Megastar: Chiranjeevi and Telugu Cinema After NT Ramo

1 Whistling Fans and Conditional Loyalty hat can cinema tell us about the politics of our time? There can of Wcourse be little doubt that studies of the cinema, from Siegfried Kracauer's magnum opus on German cinema (2004) to M.S.S. Pandian's (1992) study of MGR, have attempted to answer precisely this question. The obscene intimacy between film and politics in southern India provides an opportunity for students of cinema to ask the question in a manner that those in the business of studying politics would have to take seriously. This chapter argues that this intimacy has much to do with the fan-star relationship. Chiranjeevi's career foregrounds the manner in which this relationship becomes one of the important distinguishing features of Telugu cinema, as also a key constituent of the blockage that it encounters. Earlier accounts of random by social scientists (Hardgrave Jr. 1979, Hardgrave Jr. and Niedhart 1975, and Dickey 1993: 148-72) do not ponder long enough upon this basic question of how it is a response to the cinema. As a consequence, their work gives the impression that the fan is a product of everything (that is, religion, caste, language, political movements) but the cinema. I will argue instead that the engagement with cinema's materiality—or what is specific to die cinema: filmic texts, stars and everything else that constitutes thjs industrial-aesthetic form—is crucial for comprehending random. STUDYING FANS Fans' associations (FAs) are limited to south Indian states.1 Historically speaking, however, some of the earliest academic studies of Indian 4 Megastar Whistling Fans and Conditional Loyalty 5 popular cinema were provoked, at least in part, by the south Indian occasion to discuss (mis) readings of audiences at some length in the star-politician and his fans (for example, Hardgrave Jr. 1973). What later chapters and show that the 'many sorts of particular knowledge', new questions might this uniquely south Indian phenomenon throw up which Bordwell acknowledges are brought to bear upon comprehending for students of other cinemas but also disciplines that have little interest texts (or 'hollow' forms as he calls films) are not merely supplementary, in the cinema? but central to the empirical viewer's act of reading. Arguably, popular cinema in this region, Tamil Nadu in particular, The viewer-spectator distinction appears in the work of Miriam drew the attention of social scientists because of its excesses. It was Hansen as the gap between the 'social audience' and the spectator impacting politics in rather more direct ways than the world was familiar (1991: 2). Hansen's work allows us to see that the viewer is a member of with and fans' associations were presumably a part of this strange mix of the social audience, one who is physically present before the screen and cinema and politics. This history of politics as well as scholarly responses in the presence of others like/unlike her. The spectator is a construct of to it, which by the mid 1990s included the work of K. Sivathamby the film, an abstraction. The introduction of the social audience into (1981), S. Theodore Baskaran (1981 and 1996), Chidananda Das her discussion is necessitated by Hansen's perception that the social Gupta (1991), Pandian (1992), and Sara Dickey (1993), are necessary audience's engagement with the cinema has no bearing on discussions starting points for my work. While this history of scholarship makes of film spectatorship in film theory. it relatively easy for me to make my case for the study of random, I Paul Willemen (1994) draws attention to the gap between two other would also like to draw on the concept of the spectator to carry out entities which correspond with the viewer and spectator respectively: my investigation. In Film Studies it is usually the spectator who is the real and inscribed readers. Willemen cautions against ignoring the object of theorization. There had been some discussion in the early 'unbridgeable gap between "real" readers and authors and inscribed 1990s on the gap between the viewer/audiences and the spectator in ones, constructed or marked in by the text' (1994: 63). The spectator Film Studies. This was occasioned by the work of some scholars who of a film is not a 'real' viewer. Because, to use Willemen's distinction, began to study film audiences, at a time when 'Audience/Reception '[r]eal readers are subjects in history, living in given social formations, Studies' was a growth industry spawned by academic interest in television rather than subjects of a single text. The two types of subject are not and other popular cultural forms. commensurate...' (p. 63). I will refer to this discussion briefly to give a sense of the difficulties As if in deference to Willemen, Film Studies and studies of audiences, Film Studies has had in working around the problems posed by the whether the latter are categorized as Anthropology or 'Reception viewer-spectator gap. David Bordwell's notion of the spectator is a Studies', do not often try to deal widi both simultaneously. However, useful starting point for the elaboration of the issue. Bordwell argues: Willemen's statement is prompted by the fact that the two types of [T]hc 'spectator' is not a particular person, not even me I adopt the term subjects are often collapsed, in spite of the disciplinary division of labour. 'viewer' or 'spectator' to name a hypothetical entity executing the operations As film scholar Judith Mayne would have it, confusing the spectator relevant to constructing a story out of the film's representation. My spectator, for a person, a viewer, is 'symptomatic of unresolved and insufficiendy then, acts according to the protocols of story comprehension (1985: 30). theorized complications' (1993: 33). ^ Bordwell, however, goes on to demonstrate the manner in which the I will attempt to extend the conceptualization of spectatorship by bringing to bear upon it 'real' viewers from historically specific contexts discipline dismisses the viewer when he adds, 'Insofar as an empirical and ask how this juxtaposition might facilitate a better understanding viewer makes sense of the story his or her activities coincide widi the of cinema. The work of scholars like Miriam Hansen (1991), Judith process [of comprehension adopted by the spectator].' Bordwell is in Mayne (1993), and Jackie Stacey (1994) notwithstanding, audiences efFect suggesting that there is no distinction between the members of and spectators continue to belong to different disciplines. the audience and the spectator. In the context that I examine, the engagement with audiences can- By now there is far too much evidence to ignore the fact that not but confront the obvious and apparently direct linkages between actual readings of filmic texts need not correspond or coincide with mass cultural forms and electoral mobilization. As such, these linkages the process of comprehension laid down by a film. I will have the 6 Megastar Whistling Fans and Conditional Loyalty have begun to draw the attention of scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds across Asia in recent times (Chua 2007). How a complex empirical phenomenon like fandom can become an object of the study of cinema, even as its political salience is highlighted, is a challenge that I hope to address in the course of this chapter. I will begin my examination of fandom by outlining its history and go on to discuss its salient features. In the course of this chapter, my key concern is to identify a set of questions thrown up by fan activity and the response of the star to them that can be taken to the study of films themselves in the later chapters. My observations on fan activity are based on interactions with and unstructured interviews with fans of Chiranjeevi and other Telugu stars in Vijayawada, Hyderabad, Ongole, Tirupathi, and Madanapalle. Wherever possible, I have drawn attention to the similarities between fans' associations of different stars and differences between those of the same star. My interviews and interactions took place in two intermittent spells. The first was between 1994 and 1997 and the second between 2001 and 2002. On two occasions in 1996 and 1997, I had the opportunity to talk to Chiranjeevi fans from different parts of Andhra Pradesh when they had gathered to attend FIG. 1: Uniquely South Indian: King Khan Fans Club, Vijayawada advertises functions in Hyderabad and Ongole respectively. The first spell of its presence on its banner in the Urvasi theatre complex during the exhibition 'field work' was carried out at a time when momentous organizational of Shah Rukh Khan's film Don (Farhan Akhtar 2006). There are a handful of associations dedicated to Hindi film stars in different parts of Andhra. changes were occurring in the Chiranjeevi fans' associations. In this chapter and the rest of the book, I provide rough translations Baskaran (2005) states, "The tradition of fan clubs (rasigar manram) of oral statements, film dialogues, and print sources from Telugu in Tamil Nadu goes back to the silent era, the late 1920s. Hollywood while quoting them. I indicate the use of English phrases/words in stars like Eddie Polo and Elmo Lincoln, whose films were hugely the original statement/text and also provide a transliteration of the popular in South India, had an organized fan following in TN [Tamil Telugu phrase when concepts, film industry terms, or definitions are Nadu]'. However, from Baskaran's essay, it is not clear if the rasigar being discussed. manrams were like the present day fans' associarion at all—either in composition, organizational structure, or in terms of their activities. In HISTORICAL EMERGENCE OF THE FAN all likelihood, the fan of the kind that is found in fans' associations of The Telugu word for fan is abhimani (admirer) and fans' associations the present is of a much more recent origin in Andhra Pradesh.

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