Devotional Fanscapes

Devotional Fanscapes examines the practices and materiality of fans who worship film stars as divine figures. This book is an analysis of visual culture and star temples that bring cinema, fandom, religion, and politics into undocumented negotiations in national and transnational contexts.

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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 and fan artifacts can help us rethink art, religion, and politics. With its interdisciplinary approach, this book addresses how notions of fan bhakti (devotion) are performed in the global landscape, in the process augmenting new religious models and identities based on the idea of the “cinematic sacred.”