(below) Rajnikant in his debut role in K Balachandar's 1975 Apoorva Raganal
Rajnikant in his first film role in K Balachandar's Apoorva Raganal
Anil CS Rao
ENG665 Film Theory
Dr Stephen Tropiano
August 30 2013
Analysis of Star Rajnikant - South Indian Film Actor
Hitherto unaddressed or thought irrelevant by most Indian cineastes who tend to focus on mise- en- scene as the criterion of "good films", stars play an important role in both their economic and ideological function within the indigenous culture of the Indian Subcontinent - which sustains one of the world's largest film industries. Probably the first serious writing by an Indian on film, Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray - in his 1976 essay Our Films Their Films - recognized early on the significance of the relationship between the stars and the implicit economic and societal rubric of Indian popular culture:
"Hollywood in its heyday used to buy properties and write stories to suit the talents of big money-making stars. One could say with a good deal of truth that the stars came before the stories. This has been a common phenomenon in the performing arts for centuries. Mozart wrote important works for certain virtuosos. Ballets have been composed around gifted danseuses. In recent times, Benjamin Britten has been inspired to write a cello concerto for Rostropovich. So, too, in Hollywood and films. Stories for Garbo, Dietrich, Bogart, Brando, Marilyn Monroe. And was not Chaplin always looking for something for the Tramp to do? And in more recent times— what about Antonioni and Monica Vitti, Godard and Anna Karina, Fellini and Giulietta Massina? I doubt if Wild Strawberries would have been made if Bergman had not felt like paying homage to Victor Sjöström." Ray, Satyajit (Kindle Locations 780-787). Ray was one of the privileged India based cineastes - in those days (1950s) who though his Film Society - was able to access (and be influenced by) World Cinema. In India, the film star determines every commercial film’s success or failure is dependent on the “star factor”: plotlines, themes and even production values have only recently improved due perhaps to technical advancement of filmmaking in India – and have only recently become important in films targeted to a much more savvy audience which coincides with the liberalization and opening of the Indian economy to The West in the 1990s.
This paper is an attempt to examine the economic and ideological function within context of Indian culture, but focusing not on a "Bollywood" (North Indian) actor commonly associated with "Indian" actors (such as “The Big B” - Amitabh Bachaan ) but instead on a film star local to the Tamil speaking region of India based in Chennai in "The South" known popularly as Rajnikant. The choice was warranted by the availability of scholarly oriented writing on one particular Indian star and given the ubiquitous presence of Rajnikant in the Indian (Tamil and Hindi) film industry for over three decades. This analysis is centered on the framework developed by Richard Dyer, in his 1979 book STARS - which breaks down the persona of a movie star into five elements: " ...1) physicality, which is comprised of their body, voice, gestures, and movements; 2) talent as a performer; 3) the roles he/she has played in films; 4) the star’s public image, which is created by criticism of his/her roles and publicity (both positive and negative) that may or may not be generated by him/her; and 5) The real person.
Physicality:
"Essentially, his face reflects sheer anger, a quality which does not attract too many viewers. Still, for thousands of young south Indian boys and girls here was the body of a true ‘male’ who was going to recover for them the promised dream. But when you look close at this ‘male’ you will notice that his face has a kind of mask-like quality. It is unusually large, seated on narrow shoulders and an even slimmer body. His eyes are small but his hair is almost like a mane, just long enough to be disturbed and short enough to attract you." HARIHARAN, K (Kindle Locations 219-222). . In common Indian parlance/opinion, Rajnikant was no “pretty boy” like many of his North Indian counterpoints and was even considered physically unattractive by many in the general consensus. Nonetheless, it would seem his “physicality” (or lack of it) was the very element that made him uniquely attractive to his South Indian audience – for in a Western sense, South Indian actors are generally considered less physically attractive then their North counterparts.
Talent:
Watching him on the screen was like seeing a caricature bringing itself to life with raw primal power and nothing to help him by way of a cinematic intervention. It was the sheer melodrama of his body language that sustained a lot of his films. HARIHARAN (Kindle Locations 231-233). One must clarify Dyer’s use of the word “talent” in the context of Indian commercial cinema. Rajnikant’s talent lies in his ability to move the audience such that a “hit” occurs at the box office – often based more on his on screen “charisma” over serious acting ability in the Western sense of the word. Rajnikant’s current “mega star” status was never lauded for purely his ability to act – but rather other components in Dyer’s framework. Rajnikant represents the “norm” in Indian commercial cinema which would be judged as “bad/poor” with respect to what would constitute a “good” portrayal in a European or American context. The star Rajnikant was in fact a early graduate of the Madras State government’s Film Institute which gave equal importance to skills such as dancing and comedy abilities in addition to any serious acting technique. This is not to say that Indian popular cinema does not have films that give importance to acting abilities – but much less so than in a Western film with serious method acting. Rajnikant’s “talent” would include such things as throwing lighted cigarettes into his mouth and generally over emphatic portrayal of emotions. Like his North Indian counterpart Amitabh Bachaan, Rajnikant’s acting “talent” (if any) evolved after many decades beginning with his supporting role (debut) in the 1975 “semi serious” film Apoorva Raganal. Perhaps this term “talent” with respect to Indian commercial cinema has less to do with realistic, aesthetically “good” performances but other factors that Dyer mentions – i.e. “physicality”.
Roles:
Films like “Apoorva Ragangal” which introduced him in 1975 till 20 films later through big successes like ’16 Vaithinile’ and ‘Gayatri’ in 1978 he played the angry scoundrel. The wretched characters that he portrayed one after another through the depressing days of Mrs. Gandhi’s emergency must have doused the frustrations of millions of Tamils who suddenly found themselves orphaned as their Tamil leaders compromised the heart & soul of their people to escape sure ignominy. HARIHARAN, (Kindle Locations 226-229). Early in his career, another point that added to his seemingly enigmatic popularity was his image as an “anti hero” expressing the political and social realities of Tamils in the aftermath of North Indian political dominance and social prejudice against South Indians in general.
Public Image:
Being politically savvy is almost a prerequisite for stardom in India. Rajnikant betrayed the norm by not participating in local and national politics. It is this very rejection of a precedent set by other stars-turned-politicos that helped popularize his public image as someone to represent a new type of Tamil hero. Congruent with Dyer’s framework, Rajnikant went through a series of “stages” in his public image consistent with the political and social reality of Tamils in general. But his “irreducible core image” remained consistent in that he balanced both his private and public image in a premeditated manner i.e. when something was going in one direction with respect to society at large, Rajnikant would follow a path which in fact glorified an alternative – thereby an enigmatically attractive position to a politically disgruntled Tamil.
Reality:
In reality, Rajnikant is now said to eschew his former alcohol addiction and general image of an angry "anti-hero" to retreat for most of his time in a spiritual location in the Himalayas. The reality of his private life was never in conflict with his image as the “anti hero” mega star until recent times with the advancement of blatantly commercial portrayals which catered to the business interest of the Indian film distribution system. Ironically, in Rajnikant’s present (last) “mask” he rejects the very industry that sustained him thus far and the underlying atheism of past “masks” to embrace a “spiritual” path in his personal life and acting roles as a result of his
disgust and rejection of the very principles that made him notable in the first stages of his career and the very industry that sustained him in the past decades. By this time, his status as “mega star” was a given and he felt disgusted with the lack of the values in Tamil film that he once championed.
"Dyer argues that movie stars develop a certain performance style over a series of films. “Part of the business of studying stars is to establish what these recurrent features of performance are what they signify in terms of the star’s image” (481). Dyer also challenges the idea that mise-en-scene (direction) and montage (editing) are what make a performance" (Tropiano, Class Notes: ENG 665). Hariharan develops the concept of Rajinikant as a "superstar" who becomes so by travelling through several stages or on screen personas which he refers to as "masks". Harharan further adds an emotional element to each mask as per the indigenous Indian "rasa" aesthetic perspective:
"Like some reader response critics today, ancient Indian aestheticians saw the emotional response of an audience as crucial to art. For this reason, the centerpiece of most classical Indian aesthetic theories is the notion of rasa, aesthetic emotion (for the classic treatment of rasa, see Chapter Six of Bharatamuni). Aestheticians developed this theory in relation to a range of arts, prominently including drama, dance, and music. For millennia, the notion of rasa has retained its importance in dance and music particularly. As writers such as Valicha (27) and Thoraval (54-58) have pointed out, these performance traditions have contributed powerfully to the formation of Indian film." Patrick Colm Hogan. (Kindle Locations 1497-1500). Hence the explanation for the songs and dance that permeate the mainstream commercial cinema in India – however serious the plotline. Melodrama, anger, and other cinematic "rasas" are moved through the timeline through the star in question. There would be nothing worse that a film cast with non-stars that still retains the heavy emphasis on emotion (the Russian filmmaker Pudovkin remarked about the false emotion or "sentimentality" of 50s/60s Marathi director V Shantaram's DR KOTNIS KE AMAR KAHANI (Barnouw, Krishnaswamy). Hariharan divides Rajnikant's career and persona into "masks" related to 1) political (boundaries) 2) cultural distinction 3) linguistic identity 4) the mask of the performer 5) that of the "anti-hero" 6) the emotional mask 7) spiritual and finally 8) one celebrating its (Tamil cinema) own destruction.
With respect to political boundaries, what Hariharan seems to be referring to is the Dravidian (Tamil based) impetus throughout the formation of post-colonial India for an Independent State and "cultural distinction" and "linguistic identity" of Tamil as the basis of Dravidian culture and language (as opposed to the Indo-Aryan north of the Vindhya Mountain range which divides South India from North India). A analogy for The West would be Quebec province in Canada and its associated impetus for promotion of French language and culture and realignment politically based on linguistic boundaries. In Rajnikant's anti-hero mask: which came in 1978 with the release of ‘Bhairavi’ in which he is the accomplice to an evil boss who rapes a young girl named Bhairavi and then switches perspective halfway through the film to attempt to resolve the situation by getting Bhairavi married to the landlord boss. HARIHARAN (Kindle Location 234).
Dyer goes on to say: "Stars articulate what it is to be a human being in contemporary society; that is, they express the particular notion we hold of the person, of the ‘individual’. They do so complexly, variously – they are not straightforward affirmations of individualism. On the contrary, they articulate both the promise and the difficulty that the notion of individuality presents for all of us who live by it. ‘The individual ’ is a way of thinking and feeling about the discrete human person, including oneself, as a separate and coherent entity. The individual is thought of as separate in the sense that she or he has an existence apart from anything else – the individual is not just the sum of his or her social roles or actions. He or she may only be perceived through these things, may even be thought to be formed by them, yet there is, in this concept of the person, an irreducible core of being, the entity that is perceived within the roles and actions, the entity upon which social forces act. This irreducible core is coherent in that it is supposed to consist of certain peculiar, unique qualities that remain constant and give sense to the person's actions and reactions. However much the person's circumstances and behavior may change, ‘inside’ they are still the same individual; even if ‘inside’ she or he has changed, it is through an evolution that has not altered the fundamental reality of that irreducible core that makes her or him a unique individual. At its most optimistic, the social world is seen in this conception to emanate from the individual, and each person is seen to ‘make’ his or her own life. However, this is not necessary to the concept. What is central is the idea of the separable, coherent quality, located ‘inside’ in consciousness and variously termed ‘the self’, ‘the soul’, ‘the subject’ and so on. This is counterpoised to ‘society’, something seen as logically distinct from the individuals who compose it, and very often as inimical to them. If in ideas of ‘triumphant individualism’ individuals are seen to determine society, in ideas of ‘alienation’ individuals are seen as cut adrift from and dominated, battered by the anonymity of society. Both views retain the notion of the individual as separate, irreducible, unique." (Dyer, Kindle Locations 289-306).
CONCLUSION
In contrasting Harharan’s revelation of Rajnikant’s “masks” with the framework provided by Dyer – one can sense the intricate cob web that comprises the definition of a star in either an Indian or Western context. The very term “mask” implies that the underlying person might be considered a polyglot molded by various societal, political and personal forces that lends to a sense of evolution of Rajnikant – the star - from point A to point B. What makes Rajnikant unique is the Rajnikant’s unique spin on the variables that seem against the grain when compared to any other Indian star. Dyer seems to point out the notion that irrespective of Rajnikant’s movement through these stages and “masks” – the star’s irreducible core remains constant in whatever context his star status may exude. True, the major point is that Rajnikant retains his core stubbornly despite commercial success or failure of any one of his films. Unlike, lets say a Western star such as Jack Nicholson – Rajnikant is undisputedly original with respect to the idiosyncrasies of his public and private personas in that he portrays a uniqueness that only would be available to a Tamil actor, given the general overall uniqueness of Tamil society even in India as a whole. The key factors that make for this uniqueness:
(1) The linguistic division in India between Tamil and hundreds of other languages, most of which (like Hindi) is rooted in Sanskrit as opposed to Tamil which exists independent of that root.
(2) Rajnikant’s physicality, as described previously – to be “non standard” as far as his face, body and shrill Tamilian voice.
(3) Rajnikant’s embracement of an “underdog” nature in both his on and off screen personas
i.e. going “against the grain” of what would be considered the politically “popular” point of view of the other Tamil stars most notably MG Ramachandran who follows the trajectory of any other Indian film star in that there is a one to one relationship between MGR’s film and private life and that of the popular Tamil consensus (the atheistic Dravidian political view which MGR and others before Rajnikant share). All the adjectives that would describe a Rajnikant : “spiritual”, “anti hero” etc. defy the very notion of Rajnikant’s success as a Tamil film star in comparison with his predecessors.
All of this validates Dyer’s thesis that though Rajnikant evolves from a non standard trajectory in comparison to MG Ramachandran and other (older) stars before him - he remains uniquely and indisputably Rajnikant – an irreducible core that remains independent of the “masks” worn at various stages.
Works Cited:
Bajaj, J.K. (2013-07-08). On & Behind The Indian Cinema Diamond Pocket Books (P) Ltd.. Kindle Edition.
Barnouw, Eric, Krishnaswamy, S, Indian Film, Oxford University Press, USA; 2 edition (May 29, 1980) Print
Bhaichand Patel (2012-01-24). Bollywood's Top 20: Superstars of Indian Cinema. Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.
FILM THEORY & CRITICISM (7th Edition) Author: Braudy & Cohen
ISBN: 0-19-536562-7
Publisher: Oxford
Dyer, Richard (2013-05-13). Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society . Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
HARIHARAN, K (2011-09-05). RAJNIKANT – THE TAMIL TITAN: Unveiling the Anti-Heroic Mask. IDEAINDIA.COM. Kindle Edition.
McDonald, Paul (2012-11-20). Hollywood Stardom. Wiley. Kindle Edition.
Ray, Satyajit (2012-05-31). Our Films Their Films (Kindle Location 527). Orient Blackswan Private Limited. Kindle Edition.
Patrick Colm Hogan. Understanding Indian Movies: Culture, Cognition, and Cinematic Imagination (Cognitive Approaches to Literature and Culture Series). Kindle Edition.