<p>Actor Rajinikanth will celebrate 50 years in cinema this year. His ‘Apoorva Raagangal’ directed by K Balachander was released in 1975. People have always wondered at the specific attractions that he brought to cinema, why he succeeded in Tamil but not in Hindi cinema or even in Kannada. Did his acting style not have any pertinence outside the Tamil space? But, I think, rather than look at the star himself, it would be interesting to see why specific stars are seen to fit only certain cinematic cultures even within India. That may answer more questions than only about Rajinikanth.</p>.<p>The protagonist of any popular film narrative is not any random individual but someone intimately connected to the public addressed by it — his trajectory mirrors or represents its narrative. A popular film from a nation that has just been defeated in war, for instance, may not accommodate a triumphant protagonist. Popular film narratives therefore need stars with personae made pertinent to the historical circumstances. Stock characters fit the national (or local) narrative as subjects and it has been established that Dilip Kumar’s existential hero of the 1950s, the angry young man of Amitabh (in the 1970s) and Shah Rukh Khan’s anti-hero of the 1990s (‘Baazigar’) were all products of their respective eras and created by the prevailing socio-political situations in the national space. </p>.Should an international film festival promote popular cinema?.<p>A factor about Indian cinema that has many wondering is how stars are chosen since their looks are seen to play a part. Why do south Indian male stars have such markedly different appearances from those who succeed in Bollywood and why is the appearance gap among female stars smaller? A south Indian or a Bengali male star will find it difficult to make his mark in Bollywood but the women have done famously there (Sharmila Tagore, Deepika Padukone, Hema Malini). </p>.<p>In order to understand these gaps, we need to first acknowledge the role played by the stars (male and female) in popular film narrative. In playing a lead role, the male star is made the subject of a narrative that implicates a community — pan-Indian or national in the case of Bollywood films or local in regional language cinema. The woman is less (if ever) the subject of a national narrative and one can trace the respective places of the man and woman to the Brahmanical sense (in the Manusmriti) that “the woman is the soil, the man is the seed; the production of all corporeal beings (takes place) through the union of soil with the seed.” It is the same sense of gender by which the male line is said to determine caste and ancestry and mark the destiny of the family. The choice of a certain kind of upper-caste north Indian physiognomy (facial appearance) in Bollywood’s male stars therefore goes along with the kind of subjects who ‘should’ relate to Bollywood’s narratives of the nation by inhabiting the roles — very much as the seed determines the narrative of the plant or tree. The woman, not being the subject, is simply like the soil nurturing and facilitating the male-driven narrative but never carrying it onwards. </p>.Women in cinema have always been seen from a male gaze: Kriti Sanon.<p>If the national narrative furthered by Bollywood is covertly upper-caste and north Indian, local narratives need to be carried forward by male stars whose physiognomies fit those of the dominant castes or political groupings of that region. It is for this reason that the male stars in Telugu cinema fit the dominant caste profile (like Kapu or Kamma). In Tamil cinema, by and large, the ‘Dravidian’ physiognomy is the key — since there was an anti-Brahmin movement that created this Dravidian community. We may note here that there is a parallel Tamil Brahmin cinema (through Kamal Haasan and Mani Ratnam) that uses Brahmin stars like Arvind Swamy who are compatible with Bollywood — as Rajinikanth’s films are not. By and large, Brahmin-like facial appearances are not suitable for south Indian cinema though Kerala needs deeper examination. Princely Mysore was culturally dominated by Brahmins and this had its effect on male stars in Kannada cinema, but the dominant caste groups like Vokkaligas gradually took control of the local narrative through stars like Ambareesh, Yash, Darshan and Jaggesh, whose appeal is different from that of Rajkumar and Vishnuvardhan.</p>.<p>Art critic John Berger noted that the man’s sense of power implied what he could do while the woman’s strength implied what could not be done to her. In popular Indian cinema, the woman’s presence is also different from that of the man in terms of its place in the narrative. Since the woman is only supportive and acts as consort, there are no casting imperatives. But there are women-centred films like ‘Andaz’ (1949) or those of Puttanna Kanagal (‘Gejje Pooje’, 1969), about patriarchal society. The woman is stronger but her placement is such that she is not the triumphant subject but the victim — and the story is about what society does to her. Where the man represents the trajectory of the community whether national or local, a strong woman character is at the receiving end of its trajectory. In ‘Andaz’, she is the victim of Indian modernity, while in ‘Gejje Pooje’, it is the local caste structure. She is hence usually from the community — Nargis or Kalpana, rather than non-local like Vyjayanthimala or Pooja Gandhi.</p>.<p><em>(The author is a well-known film critic)</em></p>
<p>Actor Rajinikanth will celebrate 50 years in cinema this year. His ‘Apoorva Raagangal’ directed by K Balachander was released in 1975. People have always wondered at the specific attractions that he brought to cinema, why he succeeded in Tamil but not in Hindi cinema or even in Kannada. Did his acting style not have any pertinence outside the Tamil space? But, I think, rather than look at the star himself, it would be interesting to see why specific stars are seen to fit only certain cinematic cultures even within India. That may answer more questions than only about Rajinikanth.</p>.<p>The protagonist of any popular film narrative is not any random individual but someone intimately connected to the public addressed by it — his trajectory mirrors or represents its narrative. A popular film from a nation that has just been defeated in war, for instance, may not accommodate a triumphant protagonist. Popular film narratives therefore need stars with personae made pertinent to the historical circumstances. Stock characters fit the national (or local) narrative as subjects and it has been established that Dilip Kumar’s existential hero of the 1950s, the angry young man of Amitabh (in the 1970s) and Shah Rukh Khan’s anti-hero of the 1990s (‘Baazigar’) were all products of their respective eras and created by the prevailing socio-political situations in the national space. </p>.Should an international film festival promote popular cinema?.<p>A factor about Indian cinema that has many wondering is how stars are chosen since their looks are seen to play a part. Why do south Indian male stars have such markedly different appearances from those who succeed in Bollywood and why is the appearance gap among female stars smaller? A south Indian or a Bengali male star will find it difficult to make his mark in Bollywood but the women have done famously there (Sharmila Tagore, Deepika Padukone, Hema Malini). </p>.<p>In order to understand these gaps, we need to first acknowledge the role played by the stars (male and female) in popular film narrative. In playing a lead role, the male star is made the subject of a narrative that implicates a community — pan-Indian or national in the case of Bollywood films or local in regional language cinema. The woman is less (if ever) the subject of a national narrative and one can trace the respective places of the man and woman to the Brahmanical sense (in the Manusmriti) that “the woman is the soil, the man is the seed; the production of all corporeal beings (takes place) through the union of soil with the seed.” It is the same sense of gender by which the male line is said to determine caste and ancestry and mark the destiny of the family. The choice of a certain kind of upper-caste north Indian physiognomy (facial appearance) in Bollywood’s male stars therefore goes along with the kind of subjects who ‘should’ relate to Bollywood’s narratives of the nation by inhabiting the roles — very much as the seed determines the narrative of the plant or tree. The woman, not being the subject, is simply like the soil nurturing and facilitating the male-driven narrative but never carrying it onwards. </p>.Women in cinema have always been seen from a male gaze: Kriti Sanon.<p>If the national narrative furthered by Bollywood is covertly upper-caste and north Indian, local narratives need to be carried forward by male stars whose physiognomies fit those of the dominant castes or political groupings of that region. It is for this reason that the male stars in Telugu cinema fit the dominant caste profile (like Kapu or Kamma). In Tamil cinema, by and large, the ‘Dravidian’ physiognomy is the key — since there was an anti-Brahmin movement that created this Dravidian community. We may note here that there is a parallel Tamil Brahmin cinema (through Kamal Haasan and Mani Ratnam) that uses Brahmin stars like Arvind Swamy who are compatible with Bollywood — as Rajinikanth’s films are not. By and large, Brahmin-like facial appearances are not suitable for south Indian cinema though Kerala needs deeper examination. Princely Mysore was culturally dominated by Brahmins and this had its effect on male stars in Kannada cinema, but the dominant caste groups like Vokkaligas gradually took control of the local narrative through stars like Ambareesh, Yash, Darshan and Jaggesh, whose appeal is different from that of Rajkumar and Vishnuvardhan.</p>.<p>Art critic John Berger noted that the man’s sense of power implied what he could do while the woman’s strength implied what could not be done to her. In popular Indian cinema, the woman’s presence is also different from that of the man in terms of its place in the narrative. Since the woman is only supportive and acts as consort, there are no casting imperatives. But there are women-centred films like ‘Andaz’ (1949) or those of Puttanna Kanagal (‘Gejje Pooje’, 1969), about patriarchal society. The woman is stronger but her placement is such that she is not the triumphant subject but the victim — and the story is about what society does to her. Where the man represents the trajectory of the community whether national or local, a strong woman character is at the receiving end of its trajectory. In ‘Andaz’, she is the victim of Indian modernity, while in ‘Gejje Pooje’, it is the local caste structure. She is hence usually from the community — Nargis or Kalpana, rather than non-local like Vyjayanthimala or Pooja Gandhi.</p>.<p><em>(The author is a well-known film critic)</em></p>