Shahrukh Khan as media text: celebrity, identity and emotive engagement in a Russian online community

摘要

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.View full textDownload full textKeywordsCelebrity, fandom, identity, internet, RussiaRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2011.609333