South Indian cinema has always played second fiddle to Bollywood in the past but of late, with the advent of Baahubali, Southies are back with a bang with their own stylized acting at one end to being a complete natural at the other. Hero worship reaches its zenith here with ‘Thalaivar’ reigning supreme and the ‘Thalas’ and ‘Thalapathys’ a respectful second. So here’s your pocket guide to South Indian cinema:
First things first: Basics
Kollywood - Tamil cinema’s tinsel town
Tollywood - Telugu movie industry
Sandalwood or Chandanavana – colloquial for Kannada moviedom
Mollywood - Malayalam film industry
Title Crazy
You might have thought with the end of the Victoria era, ‘titles’ too faded into oblivion. Take a look at these though:
Kollywoood
Thalaiva - Our very own ‘Superstar’ Rajinikanth
Illayathalapathy - ‘Young commander’ Vijay
Thala - literally translating into ‘head’, actor Ajith Kumar is also known as the ‘ultimate star’
Ulaganayagan - ‘Universal hero’ Kamal Hassan
Puratchi thalaivar - ‘Revolutionary artist’ Vijayakanth
STR - ‘Little Superstar’ Silambarasan
And then - ‘Powerstar’ Srinivasan
Tollywood
Mega star - Chiranjeevi
Power star - Pawan Kalyan
Prince - Superstar Mahesh Babu
‘Young Rebel’ star - Prabhas
‘Victory’ Venkatesh - Daggubati Venkatesh
Stylish star - Allu Arjun
Mollywood
Of all the four ‘woods’ Mollywood is the least showy of all. Superstars here have no titles prefixed before their names. The adoring masses instead prefer to call them their own with affectionate monikers such as:
Lalettan – Mohanlal
Mammukka – Mammootty
Kunjikka – Dulquer Salman (Mammukka’s son)
Sandalwood
Golden star - Ganesh in recognition of his success at the box-office
Crazy star - V. Ravichandran
Challenging star – Darshan
Real star – Upendra
Appu- Puneeth Rajkumar
The trend seems to have begun with yesteryear stars like Sivaji Ganesan and Rajkumar being called ‘Nadigar Tilagam’ and ‘Natasaarvabhouma’.
And it has soared to such a level that more often than not, people identify present-day heroes by the titles conferred on them.
By now, you must have noticed not a single heroine figures in these lists. A clear case of misogyny indeed!