Populism, OTTs, and Stardom: Demystifying the Aura

Populism, referring to a political approach that seeks to cater to ordinary people, often counters the traditional institutions and elitist discourses. OTT, on the other hand, stands for “Over-The-Top” and refers to a type of content delivery system where content providers deliver media content directly to viewers over the internet, providing the audience the freedom to navigate through content irrespective of linguistic, cultural, and national boundaries. This bypassing of traditional broadcasting methods through subversion of the hegemonic system of consumption by traditional institutions foregrounds the conflicting relationship between the emergent platform of OTT with the dominant system of movie-theaters and redefines the dynamics between the producer and the consumer by demystifying the ritualistic theater-going experience. OTT, being a more heterogeneous, customizable, and less hierarchized space, questions the consumerist attempt to retain the aura of stardom, fostered by the dominant discourse of consumption of films as well as populist ideologies. Richard Dyer (2007), while talking about the methodical construction of stardom, which is a process of commodification of models and actors, refers to Max Weber’s idea of “charisma” as a combination of concepts concerning social functions and ideologies. OTTs subvert this notion of charisma through the platform’s spatiotemporal fluidity and controlled viewing experience, subsequently creating a generation of performers who engage with a nexus of populist discourses. This entry thus intends to focus on examining the role of changing patterns of media content consumption in the twenty-first century led by the proliferation of OTT platforms and scrutinizes the systematic erasure of the perceived “aura” of stardom and its intricate correlation with populism.