Between fantasy and 'reality': Tamil film star fan club networks and the political economy of film fandom

South Asia: Journal of South Asia Studies

Volumn 32, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 63-85

  Rogers, Martyn ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURE; DEMOCRACY; POLITICAL DISCOURSE; POLITICAL ECONOMY; POLITICAL PROCESS; STATE ROLE;

ASIA; EURASIA; INDIA; SOUTH ASIA; TAMIL NADU;

EID: 67650721753     PISSN: 00856401     EISSN: 14790270     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00856400802709284     Document Type: Article

References (57)

1. A. Nandy, The Secret Politics of Desire: Innocence, Culpability and Indian Popular Cinema (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), italics in original.
2. M.M. Prasad, Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002).
3. M.S.S. Pandian, The Image Trap: M.G. Ramachandran in Film and Politics (Delhi: Sage, 1992)
4. and Sarah Dickey, Cinema and the Urban Poor in South India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
5. This fieldwork was conducted as part of the author's DPhil studies at the University of Sussex, UK and was funded by the Economic & Social Science Research Council (ESRC), UK. The paper's completion was funded by an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (Award no. PTA-026-7-1387) and was presented in various drafts at the South Asian Studies Seminar, The University of Edinburgh, UK
6. The South Asian Student Seminar, the University of Sussex, UK
7. and at The Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSSC), Bangalore, India. The author thanks the seminar participants for their constructive comments.
8. 'Captain' is a nickname for Vijayakanth taken from the popular 1991 movie in which he starred entitled Captain Prabhakharan. The film, Vijaykanth's 100th, was a big hit.
9. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).
10. Pandian, The Image Trap, p.33.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., p.39.
13. Ibid., pp.24-5.
14. When MGR suffered a stroke three years earlier, 21 people immolated themselves or cut off limbs as offerings to various religious deities. Ibid., pp.17-18.
15. Ibid., p.140.
16. Ibid., p.97.
17. See Dickey, Cinema and the Urban Poor in South India
18. Sarah Dickey, 'Opposing Faces: Film Star Fan Clubs and the Construction of Class Identities in South India', in R. Dwyer and C. Pinney (eds), Pleasure and the Nation: The History, Politics and Consumption of Public Cultures in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp.212-46
19. and Sarah Dickey, 'Consuming Utopia: Film Watching in Tamil Nadu', in Carol Breckenridge (ed.), Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in a South Asian World (Minnesota: The University of Minnesota Press, 1998).
20. Dickey, 'Consuming Utopia: Film Watching in Tamil Nadu'.
21. Ibid., p.132.
22. Ibid., pp.133-4, 147 & 152.
23. See P. Manuel, Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp.2 & 257.
24. Andre Béteille, 'Caste in Contemporary India', in Chris Fuller (ed.), Caste Today (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), p.173.
25. Dr. S S. Ramadoss is currently health minister in the central government.
26. For full election results see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Tamil_Nadu_state_assembly_election,_2006.
27. See http://www.screenindia.com/news/vijayakanth.
28. Vijayakanth's personal astrologer, R.S. Sundaranantham, predicts Vijayakanth will become chief minister after 2011 [http://spoonfeedin.blogspot.com/2008/08/ india-vijayakant-coming-kindly-step.html].
29. See N. Subramanian, Ethnicity and Populist Mobilization: Political Parties, Citizens and Democracy in South India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), p.147.
30. Ibid., p.69.
31. Ibid., p.71.
32. Ibid., p.74.
33. Ibid., p.75.
34. Due to the internet, many middle-class women access the numerous Tamil fan sites and chat rooms online, where they are able to participate in film fan activities within the privacy of the internet café's computer booths.
35. P. Bourdieu, Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), p.33.
36. Ibid., p.17
37. and Richard Jenkins, Pierre Bourdieu (London: Routledge, 2002), p.85.
38. See Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992).
39. M. Mines, Public Faces, Private Voices: Community and Individuality in South India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), p.36.
40. M. Mines and V. Gourishanker, 'Leadership and Individuality in South Asia: The Case of the South Indian "Big-men"', in Journal of Asian Studies, Vol.49, no.4 (1990), pp.761-86.
41. B. Stein, Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1980), p.138
42. and D. West Rudner, Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India: The Nattukottai Chettiar (Berkeley: California University Press, 1994), p.142.
43. Stein, Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India, p.139
44. and A. Appadurai, Worship and Conflict under Colonial Rule: A South Indian Case (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p.72.
45. D.A. Washbrook, The Emergence of Provincial Politics: The Madras Presidency 1870-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p.47
46. and N.B. Dirks, The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p.54.
47. Dirks, The Hollow Crown, p.383.
48. Chris Fuller, The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), p.107.
49. See Mines, Public Faces, Private Voices
50. and West Rudner, Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India.
51. C. and F. Osella, Social Mobility in Kerala: Modernity and Identity in Conflict (London: Pluto Press, 2000), p.199.
52. This was before Vijayakanth had formed his political party, so it is doubtful that Bhasker had received official sanction from his organisation.
53. The use of khadi was an important political symbol for Gandhi and the independence movement.
54. For a detailed discussion of this phenomenon, see C. and F. Osella, "'Ayyappan Saranam"': Masculinity and the Sabarimala Pilgrimage in Kerala', in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol.9, no.4 (2003), pp.237-44.
55. See M. Carrithers, 'Stories in the Social and Mental Life of People', in E.W. Goody (ed.), Social Intelligence and Interaction: Expressions and Implications of the Social Bias in Human Intelligence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp.261-76.
56. Also see J. Bruner, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
57. J. Bruner, 'Life as Narrative', in Social Research, Vol.5, no.4/1 (1987), p.15.