Start Date
23-3-2011 3:00 PM
End Date
23-3-2011 6:00 PM
Description
The star machinery of Tamil cinema presents itself as a nearly unfathomable system that produces stars out of actors and fans out of audience on a grandiose scale. The study is invested in determining a specific mode of star films in Tamil cinema as a unique genre by itself. These films from the southern state of Tamil Nadu in India typically frame and deify the male actor as a star. The star’s image prevails over the narrative, thereby organizing the entire film for the star and not vice-versa. The stars in Tamil cinema are not icons for a genre; rather they are the genre themselves. This research study diagnoses star‐centric cinema in terms of genre and modality, cinematic populism, mythification, identification, spectacles, melodramatic masculinity and fan‐driven organized spectatorship.
Included in
Star as Genre: Actors and their Externalities in Popular Tamil Cinema
The star machinery of Tamil cinema presents itself as a nearly unfathomable system that produces stars out of actors and fans out of audience on a grandiose scale. The study is invested in determining a specific mode of star films in Tamil cinema as a unique genre by itself. These films from the southern state of Tamil Nadu in India typically frame and deify the male actor as a star. The star’s image prevails over the narrative, thereby organizing the entire film for the star and not vice-versa. The stars in Tamil cinema are not icons for a genre; rather they are the genre themselves. This research study diagnoses star‐centric cinema in terms of genre and modality, cinematic populism, mythification, identification, spectacles, melodramatic masculinity and fan‐driven organized spectatorship.