Can you unlove your stars?

This article was published on roundtableindia.co.in.

Manufacturing a star

A film is a cultural product that takes shape through the labours of over 24 departments popularly referred to as the ‘24 crafts’ if not more. All the junior artists, side dancers, lightmen, camera assistants, drivers, sanitation professionals, electricians, cooks and food catering people, spotboys, make up artists, customers, stuntmen, prop assistants, postermen, production assistants form approximately 85 percent of the film crew which invariably has people from Bahujan communities. Often lead actors, directors’ team, writers, cameramen, post-production heads and other key positions in designing costume, choreography, stunts form the 15 percent of the crew who could be from forward castes.

In the industry, the caste lines are very clear and no one dares cross them. People from different forward castes, basically those castes who can dine together, align with each other. Collaborative spirit with a power dynamic oscillates only between these people in key positions. That is how the Kamma-Kapu businessmen bet on their caste men in key positions, like actors and directors and producers, associating with the literary and creative talents of the Brahmin-Savarna castes to produce stars over the last 100 years of Telugu cinema. Between 1980-85, the average number of films Chiranjeevi annually appeared in was roughly 12. Out of these, one or two would be massive successes. But imagine how they must have churned out one film every month.

When everything about a star is about the spotlight, why would any forward caste member give it away to any less-powerful Bahujan? How can one bend to the one from the lower of the caste ladder? I feel this fundamental reflex rooted in caste is the reason why a star should necessarily be ‘manufactured’. That’s how his contemporaries Balakrishna, Venkatesh and Nagarjuna produced from their respective families, who all come from Kamma caste. It’s a parade of their own sheep so that, whoever wins, it’s at the end their own.

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