Hero Worship
For the most part fans cheer, and are deeply moved by, flickering shadows. They matter because they make stars.
Film historian Eileen Bowser points out that in the early nineteen teens, American production companies were wary of revealing the names of actors for fear of losing them to competitors. It was viewers who “harangued the theatre managers with questions about their favourites, who wrote to studios, who asked for photographs, who sent in proposals of marriage and less proper invitations.” Thus was born the fan, before the star system was instituted. Today, it is difficult to imagine what cinema and its stars would have been the hysterical fan. For one thing Rajnikant’s newsworthiness would be considerably diminished without footage of fans bathing his cut-outs in milk.
The four south Indian states and Pondicherry are home to a unique variant of fandom which is organized and hypervisible. Each state—and perhaps every region within the state—has its own variant of the fan club. Nonetheless, across the southern states, including Kerala, we see the signs of activities by fan clubs on the streets. These range from leaflets, wall posters and cloth or vinyl streamers to bronze statues and giant plywood cut-outs of screen idols. Known as rasigar manram (Tamil) and abhimana sangha/sangham (Kannada/Telugu), typically a fan club is formed by a group of 10-25 young men in their late teens to early thirties who are poor or lower- middle class. Fans of female stars are not impossible to find but it is usually the male star that is the centre of fan activity. If estimates by journalists are accurate, the membership of these organizations runs into several millions. Tamil superstar Rajnikant alone reportedly has a hundred thousand clubs with a total of million plus members.
In the Name of the Star
Fan activity is carried out in the name of the star—presumably to promote him—but not all of it is approved by him. It is a myth that fans are remote controlled by stars or their offices. The star is a facilitator, an excuse almost, for a range of activities that are at times utterly meaningless displays of cinephilia and at other times overtly political. By definition, a fan is creature of excess. Organized fandom’s distinguishing feature is its insistence on “going public” with its numerous excesses. Obsession with the cinema and its stars is acted out, quite literally, in the streets. A secret admirer or a moderate devotee is no fan at all in the abhimani universe. For decades now extreme actions by fans have been reported from different parts of south India. When the Tamil superstar M.G. Ramachandran (MGR) died in December 1987, 31 people reportedly committed suicide. In the early 1980s, fans of the Kannada star Rajkumar were accused of rioting during the “Gokak agitation” demanding special measures for the protection of Kannada. More recently, in April 2006, the star’s death from natural causes brought Bangalore to a complete standstill. Several people died in the rioting that accompanied the undeclared bandh. A few years later (December 2009), the death of Vishnuvardhan, Rajkumar’s younger contemporary, too resulted in an impromptu Bangalore bandh, albeit a less violent one. In Andhra Pradesh fights between fans of competing stars have been witnessed since the late 1970s, if not earlier. In the 1990s competing associations of “Megastar” Chiranjeevi fans fought with each other too.
Bangalore shuts down to pay respect to stars
[Image 1] April 2006: Rajmukar fans take to the [Image 2] December 2009: Makeshift memorials were streets as the city observes an undeclared bandh. erected for Vishnuvardhan within hours of his death.
Fandom is not just about fights and riots. Fans are, of course, movie buffs who spend the better part of their evenings in and around cinema halls: watching films, decorating them (or damaging them) or simply hanging around talking about the cinema and its stars. The relatively high density of cinema halls in south India is a necessary condition for the emergence of fans’ associations. However, fans also participate in a wide range of activities that are completely unrelated to film watching. These range from acts of charity (poor feeding, blood donation and disaster relief work, etc) to election campaigning. An anthropologist studying the fan phenomenon wrote that he was surprised to find that active members of fan clubs did not watch films regularly. Evidently, a fan club is not the poor man’s film society. Young men don’t join or form fan clubs only to watch films. To understand what the fan club is all about it is useful take a historical detour.
Emergence of the Fan Club
Film scholar Theodore Baskaran states, “The tradition of fan clubs (rasigar manram) in Tamil Nadu goes back to the silent era, the late 1920s. Hollywood stars like Eddie Polo and Elmo Lincoln, whose films were hugely popular in South India, had an organized fan following in TN [Tamil Nadu]”. Even in the 1940s and early 1950s there were reports of fan-like activity (riotous behaviour at cinema halls, mobbing of film stars, etc). However, present day fan clubs which come with governing bodies, official stationery and other trappings of registered societies, are traceable to 1953, when the first fan club dedicated to MGR was formed. This is likely to have been the progenitor of fan associations of the (south) Indian kind.
The year 1953 was something of a watershed for south Indian cinema and politics for other reasons as well. MGR inaugurated his long political career in this year by joining Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham (DMK). It was in 1953 that the Telugu speaking districts of Madras (earlier known as the Madras Presidency) were carved out into the Andhra state, the first linguistic state of the Indian union. Born in the same year, the linguistic state, star-politician and fan club remained linked to each other in complex ways ever since.
In the MGR instance, the link between fans and party politics—forged by the film star’s crossover to politics—is strong and direct. So much so that it attracted the attention of social scientists as early as the 1970s. Political scientist Robert Hardgrave Jr. notes that MGR’s manrams were the foundation on which Anna DMK (later renamed All India Anna DMK) was formed when the star was suspended from the DMK in 1972.
Developments in other parts of south India suggest that the film star who nurtures political ambitions is not a necessary condition for the growth of fan clubs. In other words, fans are not always political cadres in the making. Take the case of NTR whose fans campaigned actively in the 1983 assembly election which made him the first non-Congress chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. Although fans’ associations became a noticeable presence in the state as early as 1964 no major Telugu film star had expressed an interest in politics till 1980, when NTR made vague notices about serving the people. It was only in 1982 that NTR made public his intention to enter politics. Rajkumar, the biggest Kannada film star ever, did not join politics at all.
Language, Caste, Politics
While fans are not always or necessarily engaged in party politics, there is no denying that fandom of the organized, south Indian variety has links with socio-political mobilizations. Fan activity grew in direct proportion with the expansion of mass politics and in the southern states language was one of the axes of mass mobilization. Lisa Mitchell, in her study of Telugu language and politics, draws attention to the changing profile of the bhashabhimani (one who takes pride in language) in the 1950s, from the connoisseur of literary works to street agitator who may not even be literate. M. Madhava Prasad argues that from the 1950s the south Indian troika—MGR, NTR and Rajkumar, became representatives of entire linguistic communities. Fallout of this development is the dovetailing of the bhashabhimani and the abhimani or fan proper. In present day Karnataka we can see street memorials for film stars decorated in yellow and red (the colours of Karnataka flag) while declarations of commitment to Kannada are accompanied by images of film stars. On the busy roads of Bangalore city there is a good chance of encountering the bhashabhimani “Auto Raja”. Calling himself a “fan of Kannada people” (Kannadigara abhimani), Raja drives an autorickshaw decorated with the yellow and red (Karnataka) colours and images of film stars and literary figures.
[Image 3 and 4] Auto Raja with newspaper reports of his charitable activities and his chariot of language
Caste too is an important factor in fans’ associations. At times we notice a strong correlation between the caste of the star and his fans but since there are far fewer stars than castes it is impossible for stars to survive with single caste constituencies. Complex caste alliances and antagonisms are often manifested in fans’ associations. Indeed, these organizations have a history of being sites for caste-based assertions and mobilizations. This is strikingly evident in the career of Chiranjeevi. The star himself is Kapu by caste and stood out in a film industry dominated by Kamma stars. His fans’ associations in the 1990s became one of the sites for the formation of a broad anti-Kamma, anti-Telugu Desam Party alliance in parts of Andhra Pradesh including Vijayawada city. To this day fan publicity of films featuring Chiranjeevi’s extended family, which includes his son Ram Charan Tej, brother Pawan Kalyan and nephew Allu Arjun, is often accompanied by images of Vijayawada’s popular Kapu Congress (I) leader Vangaveeti Mohan “Ranga” who died in 1988.
[Image 5] Fan publicity for Pawan Kalyan’s Teenmaar (Jayant C Paranjee, 2011) in Vijayawada. Notice the images of Chiranjeevi (top left), “Ranga” (centre) and Vangaveeti Radhakrishna, Ranga’s son (right)
Casual observers come away with the impression that the fandom is all about irrational and pre- modern loyalties. This is partly because of the excessive nature of fan activity but also the language of devotion deployed by fans themselves. Fans refer to their stars as elder brother (anna), prince, king and boss and speak of the families of their idols as dynasties. The unrestrained use of religious and feudal terms to describe the fan-star relationship is both amusing and somewhat disturbing. Notwithstanding the hyperbole, there is overwhelming evidence of fans’ relative autonomy. Instances of fans violating the star’s injunctions and appeals are plentiful. Most major stars, Chiranjeevi and Rajnikant included, faced overt or subtle forms of fan boycott/rejection of their films. There are stories of film directors going into hiding for fear of fan violence after the release of films that did not go down well. The climax of the Telugu film Bobby (Sobhan, 2002) featuring the Telugu actor “Prince” Mahesh Babu had to be changed because of protests by his fans. In the year 2000 Mohanlal fans’ association prevented the star from accepting the position of director in Kairali TV. From media reports it appears that the association had given the star a bit of career counselling, telling him that acceptance of the offer would damage his career!
Not even the star’s political preferences are replicated by fans. Well over a decade before Chiranjeevi announced his decision to enter politics his fans in coastal Andhra were supporting Congress (I), largely because of the criss-crossing of caste and politics in the region. This was in spite of warnings from the leadership of the official Chiranjeevi fan club and the star himself that they should remain politically neutral. In the 2004 general election, when Chiranjeevi decided to endorse the film producer Ch. Aswini Dutt, contesting on a Telugu Desam Party ticket from Vijayawada, his fans from the constituency protested so loudly that the star had to retract his endorsement.
Active and Reactive Spectatorship
The fan is a reactive viewer: like all viewers he consumes cinema but the fan response to films and stars is excessive. The whistling and cheering is but one part of the story. If there is one single feature that characterizes all fan activity, organized and unorganized, it is the fans’ acute sense of entitlement.
The cinema in India was relatively open to the poor and lower caste customers and entry level thresholds—economic and cultural—were low. “Gandhi class” tickets were cheap and illiteracy was no bar. This history of the cinema—as a space which was accessible to a wide cross-section of viewers—made it an important public institution by the 1940s. Film scholar Ashish Rajadhyaksha proposes that the cinema hall in India has been a space where “ticket-buying spectator automatically assumed certain rights that were symbolically pretty crucial to the emerging State.”
In fan activity we notice highly developed notions entitlement that encompass not only what the fan can do in the cinema hall (whistle, dance, throw coins at the screen, etc.) but also what the star ought to be doing in the film and, at times, in life too. As a result, some of the biggest south Indian stars have reified screen images and a limited repertoire of roles. Hell will break lose if a superstar were to die on screen. Kamal Haasan, whose model Aamir Khan emulates faithfully in Bombay, is the exception who proves the rule. The expectation of Kamal being hatke (different) all the time is such that he has played the role of an old woman, George W. Bush and another eight characters in the same film.
The origin and growth of fans’ associations are coeveal with a crucial development in both cinema and politics: the turn to populism. The kind of cinema that spawns fans’ association is, to being with, populist at the story level. Our hero fights an assortment of villains who are easily identified as the enemies of the people, ranging from landlords to industrialists to corrupt police officials and politicians. Further, the films unfold along anticipated lines, giving viewer the impression that the fiction exists for his/her sake. When they make their grand entries into the fiction, it is not unusual for stars to wink, salute and directly address camera, as if to reassure audience that they will get their money’s worth.
Fan-Devotee
In the 1990s, Chiranjeevi gave up on trying to balance his formula films with middle-brow “class films.” Commercial failure of these experiments apart, the reaction of his fans to them was far from positive. The star himself told an interviewer that screenings of his award-winning film Aapadbandhavudu (K. Vishwanath, 1992) were stopped by fans who were unhappy with his role in the film. Looking back on his class film experience he said half jokingly, “Even the man who pays three or four rupees [to watch a film] thinks he owns the star and has a right over him.”
What then do we make of the proclamations of the fan’s loyalty to his star? Film scholar Richard Dyer argues in his study of Hollywood stars that there is complex interplay between “star-as- image” and “star-as-real-person”. Screen images are authenticated by drawing on (often fabricated) biographical. In stardom’s “hall of mirrors” (Dyer’s phrase) it is virtually impossible to distinguish object and reflection/illusion. Closer home, M.S.S. Pandian’s classic study of MGR titled The Image Trap (1992) traces the continuities between the on and off screen images of the star-politician. When we juxtapose the work and metaphors of Pandian and Dyer what we get is a viewer who is trapped in the hall of mirrors. How then do we explain the difficulties stars routinely have with their fans? Looking at the image trap from the perspective offered by fan activities, it is possible to suggest that the fan is wilful in his insistence that the fiction is true. The game does not end with the creation of the image. The star has to live up to it. At issue here is not “belief” in any simple sense of the term. Every fan knows that Rajnikant is a not youth with cool hair but a bald, old man and the film itself is only a work of fiction. But it is necessary for all stake-holders to remain faithful to the image, to maintain appearances. Because the appearance is what has drawn us to the star.
The fan is so invested in the image that he feels entitled to be its guardian, ensuring that the star himself does not digress from it. So, there can be no screen death or experimental role, no smoking or drinking in public, no supporting candidates or political parties without prior approval, and so on. Devotion is donated conditionally, if and when the star lives up to the fan’s expectations. As K. Balagopal, human rights activist and commentator on Andhra Pradesh affairs jokingly put it in an essay on NTR, populism often lands gods in trouble.
After the Fan Club
The street-corner fan club, which rarely impacted box office collection even in the past, plays an increasingly marginal role in the new economies of film which revolve around non-box office related revenues. There is precious little star-related branded merchandise in south India. In the good old days fans enhanced the star’s prestige and stature. For his part the star anchored projects and became the reason why investments were made in them. Today’s megastars do so few films that they neither keep the industry’s wheels moving nor feed their fans’ cinephilia. The cinema itself is morphing into an entity we do not yet fully understand and film viewers are migrating from stand- alone theatres to multiplexes and also television, computer and cell phone screens. Chances are that new interfaces will become pretexts for the onward journey of the reactive consumer even as fans’ associations stagnate or decline.
[S.V. Srinivas is a senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society and ICCR Visiting Professor of Indian Society and Culture at Georgetown University for 2012-13. He is the author of Megastar: Chiranjeevi and Telugu Cinema after N.T. Rama Rao (2009). His book on the south Indian stardom, Politics as Performance, is forthcoming from Permanent Black.]