Alter egos conceived by social media stars are as, if not more, popular as their creators. Here’s how characters are helping them diversify and make moolah in a new entertainment landscape
Bhuvan Bam dressed as one of his characters for his upcoming series, Dhindora
In 2017, an idea struck comedian Bhuvan Bam. His short videos, filmed on his phone’s front camera, and presenting glimpses of the lives and conversations of an urban teenager with his friends and family—all played by Bam himself—had garnered much popularity. Bam knew that his characters of middle-class father Babloo ji and his pesky brother-in-law Titu Mama were well-liked—his YouTube channel BB Ki Vines has over 21 million subscribers. “I wondered, why can’t I create a universe of my own?” Bam does just that in his upcoming web series on YouTube titled Dhindora, where he plays nine characters.
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While the switch between characters comes easily to him, costume and makeup helped set them apart. “I have shown the Dhindora trailer to so many people and I have had to tell them that this was all me,” he says, over a telephonic interview. “And then they would watch it again.” A lot of effort went into making each character’s body shape and walk look different, with Bam wearing a tummy pad for the father’s character, and a bra and a bum pad for the mother’s character.
Bhuvan Bam’s upcoming web series Dhindora will see him play nine characters that he played on his YouTube channel before
Fashion also plays an important role for social media celebrity Kusha Kapila’s characters, many of whom, like their creator, are citizens of Delhi. “Billi Maasi has never made a shabby appearance,” she declares proudly of her south Delhi character. Kapila has conceived a range of characters, initially parodying the brash privilege of the much-ridiculed south Delhi girl. “It was an exaggeration, but the fact that it was the first piece of viral content that established me, my colleague Dolly Singh and creative director Santu Misra and brought us into the limelight, showed that people related with the mannerisms. After that, I realised that characters would help me say things that I could not say myself,” says Kapila.
She has also played Zulmi Aunty, a character out to taunt women about their bodies, age and singlehood, among other things. “I used that template to empower the person who was getting shamed; she was able to get back at this woman and educate her,” she says, explaining that while characters were initially associated only with mimicry and caricatures, they have increasingly been used to start dialogues.
Danish Sait says his characters “happen by mistake,” with him rattling an accent, a voice, a stereotype, or playing with props
There is also Ma WokeAnand, a progressive feminist, who had a fluidity in terms of her sexuality and thoughts, and spoke about body positivity. The recent social media outage also inspired her to create a parody on herself, showing what influencers would have felt in those hours. “Sometimes we are so preoccupied with bringing the social message that we forget fun and entertainment.”
Kapila has also returned often to the character of a Punjabi mother, who may have begun as a social type, but whose potential Kapila has slowly come to understand. “I used the mom character to speak about the New Education Policy [launched last year] and the erratic schedules of university exams, because as a mother she would be invested in the education of her children and how the changes are going to affect them,” she says. “I was able to give agency to the woman, to the ‘aunty’, to the ‘mom’ who has been equally stereotyped by us, and who tells her daughter, ‘how do you plan to crush patriarchy when you still ask your mother to fetch your water?’”
Cyrus Oshidar and Kusha Kapila
Comedian Danish Sait too has used his fictional characters to say things he says he otherwise wouldn’t say. “I wouldn’t say a lot of it in front of a camera, but I can land them harder if I said them through a character. With an accent, moustache or a look that’s different from you, people tend to focus more on the comedy than on you,” he says, admitting that he himself is more boring than his alter egos. Sait’s character Nagraj, who graced the big screen in 2018 in the Kannada film Humble Politician Nograj, started life as a voice on radio, where Sait made prank calls as Nagraj, and eventually became part of the IPL Royal Challengers Bangalore set up, appearing as Mr Nags on the RCB Insider Show. “I have been fortunate that these little character sketches that I did on the internet or the radio as voices eventually ended up being films,” says Sait, whose film One Cut Two Cut is awaiting release and will bring another of his social media characters, Gopi, to the big screen.
“These characters happen by mistake. It’s usually me rattling an accent, a voice, a stereotype, which then ends up becoming a character.” Their look too takes shape organically as he plays around with his minimal props of a dupatta, a cap and a pair of sunglasses. “The thing about doing a character on social media is that you’ve got to take yourself less seriously than that. You don’t have to become a method actor and start feeling like that person,” says Sait.
The longer format is also far more demanding, he admits, given the necessity of peaks and troughs. “In a film, you’ve got to take people on a journey, whereas in a one-minute video, people are just with you. They are here for the jokes, they see the video and they are out,” he says, pointing out that while he writes and adds personality traits to his characters, a film is inconceivable without the vision of a director.
While revisiting characters is rewarding, Sait also speaks of fatigue setting in. “It’s been seven years [playing Mr Nags at RCB] and sometimes I sit down scratching my head thinking what new things am I going to do now. If you look at people like Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Murphy, or the guys at SNL [Saturday Night Live], you’ll see that they have moved beyond playing that one character that they have been most identified with.”
The pattern is not new, says Shashanka Ghosh, former creative director of Channel [V] and one of the forces behind the creation of Quick Gun Murugan, who appeared in the channel’s promos and later in the Ghosh-directed 2009 film. “We just cooked up a few characters with interesting cultures, mythologies and once they caught on, advertisers started coming on board, saying they would like to use them for endorsements. The ’90s was a break out generation. We used to joke about things, and those jokes turned into promos,” says Ghosh, about Channel V’s mascots, which included Aunty 303, a crime-fighting single mother and of course, Lola Kutty with her Kanjeevaram sarees, spectacles and gajra, played by Anuradha Menon, who went on to host shows.
Cyrus Oshidar, former senior VP, Creative & Content at MTV India, says that the trend of “characters” being hired for jobs on account of their popularity hence, is not a new phenomenon. “We were used to versions of that during the MTV generation. That’s when short form came into its own with 30-second promos, and as they became popular, they were given shows.” It is only the democratisation of modern social media platforms, he says, that allows for more people’s work to be seen.
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