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Abstract
This article is an exploration of fan authorship in the construction of Shahrukh Khan's celebrity. It examines the manner in which Shahrukh's star status takes shape in the lively fan spaces of the Russian-language internet (Runet) and reveals how Russian fan identity is articulated in the process. In order to do this, the article studies the Shahrukh fan community at worldsrk.borda.ru, whose members refer to themselves as Sharumanki (a portmanteau of the words Shahrukh and maniaki, Russian for ‘maniacs’).
Shahrukh's celebrity is a discursive tool in the hands of these fans, and is constructed in the negotiated ties between fans and Shahrukh, between fans and other fans, and between fans and non-fans. Sharumanki not only help define Shahrukh's celebrity but also inscribe their personal/collective selves into that star narrative. In this manner, Shahrukh's celebrity is fully incorporated into fans' lives, facilitates identity work and is continually rewritten in fans' digital articulations of their everyday. In their narrations about his emotive appeal, Shahrukh becomes a figure that is transformative, (extra) ordinary, but also bounded, situated as he is in a field of shifting personal and social relations and experiences. The construction of Shahrukh's celebrity in these emotive spaces is, thus, an ongoing negotiation between the personal and the social, as fans not only underscore the star's appeal but also navigate the fault lines of their fandom in contemporary Russian culture.
Notes
1. This article stems from an ongoing post-doctoral research project that studies a wide spectrum of fan activities on the Russian language Internet as practices of cultural citizenship.
2. By ‘Russian fans’ is meant fans that are Russian by nationality and/or ethnicity (‘and/ or’ because members from other former Soviet republics, for instance, are not ethnically Russian, but they are Russian nationals). Not all Russian fans that are board members are necessarily resident in Russia; the Russian diaspora is active on the Runet.
3. The word fanatiki (fans) with its persistent negative connotations is rarely used on this message board. Sharumanki here go to pains to emphasise that they are not fanatiki, but serious, discerning admirers of Shahrukh, something that will be evident through this paper. But let me say at the outset that I will use the phrase fan community and fan for the sake of convenience and in its neutral application as an individual or group of individuals more committed and engaged with a text or icon than most audience members and nurturing that common interest in an online group.
4. It has a transnational membership, but most members are resident in various, far-flung parts of Russia.
5. A forum member, Yulia, has worked with a DVD company to do the subtitling for three recent Shahrukh starrers. Roza checks Yulia's work after she completes the subtitling.
10. The homes of other megastars, such as Amitabh Bachchan, are also popular fan destinations.
18. In the Russian context of a pervasive elitist bias against popular culture and the high value placed on the written word or literature, this seeming defensiveness is fundamental to Russian fan cultures in general, keen on impressing upon others the sophistication of their engagement.