How Vijay Uses the Politics of Silence |
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Orientalist framings of movie stars in South Indian politics tend to reduce the phenomenon of actors gaining political power to a weakness in the electorate, where the voter is described as foolish or incapable of distinguishing between reel and real life. These framings misunderstand the role of cinema in politics.
The electoral success of C. Joseph Vijay in Tamil Nadu is about more than celebrity worship. While the tools used by his campaign are the products of modern fan culture, his victory is indicative of a deeper discontent with the status quo. It points to the existence of a sufficiently large segment of the electorate not finding adequate political expression in the formal political discourse.
Vijay, by offering a charismatic blank slate on to which this population can project their own varied (and sometimes contradictory) political desires, has become the chosen vehicle for the political expression of these desires.
Two aspects of what cultural studies scholar Madhava Prasad describes as cine-politics are relevant to building our understanding of Vijay as a politician. First, the cine-politician is not a simple byproduct of cinema fame. Rajnikant, who is arguably the most famous star the industry has produced, did not manage to find a suitable entrance into politics. Beyond fame, the successful cine-politician must tap (consciously or unconsciously) into the political desires of their fans.
Second, the “megastar” as a concept extends beyond the personality of the actor in question. It is a manufactured character that develops over the years through the actor’s interactions with his fans. The megastar is both shaped and contained by what his fandom wants. The languages the megastar works in, the roles he plays, and the politics (or lack thereof) of his films are dependent on the consent of the fans. While the online dimensions of Vijay’s fandom are new, Tamil Nadu politics is no stranger to the ability of organised fandoms to convert star power into political power. M.G. Ramachandran’s manrams, or fan clubs, who formed the core of his political strength within the DMK, and later became the first cadres of the AIADMK, when it was formed, were crucial to the formation of his megastar persona.
M. G. Ramachandran collecting the petitions from the public. Photo: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).
As the character of the megastar is in itself a political formation, the cine-politician’s engagement with the electorate does not begin when they enter formal politics or launch a party. It begins when the fans first see their political desires reflected in their star’s films. The question to ask with Vijay then is not why people vote for him, despite his political inexperience, but what........