![]() In the most recent addition to postmodern Tamil cinema, the dark comedy Naanum Rowdy Dhaan (2015), as ‘Pondy’ Pandi, Sethupathi can only be loosely referred to as playing the hero. ![]() These figures throw the entire ideological mission associated with each film text into disarray. ![]() Indeed, as the postmodern Tamil hero, the Sethupathi-persona seems to suggest: since omnipotent heroes do not exist in reality, why bother with them on-screen? His characters demonstrate what Jean-Francois Lyotard refers to as “ incredulity toward metanarrative” – a rejection of the postcolonial modernity in Tamil cinema. However, with the efflorescence of postmodern Tamil films, the hero has been unburdened from the weight of a transformative quest. Whether he’s a swashbuckling prince, bleeding heart reformist, die-hard romantic, suffering patriarch, supercop, mafioso, vigilante, or social bandit, inter alia, the valorous and righteous Tamil film protagonist from the late ’50s to the mid-’00s is a centripetal force providing the narrative with a rational objective as the emissary of postcolonial modernity. The occasional flashbacks, comedic interludes, and song-and-dance items notwithstanding, a grand mission provides the teleological outcome underpinning the metanarrative for every film text. Very much a product of modernity in India, cinema as an art form creates legitimizing myths that are bounded, coherent, and structured in a linear fashion. To recapitulate an argument I have made before in an article published with this magazine: the foremost symptom of Tamil cinema’s postmodern condition was the disavowal of the heroic quest that has been its coalescing modernist feature. As he continues an inexorable ascent to become a superstar it becomes instructive to hermeneutically dissect this Sethupathi persona. Probably speaking to a collective existentialist anomie, Sethupathi has enjoyed great critical and commercial successes as the postmodern Tamil hero. Collapsing binaries and eschewing moral dichotomies, his insouciant nihilists defy archetypes. He may very well have carved a niche in playing well-meaning but dysfunctional characters unable and unwilling to serve any grand teleological function. Indeed, Sethupathi’s protagonists exist in and contribute to petit recits that resist the imposition of a master narrative and spurn didacticism. ![]() Reflexively dismantling the myth of the questing hero and abnegating his messianic impulses, Sethupathi’s protagonists are the fragmented decentered entities of post-industrial society. Concomitant with Tamil cinema’s postmodern turn with the onset of the Tamil New Wave, his popularity was achieved by subverting the industry’s heroic conventions. Yet, Sethupathi’s take-off is unparalleled. Expanding his oeuvre in a prolific output of films these past years, Sethupathi now knocks on the doors of Kollywood’s A-List megastar duopoly. Lavished with critical acclaim for his naturalistic performances, Sethupath has became the icon of the Tamil indie even attracting the attention of auteurs from Hindi indie cinema. This after obscurity in the noughties doing short films and uncredited walk-on roles in feature films. Meet the postmodern Tamil hero, Vijay Sethupathi.Ī progeniture of the cinematic efflorescence that was the Tamil New Wave in Indian cinema, Vijay Sethupathi (Sethupathi, to differentiate him from coeval and antithesis megastar Joseph Vijay) got his breakthrough as the leading man in independent Tamil films in 2012. A protean artiste who is de rigueur for liberating the Tamil cinematic protagonist from the straitjacket of history, canon, and orthodoxy. Out of the wreckage of Tamil popular culture, with its defunct anachronisms, hackneyed formulas, and eviscerated binaries, a new bricoleur emerges. A most recent trailblazing ascent from bit-part obscurity to whistleblowing pre-eminence in Kollywood has mythoclastic resonances, achieved, as it were, by vitiating the industry’s totemic hero cult. With stories of drastic upturns in fortune, whether on-screen or in real life, the mystique of the parvenu lingers. There’s a special place in the hearts of Tamil cinephiles for a good rag to riches story.
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