One simply cannot believe the kind of violence that has been associated with the death of Kannada actor Rajkumar. Here is a first hand report of my friend Karthik affected by the aftermath of the violence which is from a team blog by me and my buddies from college. This post ought to be a comment on his post, but the rest of this post shall be digressing from the event (Rajkumar's death)... Karthik... sorry for stealing your thunder, I acknowledge your contribution to this post.
Alright, now moving on, Kathik's post had me thinking... "Forget the violence. Does any actor deserve such fanaticism?". The Kannadigas don't stand alone on this issue. I accuse the fellow men from my own state (Tamil Nadu) of the same wrong.
So why do people do this?
My first thought was a possible reason in "Madan's Thiraipaarvai" (Madan's Movie Review) on the channel Star Vijay. While reviewing the movie Spiderman, Madan explains that the US has so many fictional comic Superheros due to the fact that they are a (relatively) young nation and woefully short of historical heros. So can we say the same about what is happening here in India i.e. Are we short of any heros that we take movie heros to be real life one? Well, my answer to that question would be Yes and No.
'Yes' is for youngsters from resonably well off families. These are people without a real life cause to fight for and hence short of "contemporary" heros to look up to. They are fed up with the system and there is now a general revulsion towards the word "politics" in India. Hence their other outlet for emotions are movies...
The 'No' is for poverty stricken poor people whose only source of entertainment are movies. When they see their "Hero" on the screen (repeatedly) living out their their dreams of an ideal man, they lose their sense of reality and in the same way as Pavlov's experiment on stimulated response, they start associating their screen God with idealism and become absolutely devoted to him.
In case of the poor, a classic analogy would be the propaganda during the time of Stalin. His cult of personality so totally permeated into the psyche of the public that there was a sense that everything they(general public) knew existed solely due to efforts of Stalin. So much so that there were suicides after Stain's death because they couldn't think of a life that was not controlled by their beloved leader.
It is only fair to say that in some ways this kind of fanaticism would be justified in the '40s and '50s because the people believed that their screen idols actually lived their lives the way they were portrayed in the movies, but why they do so in the current age of media beats me.
What do the actors think about this?
A great example of this kind of adulation can be seen in the movie "Iruvar" by director Mani Rathnam. Mohan Lal who plays the role an '4os movie actor (inspired by MGR) in the movie is totally stunned by the kind of craze he evokes on the crowds. This leads him to ask "Why do I deserve this? I am just an actor...".
I am sure that that is the first reaction of any actor. Soon they start thriving on this kind of fan adulation. It kinda becomes a life source for them. They sustain themselves as well as their market value by feeding this fan craze by constant feuds with other actors as is the case of the well known feud of between actors Ajith and Vijay. This is one of the reasons why many actors suffer depression once they lose their charm and become sidelined by other actors.
One last question before I end this post. Why do we see this only in South India?
I have no knowledge of such kind of fanaticism in North India. Sure there were many concerned fans when Amitabh Bachchan fell sick but I doubt if such riots would have taken place if he had died. This seems to be a South only phenomenon. Ironic that this should be seen only in South India, the self proclaimed torchbearers of Rationalism... but I can say that South India is not alone in this. There are some such cases around the world too, take for instance Joseph Estrada of the Philippines.
Before signing off... my apologies to anybody who was hurt due to the fact that I have associated the name of Gandhi with an expletive.
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