Why do we have gods? Why do we have ‘heroes’ as demi-gods? Such often wondered but seldom asked, rarely explored and largely accepted questions are explored in this DocuBay Original one-hour documentary about the obsessive fan-cultures of South Indian cinema.
On Dec 4th, a 35-year-old woman was killed and nine-year old son was injured due to the stampede at the famous Sandhya Theatre at RTC X Roads, Hyderabad. The uncontrolled overcrowding of fans and the lack of additional security for the sudden unintimated arrival of ‘Icon Star’ Allu Arjun at the theatre for his much-hyped Pusha 2’s premiere are cited as the reasons for stampede. Three days later, DocuBay released the documentary Fanatics, dropping-albeit coincidentally- examining the culture of obsessive fandom across South India.
The RTC X Roads is the triumvirate of Telugu cinema with the presence of three major single screen theatres whose names are recognised well beyond Hyderabad and Telugu-speaking states: Sandhya, Sudharshan, Devi. The maniac level of mad celebrations on the day of the release of every big ‘star hero’ films is a mini Kumbh Mela- the world’s largest public gathering duodecennial event in Uttar Pradesh. Almost every major theatre in South India sees such celebrations. The scale of celebration might vary but the fervour of fan’s devoted love doesn’t. All thanks to the fan clubs of star heroes.
Showrunner Santosh Raj and Director Aryan D Roy made this hour-long documentary featuring talking-heads: members Allu Arjun & Mahesh Babu’s fan clubs in Vijayawada, Saravanan, the ardent self-harming fan of Rajinikanth from Tamil Nadu; Sujith Thomas, an unemployed job seeker from Wayanad, Kerala, who imagines that he is present with Allu Arjun in his private room that is all-filled with posters and stickers of his favourite hero without sparing an inch-gap; an entire village of Bagganadu in Karnataka that ‘worships’ ‘Kiccha’ Sudeep. The anchor-point of the whole documentary is the insight given by Psychiatrist Yamini Kannappan. She shadows the understanding of a psyche through the distinction of a fan and a fanatic. The fan who watches cinema for entertainment and the other fan who feels the admiration of the film despite its flaws as the responsibility bestowed upon him/her. After all, they all are ‘loyal fans’!
Kannappan talks about the phenomenon of para-social relationship to understand the psychology of celebrity worshipping. Parasocial relationship is when you have an extreme one-sided relationship with a celebrity, while the celebrity doesn’t even know your existence. So, to manifest their existence, a few do altruistic activities on the eve of their favourite star’s birthday; a few do the multi-million hashtag trendings on X (formerly Twitter); a few pour packets of milk on the posters, hoardings etc.; a few go to an extreme and murdering the fans of their rival hero.
Allu Arjun believes that the ‘energy’ of fan clubs can be utilised for a ‘greater cause’ and Kiccha Sudeep feels that it is beyond his control to have a say on fan clubs, “They own you”, he says. Meanwhile, “Without fans, the (cinema) business is nothing” declares Dhananjayan, the Tamil cinema producer. “Now, the theatrical and non-theatrical value of any film based on its social media trending”, he says, implying the power that online fan clubs have on the commercial viability of the film.
Since the inception of India’s first ever fan club for a cinema hero in 1954 for MGR, the symbiotic relationship of cinema industry and fans is long-running and appears never-ending– as long as the primal nature of grouping and aping exists. Fanatics is an interesting pop-culture documentary about the frontrunners of the cinema industry– fans and their fan clubs.
TF Rating: 3.5/5
Fanatics is now available to stream on DocuBay. It can also be streamed on aggregators like Airtel Xtream and Amazon Prime Video with premium subscription.
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