Among all the folks that Malayalam movie makers like to thank at the beginning of a film are groups after groups of fan associations. Promptly, applause – ranging from loud to feeble depending on the strength of each group – breaks out in the theatre. If you screw your eyes and read through the names of these associations, chances are that you will be quite impressed. For you’ll very likely find a fan club for the newest male actor on the block, whom you hardly recall. Naturally, if you’re in the habit of introspecting, you’ll wonder where all the groups for women actors are. Surely, if the little known chap has one, the much senior women actors would have a few, you think.
To that, I say pah, you naive viewer. Fan associations, in their more than two decade old history, have hardly had the time or space for women actors, barring a few. The exceptions are Manju Warrier, who returned to acting after a 14-year break, and Nayanthara, who found fame and popularity in the Tamil film industry.
“Stardom and the power that comes with it is mostly male-driven. Taking a woman to that position of power is just not done here. A majority of those who form these groups to celebrate a star are men. Truth is that many of them don’t even have minimum respect for women actors, let alone want to celebrate them,” says Archana Padmini, a film curator who is an active member of the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC).
Archana’s remarks are so deep that they appear to come from a research paper. As someone who has been observing the works of women actors for long, she has precious insights into what goes into the forming of their fan following. “We will have to go back to the roots to look for a reason, such as the presence of women in public space, which in turn gives them the space and time to gather at street corners or tea shops every evening, have conversations and discussions that may or may not lead to these fan associations. Unfortunately there aren’t many such spaces or opportunities for women to have these casual conversations in Kerala,” she says.
A lot of questions about fan associations spring from that most happening decade in Malayalam cinema – the 90s. The period is infamous for propagating the idea of superstardom and creating little havens for the superstars and trapping them there with larger-than-life roles that they couldn’t escape from for a long time.
If you go further back all the way to the 50s when Malayalam cinema was in its formative years and actors on the screen, as opposed to actors on stage, were still a new phenomenon, one particular name became rather familiar. Miss Kumari, a young woman who took to cinema quite by chance, was much later hailed as the first female superstar of Malayalam cinema. She acted opposite Sathyan, who would later become an icon, in several films and enjoyed equal pay as him, a privilege still not enjoyed by female actors playing equal roles alongside their male counterparts.
“People went to watch films for her. Movies were known as Miss Kumari movies, and several were named for the role she played in it – Nalla Thanka or Mariakutty for example. She definitely had a huge fan base although there was no fan association at the time,” says Reshmi Radhakrishnan, a filmmaker who made a documentary on Miss Kumari.
Even though she was at first thrilled with these findings, Reshmi later began to wonder why this was so – in a patriarchal world, at a time when women were mostly expected to stay home and raise kids, how did a female actor gain so many admirers.
“And then I got it. It is because of the subdued ‘adakkavum othukkavum ulla’ (quiet and discreet) characters she played, which satisfied the societal rules of how a woman should be. She played the nice quiet woman that men wanted women to be, she didn’t cross the line,” Reshmi says.
And then the 50s were over and Miss Kumari soon left the scene after a hasty marriage. Prem Nazir and Sathyan rose to be stars, though at the time there was no concept of ‘superstar’ and definitely no fan clubs. In an earlier TNM story, we saw how veteran actor Thikkurissi, fascinated by the coinage of ‘superstar’ in Hindi cinema, wanted to have it prefixed to his own name and appeared at a function wearing a T-shirt which pretty much said that. By then though, newer lead actors had emerged on the scene.
It is almost a certainty that if actor Jayan had survived that plane crash in 1980 during a film shooting, he would have unanimously been named the first superstar in Malayalam cinema by a movie-loving crowd just stepping out of the hippie era.
The 1980s of course saw Mohanlal and Mammootty making their popular debuts (after acting in films that either didn’t release or had minor roles in) and growing rather quickly into stars. This can possibly be attributed to the remnants of the hippie culture and a new generation of audience ready for change, and ready to make rockstars out of actors (probably because we didn’t have an actual rock & roll scene, barring a few historical bands).
“Malayalam movies, or Indian movies for that matter, have historically been phallocentric enterprises. And I believe that these fan associations are nothing more than manifestations of those phallocentric tendencies implicit in our movies. This, by the way, holds true even for fan associations of female actors,” says film critic Sreehari Nair.
The phallocentric tendencies, as Sreehari calls it, became more rampant in the 90s. In one of those years, fan associations began to form, predictably first for Mammootty and Mohanlal. A feature in The Hindu describes how, perhaps coincidentally, these associations formed around the same time the stars began doing superhuman roles reeking of masculinity – Aaram Thampuran, Narasimham, Veliyettan and Rakshasarajavu,
“In the eyes of the fans, the characters they played became an extension of the actors. And these were characters that satisfied a majority of the audience. The majority has an ‘aan manassu’ – mind of a man. You can see similar fandom in other spheres too. For example, the fan following for ‘Collector Bro’ (IAS officer Prashanth Nair when he was Kozhikode Collector),” Reshmi says.
Reshmi points out how women do not get to play such superhuman characters that can be idolised.
Notably, Shobana won the National Award for her performance in Manichithrathazhu, still remembered as one of the best in Malayalam, around the same time. Urvashi, who won the State Award for best female actor for a record five times in those years, continues to be recognised as among the most versatile performers in Malayalam. Both these actors not only lacked opportunities in later years, but never even had the whiff of a fan association.
“The career span of women lead actors has been noticeably short, except in a few cases. After a certain age, the characters they get and the placement of those characters are drastically different. Even for older women characters, filmmakers may look for younger actors to play them,” says Archana.
Shobana was only 14 when she played the sari-clad wife of a police official in her debut film April 18. Urvashi, in Mundhanai Mudichu, her first role as a heroine, was a 13-year-old playing a grown-up woman infatuated with the town’s widowed schoolteacher. Male actors too have played much older roles, but then that didn’t seem to affect their career span, and eventually brought them age-appropriate characters or even much younger roles. For women actors, however, the perception that they were as old as the characters they played in the initial days resulted in their awfully early and often forced “retirement” being accepted as perfectly natural.
One striking exception in recent years has been the popularity of Manju Warrier, an actor who left the film industry for a notably long 14 years and then just as suddenly popped up as a star. The audience welcomed her back like they have not welcomed back another woman actor before. She has since enjoyed such a grand place in the industry that not only did many female-centric films come in search of her but it also brought her a registered fan association. The other exception, Nayanthara, rules the box-office in neighbouring Tamil Nadu, with occasional forays into Mollywood. Her growth, however, is on a different projectile.
Talking about the shortage of women’s fan clubs, film critic Neelima Menon says, “I’m unable to really think of a reason other than the fact that most of these fan clubs thrived on superstar veneration. Among women, since we only have a Manju Warrier or Nayanthara as reigning superstars who have also had longer innings than the others, that might be the reason that they have fan clubs. It also hints at the underlying patriarchal structures in the industry. Most heroines have a shelf life, unlike heroes. Maybe that’s why an Urvashi or a Shobana never had fan clubs.”
Reshmi connects her theory regarding Miss Kumari’s success to Manju Warrier’s as well. “Why is there for instance no Parvathy Thiruvothu fan association or Rima Kallingal fan association? They play rebel characters on screen and speak out off screen as well – not what is expected of women by the majority viewer. Manju’s characters, with a few exceptions, have been mostly satisfying the majority. Off screen too, she hasn’t let herself be dragged into any controversy,” Reshmi says.
On the other hand, Parvathy, Rima and others who called out misogyny and other problematic stands in the industry had to go through extended periods of cyber bullying. In stark contrast to having fan associations, there were hate campaigns against such women actors who were vocal about the issues they faced.
Watch: When Women Take a Stand, with Priya Ramani, Parvathy Thiruvothu and Chinmayi Sripada
“It is all to the good if great women actors are not subject to this kind of fandom. It just means that you can stay guided by principles than blind worship – like your craft, your own judgement about your craft as opposed to a judgement by committee, your sensitivity, etc.,” says Sreehari.
That brings up the basic question, of course, of whether we need fan clubs at all. Fahadh Faasil, one of the reigning actors in present day Malayalam cinema, has famously refused to have one. Archana says that as a film curator and an admirer of Urvashi she may possibly present a screening of the actor’s best movies, but probably not think of forming a fan association.
“Fan associations have always been a show of power. We needn’t bring it to the women’s world. It is true that women actors are not celebrated enough, but changes that are inevitable are happening. And they began to happen when women began to go to theatres and buy a ticket for themselves to watch a movie. Until then they were not seen as “clients”. The product – when you consider films as one – has to be appealing to its clients. And therefore the makers are having to take into consideration women’s presence in the audience when they create stories,” Archana adds.
Finance also comes into play in understanding how fan associations are formed and how they function. They are often believed to be funded by the actors themselves. Women actors, even now paid a lot less than men, do not have the luxury of funding these clubs. An established woman actor who doesn’t wish to be named says that when she got calls after the success of a movie from fans wanting to start an association, her immediate reaction was to say no.
“I have seen what other fan associations do, this kind of blind mob-like following. It’s like a godman kind of a thing. But then someone asked what if they want to come together and organise talks on rights or feminism or have a book club. Though I thought that was a fantastic idea, I didn’t have the bandwidth then or now to do that, or the money. A lot of these associations are funded not just by the actors but their rich fans,” she explains.
The market for a woman star is not real yet. The box-office is still very male-driven. A Manju Warrier or a Nayanthara may be expected to rake in money when their films release in theatres, and producers are ready to bank on them. It can’t be a coincidence that the known fan associations for women actors are limited to these two actors.
Vinod, president of the Manju Warrier Fans & Welfare Association International, says that he and two other men started it five years ago because of their admiration for the actor. They knew that there were hardly any clubs for women actors, and the one for Nayanthara was not that active either.
“I have always admired Manju Warrier and was very happy when she made her comeback in 2014. A couple of years later, we formed the association and registered it too. I met her when she came to Thiruvananthapuram and told her about it. We do a lot of charity events on her birthday and other occasions, and put up banners during film releases. We are possibly the first to raise a cut-out of a woman actor in Kerala (during Aami release),” Vinod says.
Although there are 800 members in the association, only a few are active in every district, he admits.
Banners are only the beginning of celebrations for a male star’s film release. Everything from chenda melam (group percussion) performance outside the theatre to throwing confetti inside cinema halls at the hero’s first appearance, and dancing, whistling and hooting while he walked in slow-motion, are common practices by fans. “Look at how they operate – they organise early morning fan shows, huge cut-outs, palabhishekam (milk offering usually done for deities), and dance performances for such superstar films. No one has been making such films for heroines,” Neelima points out.
She has a more interesting insight on the lack of fan groups for women actors. “Most of these superstar fan clubs are run by men and they have all the time in the world to indulge in them, unlike women. I don’t think women will have the time to celebrate, conduct midnight shows and do palabhishekams.”