Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Star As Genre: Actors And Their Externalities In Popular Tamil Cinema, Ganga Rudraiah

Research Day (Arts & Humanities, FIMS, and Education)

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 …