Back to the future: Return of the star as influencer.

Abstract

Starting with the iconic actress Neena Gupta’s Instagram post about looking for work in the Hindi film industry, this paper aims to locate the ideas of old media stardom and place them in a new media framework where stars emulate influencer archetypes. Using examples from Instagram accounts of leading starlets like Zeenat Aman and Neena Gupta, the paper maps these ideas of social media stardom to interpret how influencers inform stardom and its appropriations of an image-based platform like Instagram. An endless cycle of star–fan association ensues with the star resurfacing after eons of absence from the public eye in a digital avatar. These affordances spell a shift in star–fan association from handwritten fan letters to selfies with stars and also exemplify the never-ending nostalgia shop of the Internet that finds ways to remediate the star as memes. Tracing these posts and media events, the paper analyzes the emergent shifts in the registers of stardom in the era of screens dominated by social media and selfies.