“Don’t hold back”: Ranveer Singh, masculinity and new media ecology

Abstract

When asked about his ambitions, Ranveer Singh’s answer is always the same, “I have always wanted to be a mainstream Hindi film hero”. This is a surprisingly precise answer. It speaks to a desire to be part of a mainstream Hindi cinema tradition and a specific Hindi film masculine ideal that since the Bachchan era encompasses the hoi polloi and the bourgeoisie. To be a mainstream Hindi film, hero in the twenty-first centurymeans addressing the increasing fragmentation of the socio-economic terrain of neoliberal India and the variations of classed, regional and caste masculinity. Singh strategically endeavours to represent local, national, and transnational ideals of masculinity. While he is increasingly known for his versatility on-screen, his off-screen persona is central to his rising stardom: He is the brand spokesperson for “hoi-polloi” brands such as Rupa, Thumbs Up and he also represents transnational and cosmopolitan brands such as Adidas, Durex, and Switzerland. Singh’s stardom crafted for and within a social media-driven ecology, ushers in a post-Khan iteration of stardom in Bollywood. Attentive to the pace of Internet media and shaped by his own background in advertising, he creates himself through his flamboyant fashions and his explicit repudiation of “bourgeois elitism” and “manners”, mobilizing his facility with English and his international education to embody the neoliberal, transnational upper-class urban Indian male. At the same time, his rejection of traditional ideas of gendered, classed decorum and his uninhibited performances (both on- and off-screen) mark him as potentially “déclassé". This paper examines the contradictions inherent in Ranveer Singh’s stardom as both caused by, and an effect of, the shifting habitus of the neoliberal Indian middle classes; the transnational circuits of taste; the (trans)national, classed structures of masculinity; and a changing media ecology.