 (1955), to the dramatic nationalist renditions in Mother India (1957), to the color saturated high intensity composition of Sholay (1975), the film poster has undergone thematic and stylistic changes during the 20th century. The tradition of hand painted posters is one of the most striking features of Indian film publicity. Not recognized as an art form in India, the film poster artists have largely remained anonymous. Notable among them are the stage backdrop artist, Baburao Painter, and the celebrated contemporary Indian artist, M.F. Husain, who began as a movie billboard painter but gained international recognition for his oil paintings.
Although the film poster began with the intent to launch the film and film stars to a mass audience, it circulates in unintended ways acquiring a life of its own. From being displayed outside cinemas as advertisement, to inspiring contemporary art, to being enshrined as sacred images in temples dedicated to Bollywood film stars, to customized Bollywood wedding posters, and more recently being globally showcased in museum spaces as objects of art, the Bollywood film poster operates in multiple domains. This exhibition presents these different sites to demonstrate how the Bollywood film poster becomes a highly charged yet malleable object of consumption.