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‘Spotify: Cinema with BR’ Episode 4: Hero vs. Heroine in Tamil cinema
Posted on January 27, 2023
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22 Responses “‘Spotify: Cinema with BR’ Episode 4: Hero vs. Heroine in Tamil cinema” →
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Baradwaj Rangan 
Rahini David
January 27, 2023
Wonderful episode
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Rambo
January 28, 2023
Didn’t realise you were doing podcasts! First one I’ve heard and was a great episode. One suggestion would be to get rid of the music track in the background – kills the conversational vibe. WOuld also think you need someone to riff off on these topics. Podcasts that have that conversational/argumentative back and forth I think tend to do well. You should have Rahini or Madan on there to debate the topics!
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abishekspeare
January 28, 2023
BR I think you might be wrong about Deepika’s name appearing before SRK in pathaan – i remember it not being so
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Voldemort
January 28, 2023
Au contraire, I feel like the best part of the podcast is the radio-type setting where you choose to talk about something over a long episode, digressing at times without anyone to steer it to one direction. I’d prefer this over a conversational format – we have far too many of those!
Maybe the length could be increased to around 25-30 mins giving you the time to delve deeper on to the topic at hand.
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Red chillies VFX supremacy
January 29, 2023
@abhishkspeare: Yes SRK’s name appears first. In Chennai Express Deepika and SRK had equally important roles. Here SRK is PATHAN.
Does anybody else miss titles and credits being written in three languages – Hindi, English and Urdu.
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abishekspeare
January 29, 2023
Red chillies VFX supremacy: i don’t think it’s because of the weightage of the roles… SRK movies have had the female lead’s name first in movies where their role has been much , much smaller than Deepika’s in pathaan
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Karthik
January 29, 2023
I really liked this episode. Touched upon many things, and 20 minutes felt too small for this topic. It focused a bit more on actors and their choices. I wished it had delved a bit deeper on why the industry has turned out this way.
This isn’t just a mass film or big hero issue. Even with filmmakers who have strong vision and distinctive form, like Subburaj or Lokesh, the female characters in their films dont register very strongly and feel sparsely fleshed out. A Manikandan today is still an exception.
The problem is that most Tamil filmmakers/producers dont value the need for genuine writers. Back in Balachander’s time, even in a mass film like an Enga Veettu Pillai, female characters were well fleshed out and held their own with a meaningful presence. I’m thinking because films those days were written by stage drama writers, for whom plot and character were paramount.
I liked that you brought up Edhiroli. It’s such a non-showy “internal” Balachander film, and both Sivaji and KR Vijaya were great to watch.
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Caesium
January 30, 2023
Any examples of heroine masala movies (with an arm candy hero?) none come to mind..
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brangan
January 30, 2023
Caesium: um… ABOORVA SAGOTHARIGAL? KIZHAKKU AFRICAVIL SHEELA? Thinking about the 80s, even a drama like VIDHI had Mohan as eye candy while the main drama played out between Poornima Jayaram and the two lawyers.
Yes, a lot of the films of the time were regressive (woman should marry the man who raped her, etc.) — but once the women viewers migrated to mega serials, there were no watchers left. And the hero became everything.
One thing I have never understood. Why do women readily see a Vijay movie, while men don’t as readily see a Nayanthara movie. Even flop male star movies make (in gross, not nett) some 150 crores, while KOLAMAVU KOKILA reaching 50 crores is meant to be a milestone.
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Rahini David
January 30, 2023
Rambo, thanks for your belief that I can be any worth in a podcast.
🙂
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Rahul
January 30, 2023
“. Why do women readily see a Vijay movie, while men don’t as readily see a Nayanthara movie.”
I’m not sure if we have any demographic information on moviegoers. It’s possible that men make up the majority of moviegoers. That would give rise to a different set of questions, though.
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brangan
January 30, 2023
Rahul: Yeah, I should hsve worded that differently. What I meant was:
When audiences “like” a male star movie, it makes some 150 crores. But when they “like” a female star movie, it makes some 50 crores.
Have never figured this out. What explains the reluctance?
Or is it that in any field, the skew is inherently male — like male cricket vs female cricket? The former is watched by millions, the latter is lucky to be watched by lakhs.
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Rahini David
January 30, 2023
The migration of female viewers to television series had a lot to do with this. TV writers did not initially know what to do with themselves. They just gave the protagonist an evil mother-in-law and then just rolled with it. Over time the scene in TV has been changing.
I only watch any TV series when I am visiting my mother but I can see that the scene is very different from what it was 30 years back.
I watched a bit of the “Trisha is a reporter” movie and I would choose ANY Vijay TV series over that movie which was considerably less watchable.
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abishekspeare
January 30, 2023
I think its a larger issue of gender divide in society that has penetrated into every field – and since sports, movies and politics are the three major pillars in india the impact is more profound here and there are more conversations. There’s also the vicious cycle of makers not creating strong female characters but still making hit films – audience not demanding it and accepting what they get because it’s entertaining – makers thinking why change the formula
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Rahini David
January 30, 2023
And one more Spotify request. Can you take up an individual soundtrack and discuss how the songs, both music and lyrics enhanced the movie’s experience. About proper placement of songs and the improper placements while we are at it.
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vijay
January 30, 2023
The TV serials back in the late 80s/90s were far more interesting and had variety even if the number of channels were less. Media is a good example of how competition and more channels doesnt always translate into great quality..atleast for me. You had serials on Bodyline series, series on Ramanujam, Bharat ek khoj, Malugudi days/Swamy, Mr. Yogi, besides the big firsts of Ramayan and Mahabharat to name a few. Even in Tamil you had likes of Balu mahendra, KB and suhaasini making episodes with different themes besides Tharayil irangum vimaanangaL and other such novel inspired serials..But its sad that the regressive unimaginative megaserials churned out by the sat TV channels happened to be the ones that held the women audiences captive at home..
Big Boss is a new low..
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Anand Raghavan
January 30, 2023
Good one, adding to it , Marma Desam series by Naga.
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Rambo
January 31, 2023
On a related note – why do family oriented films not really come by as often as they used to? Visu’s films or bhagyaraj’s films were not big hero films but had amazing runs in the cinema – sometimes quite as much as the mass hero films. Or even some of the KB films. Feels like such films have diminished in quantity overall – the kind of films that used to pull in the matriarchal crowds (from what I remember). Now it seems like its all about screen count in the first week and thats mostly allocated to star outings and smaller films struggle or maybe dont get green lit?
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kaizokukeshav
February 1, 2023
“Why do women readily see a Vijay movie, while men don’t as readily see a Nayanthara movie?”
Isn’t this is a little shallow analysis ? I would say men are not attracted to Nayanthara movies especially because they try to lecture men about feminism which no man really likes to hear. Not to demean but majority men have different preferences ahem ahem…Shakila..ahem ahem… and it’s not that men don’t like heroine centric movies at all, there were instances where even Kushboo had a temple in TN. There is Arundhati in Telugu and it’s not a devotional movie in any means but became a blockbuster hit. While I don’t know about such characters in Tamil, what it takes is to have an adequate amount of “masala feminism” that can replace the male-centric movie.
Women may watch a Vijay movie for variety of reasons but they may not watch a Vikram movie. May be Vijay is a better charmer to attract women.
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Enna koduka sir pera
February 2, 2023
Nice episode. But I felt it was a bit too long and some of the points were repeated in different parts of the episode. It probably was because of the editing pattern..
It’s a very interesting question why a badly-made big male actor’s movie would make 100s of crores easily, but a well-made female actor’s mass movie wouldn’t. If I am to guess, this is probably because of the size of the fan clubs. Most of the collection may be from the first few days of release in which case the fans will go watch it no matter if the movie is good or bad. And, the star power is much much bigger for male actors than females. This maybe because most of the movie going population could be male. How many women have the financial independence to go to a movie of their choice is also another question that comes up.
This could also be because of whether the audience can connect their reality with what’s shown in the movie. For instance, the recent Malayalam movie Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey was a very unconventional female-led mass movie. This was the first movie where I actually cheered and whistled during the mass moments when the heroine kicks the husband because I deeply resonated with the patriarchy shown in the movie as a woman. I have a theory that the audience has to connect their reality with the oppression shown in the movie and when the retaliation happens, it is as if they are fighting back. In most Vijay/Ajith movies, this maybe the case where the fans (mostly men) may connect with the oppression depicted in the movie. And, perhaps if there are female led mass films that connect in such a way with the larger audience, they could get bigger.
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Prat
February 7, 2023
Nice episode! Have recently been missing your reviews of female-led movies (almost all of them). They could use word-of-mouth more than the rest probably.
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Rahini David
February 7, 2023
kaizokukeshav: I did not quite understand the “Women may watch a Vijay movie for variety of reasons but they may not watch a Vikram movie. May be Vijay is a better charmer to attract women.” Why? To the best of my knowledge, Surya and Vikram were considered very handsome. But it is the young male demographic that preferred Ajith and Vijay so much more than Vikram and Surya.
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