Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of DMK Film


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May 25, 2012, 12:27:26 PM (12 years ago)
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Parth
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  • DMK Film

    v1 v1  
     1 
     2== DMK Film == 
     3 
     4Unique and extraordinarily influential type of 
     5propaganda cinema pioneered in Tamil Nadu 
     6by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). 
     7Histories of the DMK trace the party’s ancestry 
     8to 19th C. reform literature in the erstwhile 
     9Madras Presidency, where writers like 
     10Subramanya Bharati (1882-1921; sometimes 
     11considered the greatest modern Tamil poet) 
     12extended their reformist politics to advocate a 
     13specifically Tamil nationalism. After the 
     14establishment of the Justice Party aka the South 
     15Indian Liberation Federation (Est: 1917), this 
     16nationalism retained a strongly anti-Aryan 
     17thrust in its claim to represent the indigenous 
     18cultures of South India, attempting e.g. to 
     19rewrite Indian history to trace the Tamil 
     20influence back to the Indus Valley civilisation. 
     21The Justice Party had a strategic alliance with 
     22the pro-imperialist landed élite but also 
     23advocated bourgeois-democratic reformism 
     24opposing e.g. caste oppression.  
     25 
     26The party 
     27broadened its base in Kerala and Andhra 
     28Pradesh, esp. when contesting the provincial 
     29elections after the Montagu-Chelmsford 
     30reforms (1919) on an anti-Brahmin platform. 
     31The Party was transformed in the post-WW2 
     32era by one of the most influential politicians in 
     3320th C. Tamil Nadu, Periyar E.V. Ramaswamy 
     34Naicker (1879-1973), a former Congress Party 
     35member who founded the Self-Respect 
     36Movement (1926), a social action group aimed 
     37at eradicating Untouchability and caste and 
     38advocating an atheist politics. According to 
     39Charles Ryerson, at that time the movement 
     40deployed five principles: no God, no religion, 
     41no Gandhi, no Congress and no Brahmins. In 
     421944, Periyar transformed the Justice Party into 
     43the separatist Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) and 
     44later called for India’s first Independence Day 
     45in 1947 to be declared a day of mourning, since 
     46his demand for an independent Dravida Nadu 
     47or Tamil state remained unrealised. In 1949, his 
     48chief disciple, the playwright and scenarist 
     49C.N. Annadurai broke away to found the 
     50DMK. The DMK was elected to the TN state 
     51assembly in 1967, mainly on an anti-Hindi 
     52platform, repeating their victory in 1971 
     53through a conditional alliance with Indira 
     54Gandhi’s Congress. The DMK split once again 
     55when its most famous member, film star MGR, 
     56was expelled for indiscipline and launched the 
     57Anna-DMK (ADMK) in 1972, which later 
     58became the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra 
     59Kazhagam (AIADMK), winning power along 
     60with the Congress in 1977 and making MGR the 
     61Chief Minister. The DMK under Karunanidhireturned to power in 1988 after MGR died, but 
     62was dismissed by the Congress (I)-backed 
     63minority government in 1990 and then 
     64decimated in the 1991 elections following Rajiv 
     65Gandhi’s assassination which brought into 
     66power MGR’s former heroine Jayalalitha as 
     67the new AIADMK leader and Chief Minister.The 
     68DMK Film genre is the most spectacular of the 
     69party’s propaganda fronts and helped make 
     70five film personalities Chief Ministers 
     71(Annadurai, Karunanidhi, MGR, his wife and 
     72former star V.N. Janaki, and Jayalalitha)since 1967. Annadurai launched the genre adapting 
     73his own play Velaikkari to the screen, 
     74followed by his script for Nallathambi (both 
     751949). The films, esp. Nallathambi, were major 
     76hits and spawned many more as the party 
     77decided to use film as its main propaganda 
     78medium with writers like A.V.P. Asaithambi 
     79(dialogue for T.R. Sundaram’s Sarvadhikari, 
     801951), A.K. Velan and the DMK poet 
     81Kannadasan who also produced the 
     82propaganda hit Sivagangai Seemai (1959). 
     83Karunanidhi scripted Manthiri Kumari 
     84(1950) as MGR’s first folk legend for directly 
     85political purposes. He also wrote and 
     86contributed lyrics for the most famous DMK 
     87film, Parasakthi (1952), Sivaji Ganesan’s 
     88début. A string of hits followed, often starring 
     89MGR or Ganesan: Marmayogi and 
     90Sarvadhikari (both 1951), Sorgavasal (1954), 
     91and the MGR-directed Nadodi Mannan 
     92(1958). Annadurai had codified an elaborately 
     93plotted and highly charged melodramatic idiom 
     94promoting an iconoclastic ‘rationalism’ and an 
     95anti-Brahmin, Tamil-nationalist ideology. The 
     96films incorporated numerous references to 
     97Party symbols and colours, anagrams of Party 
     98leaders’ names and characters reciting whole 
     99passages from Annadurai’s speeches (cf. 
     100Pandharibai in Parasakthi). These devices are 
     101part of a very rhetorical visual and literary style 
     102as the hero, usually in the courtroom at the end 
     103of the film, presents his (and his Party’s) case in 
     104a speech that could last up to 30’. The success 
     105of the DMK Film idiom has been linked (see 
     106Bhaskaran and Sivathamby) to the fact that the 
     107cinema was an important social equaliser in 
     108Tamil Nadu, where the other performing arts 
     109traditions were rigidly demarcated along class/ 
     110caste lines. The old Congress Party’s attempt 
     111(e.g. by C. Rajagopalachari) to continue that 
     112élitism in the cinema allowed its DMK 
     113opponents to present cinema as a people’s art. 
     114 
     115Numerous studies have been devoted to the 
     116DMK Film: K. Sivathamby’s The Tamil Film as 
     117a Medium of Political Communication (1981); 
     118Robert Hardgrave’s When Stars Displace the 
     119Gods: The Folk Culture of Cinema in Tamil 
     120Nadu (1975); Hardgrave and Anthony 
     121Neidhart, Film and Political Consciousness in 
     122Tamil Nadu (1975); S. Theodore Baskaran’s 
     123The Message Bearers (1981) which deals with 
     124the pre-DMK history of political film; Ka. 
     125Thirunavukkarasu’s Dravidar Iyakkamum 
     126Thiraipada Ulagamum (1990); M.S.S. Pandian’s 
     127The Image Trap: M.G. Ramachandran in Film 
     128and Politics (1992). For histories of the DMK 
     129Party and Tamil politics, see Margaret Ross- 
     130Barnett’s The Politics of Cultural Nationalism 
     131in South India (1976) and Charles Ryerson’s 
     132Regionalism and Religion: The Tamil 
     133Renaissance and Popular Hinduism (1988). 
     134 
     135[[Studio]]