[ad_1]
Over six seasons, Koffee With Karan has seen it all: A poker-faced Salman Khan claiming to be a virgin and saving himself for marriage; a guileless Alia Bhatt hazarding a guess that Prithviraj Chauhan was the president of the country; an impish Kareena Kapoor Khan quizzing Priyanka Chopra about where she got her accent from—only to be breezily rebuffed, “The same place where your boyfriend got his from.” For almost two decades, the iconic couch has served as a coveted confessional, drawing millions across the country into its lacquered echelons of celebrity gossip and scandal—and it is easy to see why.
Crafted by the fiendish fingers of noted auteur Karan Johar, the chat show services a Venn diagram-approved cross-section of viewers. You have the Bollywood buffs who ardently worship at the altar of celebrity minutiae. And then you have those who consider themselves above such frivolity but can’t help lingering a tad longer than they’d like to admit as they begrudgingly indulge devoted celeb-watchers with their attention. Regardless of where you personally fall on this curve, any new season of the show was always guaranteed to come barrelling into your consciousness like an armoured tank gone rogue—to not know what saccharine jibes were dropped on the couch would be to risk myopia in the pop culture milieu.
And so it would have remained if the advent of social media hadn’t diluted the potency of this tried-and-true formula. As platforms like Instagram place the rarified ranks of celebrities directly within scrolling distance of their audiences, they have also inadvertently divorced the middleman from the equation. Given the younger generation’s tendency to self-inform, there remains little to be gleaned by the crafty probing of a chat show host. Those in pursuit of proof need look no further than the rising crop of Gen Z starlets who bring their elevated social media savoir-faire to the table for a carefully curated glimpse into their lives with just enough rawness to trigger that “celebrities… they are just like us” rapture.
Even as the chat show vehicle sputters as it runs out of oxygen, ever-shrinking attention spans have placed it on a collision course with the death of appointment viewing. For a generation of digital natives who are bombarded with content on an everyday basis, culling an hour from their schedule can seem anathema when regurgitated clips on social media will update you anyway on which ex of Sara Ali Khan’s is everyone’s ex in showbiz. Couple this with a general rise of do-gooders in the industry in the post-Sushant Singh Rajput era, and the thorny barbs of fore have been traded in for an onslaught of laboured niceness—last week’s episode offered up Sonam Kapoor Ahuja resolutely refusing to name any actress as overrated, even as strategically placed advertisement banners nudged viewers in the direction of her chosen brand of non-toxic mothercare products.
Are celebrity chat shows dead? Maybe not yet, but they are running on borrowed time with a looming existential crisis that cannot always be bailed out by throwaway mentions of Ranveer Singh’s sex playlists.
Also read:
Koffee With Karan season 7 is as gleefully scandalous as ever
Janhvi Kapoor and Sara Ali Khan opted for contrasting styles for their latest appearance on Koffee With Karan
Can a sex playlist, as referenced by Ranveer Singh on Koffee With Karan, enhance your pleasure in bed?
[ad_2]
Source link