CONTENTS
OF THIS SECTION |
|
உன்னைப்போல் ஒருவன் - விமர்சனம்
- கு.கண்ணன், பெரியார் திராவிடர்கழகம்,
19 September 2009 |
ஆணிவேர் - Aanivaer |
Meendum - a Film
from Norway Tamils |
Negotiating
identities in the Diasporic Space: Transnational Tamil Cinema and
Malaysian Indians - Gopalan Ravindran, 2006 - "Tamil
films do not erode our culture. They in fact promote our culture." |
Sivaji Ganesan - Nadigar
Thilakam |
Parasakthi, 1952 |
Kappal Otiya Thamizhan, 1961 |
Veerapandiya Kattabomman
1959
|
M.G.Ramachandran - MGR
Moondreluthil
En Moochirukkum |
Kalaivanar N.S.Krishnan
Theena Muna Kana
Remembering
Theena Muna Kana,N.S.Krishnan and the Camouflaged Narrative Devices
of Tamil Political Cinema - Gopalan Ravindran "Nagercoil
Sudalaimuthu Krishnan, popularly known as NSK/Kalaivanar, who died
on this day in 1957, remains unrivalled for his stellar ideological
contributions to Tamil cinema in general and Tamil political cinema
in particular through his multifaceted roles as comedian, singer,
director and producer." |
|
ANNA 100 A Video Documentary With Academic and Research Vision... |
Ayan! What�s in your Name?:The Zizekian Fetish and the Post-Colonial
Problematic of Realism and Language Use in Tamil Cinema... |
Subramanyapuram:The Arrival of Extreme Cinema in Tamil... |
Books |
*
Cinema and the Urban Poor in South India - Sara Dickey
|
*
Tamil Cinema: The Cultural Politics of India's other Film Industry
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* Celluloid Deities: The Visual Culture of Cinema and Politics in South IndiaPreminda Jacob
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*
Paths to Power and Patterns of Influence: The Dravidian Parties in South Indian Politics ,
Ingrid Widlund |
*
When stars displace the gods: The folk culture of cinema in Tamil Nadu (Occasional paper series - Center for Asian Studies. The University of Texas ; no. 3)
House
full. Silent film genre, exhibition and audiences in south India -
Stephen Hughes Indian Economic & Social History Review Volume 43 -
Number 1 - March 2006 - pp. 31-62 "This article explores
how genre matters for the history of cinema audiences in south
India. I focus on the development of silent film genre categories in
south India during the 1920s as they were used according to the
local conditions to help imagine, define and cultivate cinema
audiences. I argue that from the late- 1910s, film genre
classifications helped exhibitors and film critics to conceive of,
calculate and socially differentiate the steadily growing audiences
for cinema. Using material from archival sources and
newspapers-advertisements, reviews and film criticism-this article
documents how the emergence of film genre categories and their
subsequent refinement through the 1920s addressed and articulated a
stereotyped sociology of local film audiences in Madras. At the
beginning of the 1920s there were three main classifications of
films recognised in the local cinema market of Madras-serials, short
dramas and Indian films. For almost a decade these three categories
broadly covered the range of films available in Madras. Local
exhibitors and film critics saw each type of film as part of a
changing system of complementary and contrasting entertainment
alternatives corresponding to definitive kinds of local audiences.
As there are few sources and little scholarship which can help deal
with early film audiences, the history of film genres offers unique
insight into how those in Madras imagined the always indeterminant
social reality of film audiences. |
Music in the age of mechanical
reproduction: Drama, gramophone and the beginnings of Tamil cinema -
Stephen P. Hughes "To contemporaries, the rise of
Tamil cinema and the ubiquity of films songs both offered a democratic
promise to make music accessible for everyone and threatened to upset the
social and cultural hierarchies of professional drama and classical Karnatic
music. These sources also mark the shift from the music boom of the 1920s
and early 1930s as it transformed into a cinema-based mass culture of music
by the 1940s. This collaboration around film songs produced a new form and
institutionalization of popular music at the center of an emergent cultural
industry of Tamil cinema, which, in many ways, is still with us and still
dominates
to this day..." |
The Making of Naam Iruvar |
The Making of Meera |
Tamil movies abroad: Singapore South Indian youths
and their response
to Tamil cinema - Sathiavathi Chinniah
- "Looking at academic literature on
Indian cinema indicates an overt emphasis on Hindi cinema. The
ubiquitous nature of Tamil cinema within and outside India,
despite its regional status, and the existence of unexplored
material on Tamil cinema written in the Tamil language are two
main factors that have prompted me to carry out research on
Tamil cinema. Many areas within Tamil cinema lend themselves for
scholarly attention. The representation of women in films
interests me in particular. I decided to juxtapose textual and
audience analysis in studying this aspect of Tamil cinema so as
to draw from theoretical and empirical research. Given the
vastness of the topic, I narrowed my focus to study female
representations in the cinema of K Balachander, a filmmaker who
mostly attempts to construct atypical female subjects. Instead
of confining myself to audiences in rural and urban Tamil Nadu,
I included Singapore audience as a case study of the Diaspora so
as to open new areas for a comparative analysis of Tamil film
readings. The two central aims of my thesis then are first to
explore female representations in K Balachander�s cinema and
second to analyze similarities and differences in audience
interpretations of his female film portrayals." |
Tamil Cinema at Wikipedia |
Cinema Today |
Tamil Cinema |
TamilMovies.com
|
Ayngaran International
- Tamil Cinemal |
Cinema-Express
|
|
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TAMIL culture:
the Heart of
Tamil National Consciousness
Tamil Cinema - தமிழ்த் திரைப் படம்
"Tamil cinema articulates,
mobilises and dismantles the hegemonic conception of the
postcolonial Indian nation as fostered by the apparatus of the
nation-state through an appeal to a sense of Tamil cultural
nationalism that is antagonistic to the national imaginary. The
point here on the intimacy of the media form to the production
and circulation of a sense of (antagonistic) cultural
nationalism is precise: Tamil cinema, in particular, has had a
central role in the postcolonial re-construction of the nation
and national identity..."
Rethinking Transnational Cinema: The Case of Tamil Cinema, Vijay
Devadas, 2006
l to r:
C.N.Annadurai,
Bharathidasan,
Kannadasan,
N.S.Krishnan,
Sivaji Ganesan,
M.G.Ramachandran,
P. Susheela,
T.M.Soundarajan
Dr. C.R. Krishnamurti in
Thamizh Literature Through the Ages
தமிழ் இலக்கியம் - தொன்று தொட்டு இன்று வரை...
"The introduction of cinemas in the third decade of the
twentieth century brought about some remarkable changes in the
field of n^Atakat thamizh.
Though the stage is still surviving with expositions of plays
with mythological, social, historical or political themes, the
films are now dominating the scene.
The film industry has become
one of the most powerful and influential industries in Thamizh
n^Adu. Many estimates indicate that more films are made in
Thamizh n^Adu than in many parts of the world.
The introduction of cinemas in the third decade of the
twentieth century brought about some remarkable changes in the
field of n^Atakat thamizh. Though the stage is still surviving
with expositions of plays with mythological, social, historical
or political themes, the films are now dominating the scene. The
film industry has become one of the most powerful and
influential industries in Thamizh n^Adu. Many estimates indicate
that more films are made in Thamizh n^Adu than in many parts of
the world.
The growth of the film industry with reference to the
literary contents has been reviewed (திரை வளர்ந்த
விதம்). In addition to providing a huge industrial base
and job opportunities to a large number of talented artists, the
film has become a very powerful medium for the propagation of
social, educational and political messages which the previous
generations were unable to accomplish.
The free flowing literary prose style introduced by
C.N. aNNAthurai
(அறிஞர் அண்ணாதுரை) and
M. KaruNAn^ithi
(கலைஞர் மு.கருணாநிதி), the brand of lyrics
popularized by
BhArathi
DhAsan
(பாரதி தாசன்) and
KaNNa DhAsan
(கண்ணதாசன்) aptly supported by the
histrionic talents of N.S.
KrishNan (என்.எஸ.கிருஷணன்),
SivAji GanEsan
(சிவாஜி கணேசன்) and
M.G.
rAmachandran
(மக்கள் திலகம் எம்.ஜி.ஆர்.)and the musical
expertise of
T.M. Soun^dararAjan(டி.எம். செளந்தரராஜன்)and
P.SusIlA
(பி.சுசீலா) are some of the more memorable
milestones of the film industry.
In order to document properly all the actors, directors,
musicians, and technicians who have made significant
contributions to the development of the film industry, it is
necessary to devote a book exclusively for the purpose. It is
gratifying to note that critical analyses of the literary style
used in the mass media have been the subject of several doctoral
theses in many Indian and foreign universities (ArOkian^Athan,
1982).
The advent of high technological innovations, the impact of
western culture and the increase in the migration of people from
the rural to the urban centers are to a large extent responsible
for the radical changes in the format and content in the films
one encounters today. In the assimilation of these modern
concepts, one would hope that our own cultural identity which
has survived for centuries upto this time is not surrendered. "
|
Rethinking Transnational Cinema: The Case of Tamil Cinema
Vijay Devadas,
Sense of Cinema, Issue 41, October-December 2006
� Vijay Devadas, 2006
Vijay Devadas lectures at the Department of
Communication Studies, University of Otago, New Zealand and
researches in the areas of media, film and cultural studies,
postcolonial theory and diaspora studies.
|
"..this article examines the various ways in which the
nation is constructed and negotiated within the domain of
Tamil cinema, particularly the period after independence to
about the late 1970s to offer a critical survey of the
various ways in which �India� is negotiated in Tamil Cinema
to make the argument that, over time, there has been a shift
within Tamil Cinema from a pan-Indian construction of the
nation, that was part of the anti-colonial cinema of British
India, to the call for communally centred, closed,
ethno-nation, premised on a discourse of Tamil cultural
nationalism..."
In a special issue of the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies,
Steven
Vertovec suggests that, while there have been a variety of
uptakes on transnationalism, there has �not surprisingly [been]
much conceptual muddling�, which has led to an unproblematic
articulation of transnationalism as referring �to multiple ties
and interactions linking people or institutions across the
borders of nation-states� (1). Such a proposition has been taken
up in several different disciplines, including film studies.
Hence, we hear the call to reconsider cinema beyond the borders
of the nation-state, as a transnational cultural industry, as
the forces of globalisation has made it impossible to speak of
cinema within such a categorical schema.
Transnational cinema, as a conceptual category, thus emerged
in response to the perceived insufficiencies of existing
categories such as National Cinema, Third World Cinema and Third
Cinema to correspond with, and respond to, the conditions of the
globalised world. In effect, therefore, transnational cinema was
mobilised as a response to a shift in the economy of exchange
from national to global, coupled with increasing economic
globalisation and the acceleration of technological
developments.
Against this current of theorising transnational cinema, this
article turns to postcolonial Tamil cinema between 1947 to the
late 1970s as proof-text to argue that we can reconsider the
notion of a transnational cinema without necessarily
conceptualising it as a corollary of globalisation. In setting
up this proposition, the article also seeks to problematise the
categorisation of Tamil cinema as a regional cinema, which took
place after the arrival of sound in the early 1930s, intervene
into the idea of a postcolonial Indian nation, normatively
constituted under the umbrage of a North Indian, majoritarian
Hindu identity, and reconsider the notion of an Indian national
cinema, normatively articulated through the optic of Bombay
cinema. Underwriting the concept of transnational cinema are a
number of clusters/themes that can be delineated as such:
transnational cinema is defined and used in reference to cinema
made by displaced filmmakers living in exile or diaspora; used
as a mode of expressing the interstitial and artisinal modes of
production, distribution and consumption; marked by the use of a
hybrid stylistic forms, patterns of identification and
ideological concerns; and �defined by [� the] affirmation of
difference� (2) as a mode of resistance to the homogenising
forces of globalisation.
In one sense, we can think of these clusters/themes as
providing a framework for articulating the notion of
transnational cinema to (cor)respond to the traffic and forces
of globalisation. On the other hand, these clusters/themes also
function to bracket transnational cinema within the jurisdiction
of globalisation, thus limiting it.
Such a view, as suggested by Marvin D�Lugo, is rather
amnesiac. In his historicisation of Latin American cinema,
D�Lugo disrupts the categorisation of such a cinema as a
regional cinema and demonstrates that Latin American cinema has
always-already been transnational: here the conception moves
away from views affirming transnational cinema as �merely the
mixing of local and foreign elements, characters, styles, and
speech in particular films� toward one that sees it as involving
�a deeper interrogation of the modes of cultural production [�]
that involves [�] a rethinking of the hierarchy between center
and periphery� (3). The proposed suggestion dismantles the
notion of transnational cinema from its historical specificity
(as a response to globalisation) and opens the category so that
cinematic productions that were transnational in both form and
content, prior to the emergence of contemporary globalisation,
can be conceptualised within the schema. At the same time, it
calls for a reconsideration of transnational cinema as
disrupting and contesting established centre-periphery
relations, again opening the category so that it is not simply
couched in terms of the contest of centre-periphery relations
such as local-global and national-global.
It is these suggestions that I wish to latch onto to propose
the need to rethink the category of transitional cinema, the
categorisation of Tamil cinema as a regional cinema, the notion
of a pan-Indian national cinema and the normative construction
of the nation in postcolonial India. In other words,
postcolonial Tamil cinema functions to contest the legitimacy of
a multiplicity of centre-periphery relations: the
regional-national cinema distinction and the unproblematic
imagining of the Indian nation in specific terms. In making such
an argument, this article then suggests that the proof-text
participates in transnationalising both the idea of an Indian
nation and of an Indian national cinema. In her report on the
inaugural conference on Tamil cinema held in Chennai for the
journal Screen, Lalitha Gopalan foregrounds the relationship
between Tamil cinema and cultural nationalism in Tamil Nadu in
these terms:
self assertion of Tamil culture has persistently
interrogated the centrifugal forces of Indian nationalism
[�] nowhere else in India has cultural nationalism worked so
successfully to dislodge upper caste hegemony, to carve out
a non-Brahminical public sphere. (4)
That is to say Tamil cinema articulates, mobilises and
dismantles the hegemonic conception of the postcolonial Indian
nation as fostered by the apparatus of the nation-state through
an appeal to a sense of Tamil cultural nationalism that is
antagonistic to the national imaginary. The point here on the
intimacy of the media form to the production and circulation of
a sense of (antagonistic) cultural nationalism is precise: Tamil
cinema, in particular, has had a central role in the
postcolonial re-construction of the nation and national
identity. The suggestion that Tamil cinema participates in the
construction and negotiation of a sense of nation and
nationalism in the postcolonial period in India must also
address �the question of national cinema� (5), because the
concept of national cinema
privileges ideas of coherence and unity and stable cultural
meanings associated with the uniqueness of a given nation. It is
imbricated with national myth-making and ideological production
and serves to delineate alterities and legitimize selfhood. (6)
Taking up this suggestion opens up another line of argument and
this has to do with the problematisation of an Indian national
cinema, particularly since Tamil cinema has been
unproblematically labelled a regional cinema since the arrival
of sound in the early 1930s, which served to mark out linguistic
and cultural differences within the nation. The �regional
cinema� tag is �a label given to films in any language besides
Hindi or English� (7).
The regionalisation of cinematic forms through linguistic
differentiation served not only to marginalise the heterogeneity
of Indian cinema and affirm Bombay cinema�s special location as
paradigmatic of Indian national cinema, but also crystallise the
colonial and later postcolonial imagining of the Indian nation
under the umbrage of a North Indian, majoritarian Hindu
identity. The regional/national cinema separation that occurred
with the arrival of sound is symptomatic of the way in which the
postcolonial Indian nation has imagined itself through the
official recognition of Hindi as the national language. And it
has remained as a naturalised, taken-for-granted approach to
dealing with the heterogeneity of Indian cinema, and which has
led to an unproblematic privileging of Bombay cinema as national
cinema.
Such a view circulates even though Tamil cinema has been
particularly concerned with the idea of the nation, most overtly
and powerfully during the period that witnessed the strategic
use of cinema for political purposes by the Dravida Munnetra
Kazhagam (DMK or Dravidian Progressive Front) and later by the
Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (ADMK or Anna Dravidian
Progressive Front), which did not support any form of national
commonality and which problematised the official version of the
nation.
Both the DMK and ADMK�s ideological thrust, of championing
Tamil cultural nationalism, was founded on the Dravidian
movement led by
Periyar R. Naicker, the founder of the Justice Party in
1917. The radicalisation of the Dravidian ideology took place in
the 1930s, particularly after the �the introduction of
compulsory Hindustani in 1938� (8), which saw the Dravidian
movement engage in agitation politics against the Congress
Party, which it had been supporting to date. The antagonism
surrounding the compulsory introduction of Hindi, as national
language, marked the beginning of the affirmation of Tamil
identity �rooted in the
Tamil literary movement
of the early nineteenth century� (9).
Such a political position, one that strongly affirms Tamil
nationalism as a separatist discourse, and as antithetical to
the idea of a singular nation, was taken up and played out
through cinema to set up an alternative version and vision of
the nation, to break up established centre-periphery relations.
It is this rupturing that calls for a conception of Tamil cinema
as a transnational cinema and not simply as a regional cinema
The foregoing commentary demonstrates that it is problematic to
conceptualise an undifferentiated notion of a national cinema,
that the classification does not do justice to the impact of
Tamil cinema on the national imaginary and that there is an
urgent need to rethink the idea of Tamil cinema as a
transnational cinema.
In line with such a proposition, this article examines the
various ways in which the nation is constructed and negotiated
within the domain of Tamil cinema, particularly the period after
independence to about the late 1970s to offer a critical survey
of the various ways in which �India� is negotiated in Tamil
Cinema to make the argument that, over time, there has been a
shift within Tamil Cinema from a pan-Indian construction of the
nation, that was part of the anti-colonial cinema of British
India, to the call for communally centred, closed, ethno-nation,
premised on a discourse of Tamil cultural nationalism.
The redefining of centre-periphery relations, the contest
over the semiotics of �India� and the special location of Bombay
cinema further affirm why it is crucial to conceptualise Tamil
cinema as a transnational cinema.
The use of cinema for political purposes, namely the
construction of an imagined community based on linguistic
homogeneity, was one of the central themes that preoccupied
postcolonial Tamil cinema up to the late �70s. The close
relationship between film and politics has been the subject of
academic discussions which examine the ways in which both the
DMK and ADMK mobilised cinema and disseminated the ideology of
Dravidianism through the cinematic apparatus in postcolonial
India.
Such discussions taken various routes � through an analysis
of fandoms and fanzines, textual analysis of specific films,
star analysis, auteur theory, and ethnographic approaches � but
nevertheless arrive at a similar conclusion, one that describes
the relationship between Tamil cinema and Tamilnadu politics as
symbiotic. (10) The argument here suggests that this was a
period in which the relationship between cinema and politics was
most explicitly shored up. More crucially, this period signalled
the robust contestation over the terms upon which the idea of a
postcolonial Indian nation is constituted and the terms upon
which such collectivities are constructed. It must be emphasised
that while
Tamil film became politicized as early as during the
all-India national struggle, [� it] remained for long
inaccessible to wider audiences. DMK�s mobilization phase
coincided [...] with rapid rural electrification. (11)
In
effect, therefore, the use of the visual medium for political
purposes during the DMK period was in large part an effect of
the postcolonial nation-state�s modernisation imperative as
Nehru had imagined it. This is one side of the argument,
however, because, while there were approximately 1,500 cinema
theatres in Tamilnadu by 1971, �it was only [the] DMK who
initially saw and took advantage of cinema�s potential for
propaganda use� (12). The DMK�s strategic use of cinema, its
symbiotic relationship with Tamil cinema, is significant insofar
as it called into question the version of the imagined national
community set up in and through the anti-colonial struggle. As
Hardgrave reminds, �it was only the party of Tamil nationalism,
the DMK, that took film seriously as a vehicle of political
mobilization.� (13) The brand of Tamil cultural nationalism
resurrected through the institution of cinema by the DMK can be
traced to the second half of the 19th century and the rise of
the Dravida Tamil national movement of the first half of the
20th century, and was officially articulated at the first �Tamil
Nadu for Tamils� conference held by the Dravida Kazhagam (DK or
Dravidian Front) on 10 December 1939. The goal of this
movement and its later offshoot, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
(DMK), was an independent Dravida Nadu (Southern India, which
included Tamil Nadu), which was separate from the Congress-led
officially imagined India. This call for a Dravidian State,
�corresponding to the linguistic divisions (Madras, Kerala,
Mysore, and Andrha), each having residuary powers and autonomy
of internal administration� (14), remained the official party
proclamation until 1963, when the Congress Party Government
announced a ban on all parties and individuals demanding
independence (separatism or secession) from India, to which the
DMK � which was in power in Tamil Nadu then � acceded.
While the secessionist rhetoric
was officially banned, the �Tamil Nadu is for Tamils�
discourse continued to dominate the celluloid screen. The active
campaigning for recognition and independence through cinema,
while primarily premised upon differences of ethnicity,
language, and culture, also demanded the uplift of the
non-Brahmin community in South India founded upon an anti-north,
anti-Hindi and anti-Brahmin ideological footing.
Quite clearly then it can be suggested that postcolonial
Tamil cinema, particularly during the phase of extrovert
ethno-communalism, can be conceived as a transnational cinema
insofar as it drew from and expressed a sense of Tamil
nationalism that radically subverted the discourse of officially
driven Indian nationalism, contesting established postcolonial
centre-periphery relations.
In other words, during this phase, not only was the formation
of a hegemonic ethno-communal discourse through the instrument
of cinema taking hold, but more crucially, there was a
�transform[ation] of cinema [itself] at least in Tamil Nadu [�]
into an instrument of propaganda without parallel in �the
cinematographic world of other democratic countries� (15).
The kinds of interventions that we see taking shape within
postcolonial Tamil cinema, both at the thematic level (through
the engendering of a radically different version of the
postcolonial nation) and at level of deploying the instrument of
cinema as the forum for political communication, opens the
possibility of conceptualising Tamil cinema as transnational
cinema.
The first is evident in a number of films such as Velaikkari
(Servant Maid, 1949),
Manthiri
Kumari (The Minister�s Daughter, 1950),
Parasakthi (The Goddess, 1952), Madurai Veeran (The Soldier
of Madurai, 1956),
Sivagangai Seemai (The Land of Sivagangai, 1959),
Veerapandiya
Kattabomman (The Hero Kattabomman, 1959),
Parthiban Kanavu
(Parthiban�s Dream, 1960),
Pavamannippu (Forgiveness of Sins,
1961), Kappalotiya Thamizhan (The Tamil Who Launched a Ship,
1961), Tangaritinam (Precious Stone, 1967), Engal Thangam (Our
Beloved, 1970) and
Agraharathil Kazhuthai (A Donkey in the Brahmin Enclave,
1977), which returned to the general theme of �caste and
language [which] were the principal bases of Tamil nationalism�
(16).
Velaikkari, which was a film adaptation of a play by
C. N. Annadurai (the leader of the DMK), was released with
�the founding of the party� (17) and shores up the main tenets
of the DMK: �the film is laced with anti-caste, anti-religious
and socialistic rhetoric� (18). The narrative functioned to
critique the caste-based, religiously driven, capitalist
imperative that informed the postcolonial Nehruistic
construction of the larger Indian nation.
Supplementing such a narrative thrust, which appeared in
other films such as
Manthiri
Kumari,
Pavamannippu and Engal
Thangam, is another ideological projection: that of glorifying
Dravidian cultural heritage.
The use of the cinematic medium to affirm the hegemony of
Dravidian culture has been well documented, particularly in
the works of Dickey and Hardgrave among others. (19) The
arguments advanced here focus upon the centrality of the medium
to the political culture of Tamilnadu, particularly the way in
which cinema was used to champion �the Dravidian Movement for
non-Brahmin uplift in South India� (20).
In other words, the arguments concern themselves with the
ways in which the celluloid screen was used to project a
discourse of Tamil nationalism but do not go on to explore the
�regional� cultural industry�s disruption of the
centre-periphery relations that inform both the construction of
a pan-Indian national cinema as well as the idea of a
postcolonial Indian nation. This is what concerns this article
as it opens the necessity of conceptualising Tamil cinema as a
transnational cinema.
The reinterpellation of the origin of the nation, through the
glorification of Dravidian culture, seeks to suggest, as �many
Tamil scholars [have] pointed out, that Saiva Sidhanta, a
specifically Tamil or Dravidian religion, predated the spread of
Sanskritic civilization and establishment of Brahminical
priesthood in India� (21). While any affirmation of a narrative
of origin(inary) is highly suspect, an appellation to a
different point of origin is, nevertheless, poignant insofar as
it interrupts the hegemonic version of the origin of the nation.
Sivaji Ganesan in Parasakthi, 1952
The way in which Parasakthi, for example, draws upon
Dravidian culture and politicises it can be seen through the
opening film song which reiterated the splendour of Dravidian
heritage, the main themes of the film (triumph of rationalism
over religiosity, anti-priesthood and self-respect), and
comments by M.
Karunanidhi (one of the founding members of the DMK who
wrote the screenplay) stating that the �intention was to
introduce the ideas and policies of social reform and justice
[�] and bring up the status of the Tamil language as they were
called for in DMK politics� (22).
The recoding of the status of
Tamil language and its relocation as central to the
formation of a Tamil-nation became foundational not only to the
political strategies of both the DMK and the ADMK, but also
became the mainstay of the ideological thrust of much of Tamil
cinema. Here, the references to the legends and heroisms of the
deities of Tamilnadu (as in Madurai Veeran and
Veerapandiya
Kattabomman), and the anti-colonial triumphs of Tamilians
(as in Sivagangai Seemai and
Kappalotiya Thamizhan) dominate. Similarly, as the study
conducted by Pandian, which can be categorised under the rubric
of star studies, demonstrates the centrality of the figure of
M. G. Ramachandran (MGR)
to the production and dissemination of a specific form of Tamil
nationalism articulated through the DMK and later the ADMK
cannot be underestimated (23). Here is Dickey at length on a
similar point:
"Annadurai [founder of the DMK and architect of the
secession from the DK] asked the young M. G. Ramachandran to
star in one of his movies in the early 1950s. Ramachandran
was a great success, and soon became a member of the DMK
party. He and other movie stars were utilized to �decorate�
party functions and draw crowds. MGR began to use the DMK
colours of red and black in his movies (after the switch to
colour in the late 1950s) and made frequent allusions to
party policy and rhetoric, much of it anti-Congress.
Injections of political spice became very popular in the
1950s and �60s, and it was said that no movie could succeed
without some reference to the DMK. MGR, the main star allied
with the DMK, gained a large and devoted following and soon
controlled many aspects of his movies, using himself as the
saviour of the poor." (24)
Films such as
Nadodi Mannan (Vagabond King, 1958), Enga Vitu
Pillai (The Son of Our Home, 1965), Nam Nadu (Our Country,
1969), Adimai Penn (Slave Girl, 1969) and Engal Thangam
reproduced a stereotypical image of a philanthropic, everyday
hero: �typical roles, like that of a vagrant who becomes king
due to his exploits and who decides that each citizen should get
a house and livestock� (25). The success of this formula is
evident: MGR entered politics in 1953, used cinema strategically
as a means of political communication and then held the post of
Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu between 1977-86. At the same time,
the shifts in political dominance of parties that MGR was
associated with testifies to the success of the cinematic
formula. The DMK, which MGR was aligned with until 1972,
dominated state politics until the declaration of Emergency in
1975, lost the 1977 state elections to ADMK, the party that MGR
founded.
This shift in power block manufactured through the star
status of MGR (and the off-shoots such as fan clubs) further
testifies to the way in which the manufacturing and
interpellation of an ethno-communal nationalism which confronts
the nation-state�s subscription of an Indian nationalism through
the instrument of cinema takes place.
In other words, it prises open the surety of the nation,
built on the idea of a �people�, and �turns the reference [�]
into a problem of knowledge that haunts the symbolic formation
of modern social authority� (26) that takes place through the
machineries of the nation-state.
More precisely, in cataloguing the list of films above, which
is by no means exhaustive, the article has strived to
demonstrate that the postcolonial rendition of the idea of the
nation, as reflected through Tamil cinema, intervenes both into
a specifically ordered version of Indian nationalism and
problematises the notion of a national cinema as �an object of
knowledge [�] put into words, phrases, archives, verbal
associations, texts� (27).
If a national cinema is engaged in discursively constructing
a sense of a national people, such a project is interrupted by
Tamil cinema precisely because the strategies of discursivising
the nation through Bombay cinema remains inadequate: Tamil
cinema returns to interrogate the national cinema-Bombay cinema
equation of the legitimacy of the tropes of representations
employed in the construction of the idea of a national people.
It is precisely such a role, as intervening both on the national
question per se and the question of pan-Indian national cinema,
that Tamil cinema can be conceived as a transnational cinema.
In arguing that postcolonial Tamil cinema, specifically after
independence and up to the late �70s, be conceptualised as a
transnational cinema, as a cinema of subversion, the argument
draws attention to the ways in which cinematic form and style as
well as the technology of cinema itself has been strategically
employed to articulate and engender an interruptive notion of
the nation and, at the same time, question the authority of an
Indian national cinema expressed through the optic of Bombay
cinema.
To this end, I wish to suggest that it would be productive to
conceive of Tamil cinema as a transnational cinematic form
through its powerful commitment to intervening into the
established centre-periphery relations that inform postcolonial
Indian�s construction of the nation and the national-regional
cinema divide.
This article has been refereed. Endnotes
- Steven Vertovec,
�Conceiving and researching transnationalism�, Ethnic
and Racial Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1, 1999, pp. 447, 448.
- Martin Roberts, �Baraka: World Cinema and the Global
Culture Industry�, Cinema Journal, Vol. 37, No. 3, 1998, p.
78.
- Marvin D�Lugo, �The new identity of Latin American
cinema�, in Anthony Gunerate and Wimal Dissanayake (Eds),
Rethinking Third Cinema (New York and London: Routledge,
2003), p. 104.
- Lalitha Gopalan,
�Tamil Cinema Conference�, Screen, Vol. 39, No. 2, 1998,
p. 196.
- Wimal Dissanayake, �Introduction: Nationhood, History,
and Cinema: Reflections on the Asian Scene,� in Wimal
Dissanayake (Ed), Colonialism and Nationalism in Asian
Cinema, (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 1994), p. xiii.
- Ibid.
-
Sara Dickey, Cinema and the Urban Poor in South India
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 51. The
labelling of Tamil cinema as a regional cinema can also be
historically connected to the rise of cultural nationalism
in South India, articulated in the shadow of the Dravidian
ideology during the 1920s when a rigorous push for the
importance of Tamil language and
culture took hold.
- Marguerite R. Barnett,
Politics of Cultural Nationalism in South India
Maya Chadda, Ethnicity, Security and Separatism in India
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 71.
-
Robert Hardgrave,
�Politics and the Film in Tamilnadu: The
Stars and the DMK�, Asian Survey, Vol. 13, No. 3, 1973,
pp. 288-305.
-
Ingrid Widlund,
A vote for MGR: transaction and devotion
in South Indian politics (Uppsala, Sweden: Department of
Government, Uppsala University, 1993), p. 11.
- Ibid.
- Hardgrave, p. 289.
- �The DMK and
the Politics of Tamil Nationalism�, Pacific Affairs, Vo.
37, No. 4, 1964-5, p. 399.
- Yves Thoraval, The Cinemas of India (New Delhi:
Macmillan, 2001), p. 321.
-
Maya Chadda,
Ethnicity, Security, and Separatism in IndiaTheodore Baskaran, The Eye of the Serpent: An
Introduction to Tamil Cinema (Madras: East-West Books,
1996), p. 104.
- Ibid, p. 105.
- See Dickey and Hardgrave, 1964-5 and 1973.
- Hardgrave, 1973, p. 290.
- Chadda, p. 71.
- Hardgrave, 1973, p. 292.
-
M. S. S. Pandian, The Image Trap: M. G. Ramachandran in Film
and Politics
(New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1992).
- Dickey, 1993, p. 55.
- Thoraval, p. 321.
- Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New
York: Routledge, 1994), p. 146.
- Tom O� Regan, Australian National Cinema (London and New
York: Routledge, 1996), p. 27.
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