“I also don’t think people give that much of a fuck…,” Janhvi Kapoor notes on Koffee With Karan, when asked whether she is dating Shikhar Paharia or not. She is. She says she is. She thinks people aren’t really holding their breath, waiting for her response, either way. Johar prodding her to name and shame felt like a Koffee With Karan season 4 moment in a season that is dragging its legs to the finish line. People really don’t give that much of a fuck.
In the absence of curiosity, then, what makes stardom palpable?
I have a theory, perhaps unsound, that what we are experiencing today is the inertia from the stardom of the aughts and 2010s. We are tuned in because we are used to tuning in. There is a certain excitement with which we imagine the lives of stars and of those touched by cinema, and these stars have spent a decade ruining that image by either exaggerating their real-people-real-problems performances, or by softening every hard edge of their personality into a marketable gimmick that can be used to sell toothpaste, condoms, perfume. There is a reluctance with which we consume them—and this, obviously, does not mean that our consumption of them has fallen, or will fall, but just the quality of this consumption has turned adversarial. There seems to be a relish with which we watch them stumble. We know exactly what clip of the episode will go viral, because it implicates someone. You can feel the fingers raised in gleeful indignation.
I cannot imagine young kids tuning into the world of cinema and being carried away by its waft. Before the inertia drains it to a standstill, Koffee With Karan is slipping off the radar. It is a tactical move, perhaps a season or two late.
But how far can this inertia take us now? Can it lead us to love?
Johar notes a tiff he had with both Kapoor and Dhawan. He speaks about the tiff with Dhawan with more clarity—Dhawan releasing his film, Hai Jawani Toh Ishq Hona Hai, on the same date as one of Johar’s films, Chand Mera Dil, though strangely neither film is named; this was resolved with Dhawan moving his dates. Johar doesn’t go into the details of the tiff with Kapoor. This is the Johar masterclass, him playing a fragile host, noting only what is comfortable, even as he gives the impression of crossing a threshold of comfort. This translucence is the hallmark of the show, and a reminder of why Johar is, perhaps, a fabled host for a reason. A true insider, he has an intuitive sense of what buttons to press, and how hard.
Increasingly, though, he seems to be catering to the limits. His episode with Vijay Deverakonda and Rashmika Mandanna—poor souls, stuck in a grating performance people had no patience for—and an aging Salman Khan before that barely spoke of their faltering careers, and neither does he prod here, allowing his guests to make a joke or two to get it out of the room. These are all actors stuck in bad professional patches. How does one endure the possibility of one’s own obsolescence?
Kapoor speaks about the Peddi controversy, and in a moment of conscientious calm, takes blame for not using her privilege to state herself more strongly on set, while also noting how giving into a director’s vision might be terrible as an actor if that vision turns her into a garbled sex kitten. Does this mean she will no longer chase Telugu films—after both Devara and Peddi moved her to consider the distinction between being sexy and being sexualised? I wish the show would take that train of thought further and make that distinction clear—where one feels like you are writing desire and the other one feels like desire is written onto you—but if the show does everything, where does that leave us? And further, I wish the show would take us to the question that is most palpable—is being sexy boring? Eros has lost its appeal when it is so used to catering to other people’s desires. When there is nothing more left to look out for. When you find precisely what you seek. Eros is in the unanticipated encounter. Is there space for that anymore?
The gamification of KwK began in a way to expand the surface area of their stardom, watching us watch them transform under pressure, testing the limits of their general knowledge, who in their speed dial would pick up fastest, how agile they are with their body, their mind. Somehow, even this schtick has lost its appeal. There are moments where Johar looks genuinely uninterested in responding to both Dhawan and Kapoor on the gaming podium. If the show were to continue, it would have to swerve strategies, the way it did around Season 5, with the onslaught of Instagram.
Instead, the most affectionate moments came from the AVs looking back on the show—including Arjun Kapoor’s cameo, which extends to this episode, with his wit and comforting presence to those on set.
Dhawan did not win the rapid fire. Johar characterises his performance as one where he “held back… doing self-management control”, ostensibly because he did not name an actress he could get a hall pass for, from his wife. Dhawan notes, “No, I’m not doing any image management,” only to qualify that statement—perhaps, contradict it—“I just feel the less you give out to the world, it’s better.” Where else on the internet can you perform your stardom, and then, immediately, perform the lies of that performance? Nowhere else but here. With no one else but Johar.