There is a lot being said about what has transpired in the last 48 hours on Twitter. In case you have been living under a rock, I am referring to celebrities crawling out of the woodwork to weigh in on the farmers’ protest and the deluge of commentary that has followed in their wake. At this point, I have enough material from my timeline to churn out multiple opinion columns.
For example, I could seek to interpret what the adage, ‘with great power, comes great responsibility’ means in the context of the history of Indian cinema. Or analyse why some celebrities yield to pressure from the government – does their lust for money and power know no bounds, or are they simply amoral, or perhaps, they are over-leveraged, and more vulnerable due to weakened democratic institutions?
Alternatively, I could hold forth on how our lens tends to be trained on the Delhi-Bombay axis when it comes to defining celebrity. Or attempt to deconstruct the mania an American pop star’s comment on an article on the farmers’ protest has unleashed on two sides of the political and ideological divide.