Few days back, I've posted a comment on my Facebook wondering why do I see circulated jokes only about Balakrishna (one of the tollywood actors) and why not about others though everybody does the same kind of insane acts.
I didn't get a lot of response there but there were scores of people who told me offline that they got offended as I "dared" to compare Balayya with their Gods. Though I care a shit if they took me in wrong sense, I tried to understand what made them feel so strong about a person whom they have seen just on-screen.
I agree that movie is a great medium of entertainment and we like the piece of art if it moves us in any way and we definitely appreciate the person who performed to make us feel happy, sad or experience a kinda adrenalin rush or whatever. But how can an intelligent person drag the same image off-screen and start adulating him/her. Or am I too naive or an idiot to understand the underlying Gyaan behind the phenomena.
How many heroes who kick 20 goons at a time swirling in the air in movies are fit enough to face one average built 20 year old guy off-screen ? More entertaining than these stupid stunts are the interviews with those stars who claim that no graphics or body-doubles have been used in their stunts :)
Thanks to these kind of blind hero-worship, the actors started taking themselves rather too seriously and began their new innings in politics and few also enjoyed power. MGR, NTR (and family), Jayalalitha, Chiranjeevi, Vijaykanth, Jaya Bachchan, Dharmendra, Shatrughan Sinha, Sanjay Dutt, Govinda are the jokers of the same pack. Its not limited to India. Americans are equally crazy (read Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood). What did these guys do to earn the power or votes is still a mystery to me ?
During my engineering days in Kurnool, I saw two guys who fought bitterly on roads and came to blows because they couldn't agree on who is better among Chiranjeevi or Balakrishna. I heard about such fan wars which turned into ugly caste wars in coastal Andhra Pradesh. Heights of insanity and idiosyncrasy !
In the day to day parlance, the word "Hero" lost its meaning and is synonymously used for actors and fans can go really crazy about their favorite stars and can also wage a war against anybody who reportedly "belittles" their demigods. Yeah baby, "Heroes" are invincible, both on-screen and off-screen.
5 comments:
good post sharath, I have read a post some time something related to this on rgvzoomin called "love the hate". i guess that explains why they hate balakrishna.
Hopeless is the only word for such fans! I really pity them.
:)
I always said this about Balakrishna being targetted. (Well, in the recent turn of events, even those who are not fans of Chiranjeevi also target Mohan Babu and Rajasekhar for reasons that God only knows.) I am no fan of Balakrishna but that's aside of the point. And, I agree with your views completely :) and I wait for the day fanaticism flies out of the window for good!
I know why NTR garnered votes. That'd be a digression here, but may possibly help the readers to better understand things in context:
NTR didn't simply believe his God-like image that people gave him, when he set up his party - he actually travelled so vigorously around the state that he actually set a world record for travelling the most distance on road within certain number of days (37,000 km in 43 days or something). Even after he came to power, he took several revolutionary decisions that changed the face of the state by giving a national identity to Telugus (by also focusing on tourism development in the whole state), by abolishing Patel/Patwari/karaNam system, by forming mandals in place of unmanageable taluks, by bringing in more backward people and women into political and social foreground, by bringing back the "Janata (union) govt." policies for inexpensive food and clothing for the poor, by being benevolently dictatorial, and by curbing corruption by and large within the state (for which TDP always suffered in that the state govt. employees never usually voted for the party, since it made them work unlike Congress). He was a thorough man when it came to politics, unlike most other people you mentioned. (The scene in Rajasekhar-starrer film "ankuSam" where the Chief Minister recites the details of schools in the state in a sudden vigil is actually directly taken from the real-life incident of NTR.)
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