How do Tamils feel when North Indian actresses represent/portray Tamil characters in their movies?
quora.com
Apr 8, 2018 9:35 PM
Shurya Visu
B.Com from PSG College of Arts and Science, Coimbatore (2019)
8w ago
Until and unless the story demands, we have no objection towards casting North Indian actresses. A Visual Medium has its scope beyond region and language. It is an another medium which relies more upon emotions.
We never opposed towards casting Manisha Koirala in Bombay movie or Amy Jackson (a Britain citizen to be more precise) in Madarasapattinam. But, just because a lady has fair skin isn't enough to cast her in a lead role.
The former one (Dhanya Ravichandran) is the fair tone prevailing in Tamilnadu and the latter one (Dhanshika) is dusky (native to us) in complexion. Both are looking great. It is the story which must decide the heroine. Director's racial judgements affect the films on release.
Unlike the old/veteran actresses, today no one dubs for oneself. Many of them barely know a few words in Tamil and at times the lip sync is virtually not there. Pity on audiences.
Though Ramya Krishnan is Tamilian, she speaks fine in Telugu.
Revathi speaks well in Tamil despite of being a Malayali.
Atleast other heroines(till 80's) who relied on dubbing were good at lip sync. It is missing completely at present heroines (there are exceptions but, mostly). And, they suck at giving expressions. Their roles are mostly limited to be a glam doll and only few break that ice. That demands huge effort and struggle.
The conclusion is that “We are absolutely fine with casting North Indian actresses if they are good at acting”. We appreciate their talent like no one else. Because, cinema is in our blood. It is an emotion to us.
SVS :)
Gayathri Rathnam
Have been watching Kollywood's movies and serials for more than two decades.
40w ago
We are used to seeing heroines from the North India, act in our movies for past few decades. In fact, if a Tamil girl acts as a heroine or as the female lead, we will at times wonder, how did this happen?.
This lady, despite ruling the roost in Kollywood for years together, still gathers attention, anywhere she goes around Tamil Nadu.
Mrs.Kushboo Sundar
The other heroines from Mumbai, who dominated Kollywood are
Mrs Simran Bagga
This actress, set the bar, that attractive girls should be thin, tall and fair. Until she started to sign up for movies like Thulladha Manamum Thullum, Vaali, Paarthen Rasithen, Parthale Paravasam , Kannathil Muthamittal , Kovilpatti Veeralakshmi, she was known and sought after for dancing skills.
Mrs.Jyothika Saravanan
Mr.Subbu Panchu Arunachalam, was the one who suggested that she should be introduced as heroine and it happened. She had to wait for years to get the break she deserved. Until then, Tamil audience were crazy about her for her eyes and chirpiness.
She went ahead to break the boundaries set by her predecessors and rightfully claimed her spot in Kollywood. The following scene was the testament for how she had grown as a seasoned actress over the period of time.
There are still youngsters in Tamil Nadu who loved Mrs.Genelia D ‘Souza for her role as Hasiniin the movie Santhosh Subramaniam.
Most of these heroines, were not initially offered female centric or better roles in any regional cinema industry for that matter. They gradually had to prove themselves and they earned it over a period of time.
When Ms.Tanisha Mukerji was approached for a role in the movie, Unnale Unnale by late director Mr.Jeeva, she refused it, even before reading the script. She had told him, you guys approach us only for glamour. But Mr.Jeeva had asked her to read the script and then decide. She eventually signed up.
On the other hand, Tamilians are also a reason for domination of heroines who do speak fluent Tamil in Tamil movies. If not now, at least a couple of decades ago, girls were not allowed to pursue acting as a career. There were few Tamilian heroines, but they were just a few.
Many directors and producers have been questioned why they prefer heroines who do speak Tamil over Tamil girls. The director has blamed it as the producer’s decision and vice versa.
Ms Trisha and Ms.Samantha despite being girls from Tamil Nadu, were also not offered big roles in the initial stages of their career. Their progress was also more or less like their North Indian predecessors.
On a concluding note, we have no issues at all, when a very fair, thin, big eyes girl wearing western attire acts as a Tamil ponnu (local word for girl in Tamil) alongside our Tamil heroes. We do know, that is how it works for few movies.
But when it comes to movies from Directors like Bala, Mani Ratnam, Balu Mahendra, Bharathi Raja, Balaji Shaktivel, Vikraman, Agathiyan, Vasanth etc, we expect them to act and emote as well.
p.s :
When Ms.Tamannaah was signed up for Kanden Kadhalai, I was cursing the director. I loved Jab We Met and felt that the Tamil remake will not turn out to be as good as the original one. But I was totally wrong. This lady lived as Anjali from Theni, throughout the movie. I started liking her after watching this movie.
Images courtesy : Google
Kavitha Dhandapani
studied at College of Engineering Guindy, Anna University, Tamil Nadu, India
13w ago
Feel racially discriminated. That too directors use only North Indian fair skinned ACTRESSES never ACTORS. This shows not just racism but also parochial patriarchy. Every actor wants ONLY fair skinned actresses despite themselves having dark complexion.
This has created a virtual idea of beauty. It is imposing that fair skin is beauty. They are doing no good other than fuelling the sales of fairness creams.
Both men and women will have insecurities over their looks naturally. But such insecurities are more among girls specially about their skin tone. Believing in the false ideas of beauty, almost every guy wants or at least dreams about having a fair skinned girl as their partner. When a guy with moderate complexion marries a girl with dark complexion, he feels that he is sacrificing something and being generous towards that girl. This attitude is because of continuous imposition of false ideas of beauty.
Cinema industry is highly favourable to men. They have never imported a fair skinned actor and paired up with a tamil actress with moderate/ dark complexion. This racial discrimination is more skewed towards girls.
This is how directors pair up actors and actresses. I wonder what percentage of tamil girls actually have skin tone like Tamannah's skin tone.
This is how a tamil actress would look like.
We are proud of our skin tone. But not the tamil cinema industry.
Vivek Turuwar
Guy who witness cavery die slowly
24w ago
Even after more than 70 odd years of Tamil cinema we could hand pick successful native actress.
In early years flim industry required actress who had fair skin complexion and they should be professional dancers (barathanatiyam) because it was era of black and white flims. So every actor and actress in the flim needs to have a fair complexion so that the picture could atleast have detailed output to some extend and majority of drama artists chosen on big screen were fair.If not layers and layers of pan-cake (facial cream at that time) were used to make them look fair.
As far as dance is concerned directors thought that it was easy for professional dancers to deliver expressions on close up romantic shots.(Actress such as Padmini,Savithri,Saroja Devi,K R Vijaya,Vijayanti Mala,Jayalalitha)
This could only be done by women from Brahmin background as majority dancers were Brahmins but Tamil community irrespective of caste was very conservative at that time.
Actor Sivakumar father of actor Surya who kept a low profile on controversies even at peak of his career. Once he addressed that it was really hard for him to get married as everyone from his community denied any marriage proposal forwarded by his family mentioning that he was an actor.
If that's the situation for an actor with least controversies in his times think about public opinion on actress in big screen. So no community had any forward thinking which was quiet natural at that time.
(70 TN was reluctant to send girl child to school)
(80 TN started sending girls to school)
This system prevailed in 70s and 80s but the difference was more creative directors wanted some raw talent but the conservative thought was still reluctant in Tamil society. So directors like Balachandar and Barathiraja scouted for fresh face from other parts and they succeeded and this time it was Kerala which gave good actress thanks to their educated and forward thinking life style. This was the period which was dominated by actress from other states (Radha, Ambika, Sri Priya, Sarika, Revathi), but they were overthrown by local girl Sri Devi “thanks to Barthiraja” . All section of society enjoyed her screen presence as she filled the girl next door feel and had a brilliant acting skill. Another good find was Radika, but she was from a family known for acting. So no suprise with her acting skill.
(90 was the period where every family TN gave a serious thought about sending their daughters to higher education)
90s saw the rise of increasing imports from north as Bollywood started its glam formula and south movie makers felt the pressure considerably. Especially Kollwood and Tollywood felt the heat as Bollywood heros were more handsome with Khans and Kapoors and actress were no more hesitant to show some skin. People down south started to admire new trend set by bollywood and this forced flim makers south to change or adopt new concept. As they can't change their heros so they imported heroines from north especially models like (Nagma ,Muntaz ,Ramba) who can be paid much lesser compared to Madhuri,Karizma and Kajol. This was the period in which movies down south lost scope for acting among actress and they served different purpose.
This trend was slowly equalised with ocassional love based movies from young generation actors like Vijay,Ajith,Prasanth and for this kind of movies directors prefered south actress than north (Shalini,Devayani,Soundarya,Sangeetha,Meena , Heera and occasionally Ramba).
In early 2000 TN got hit by two Munbai storms called Simran and Jothika as they were literally every where and acted with every possible hero.Initially they came to serve the same purpose as other models did but their commitment towards acting earned them the place which Kushboo did in late 80s.
In mid 2000 as there was more scope for fashion designers down south the scope for south indian models went up as well. Girls started to take modeling as part time and full time profession just like north in mid 1990s. This gave kollywood more needed actresses who can speak Tamil unfortunately not all survived except a few like Trisha who went on for another 10 years on full throttle.
(This is 2016 TN community has grown in terms of forward thinking but not too much as girls are taking VJ and RJ jobs seriously and serials as well )
There are handfull of actress in the industry who has Tamil background and the numbers are increasing hope we have few more Sri Devi's in future
Abhinav Avadhani
A two decade experience with life, still learning.
40w ago
As Balaji Viswanathan correctly mentioned, directors cast North Indian actresses when the story doesn’t actually needs the female role. In fact, when the story often requires someone to star opposite the male hero, just for the heck of it, any female actor from any part of the world will do.
Look at the movie poster below. It is the Tamil movie Tamizhan, starring a famous face in Tamil cinema, Vijay. And starring alongside him is..guess who? Priyanka Chopra. Yes, PC. I’ve seen this movie and believe me, such waste of talent. There are so many who keep doing such roles (their choice completely, though) and seem to add little to their talents and to the industry.
It seems like the entire movie industry looks away when women are cast in these movies purely to show their skin, get stalked and chased around inappropriately by the male lead, dance in some absurdly tuned songs, cry when the hero is getting beaten, cry when the villain harms her and, once again, cry when the hero saves her.
I would blame both the actor and the industry when they produce such movies. Yes, there are some who begin in tardy movies and slowly carve out a space for themselves among the elite of the industry, but, those are just exceptions.
Rohit Nigam
Can watch movies for money ...
40w ago
I am not a Tamilian, however I think I know how Tamilians feel.
They feel the same way a North Indian feels when non-Indian/half-Indian/ultra-fair woman represents a normal North Indian girl in the Hindi movies.
Most of the Indian movies are about escapism where the women are merely for eye candy. The more beautiful (fairer) the woman is, the better the Hero looks. It doesn't matter if the love interest of the lead male character is actually 20-30 years younger.
Most Indian males have obsession for young, petite, fair women. If there is one thing that they would want had they have all the money and power and fame, then that would be a young, pretty, fair woman.
And perhaps that's why they want the lead male actor to romance a woman who has these characteristics. It's their fantasy fulfilled!
Balaji N K
works at Isuzu
37w ago
It’s a pan-Indian malaise.
The patriarchal mindset of the movie industry is a legacy of the Hindu/Indian mindset, where the man is considered supreme, while the women is vilified.
Though the goddess of knowledge and arts is a women, Sarasvati, she and all other goddess of the Hindu pantheon is still subservient to the male Trinity.
Tamilnadu is still leagues ahead from the other Indian industry, where a non-Tamil hero could attain cult status — the great Rajnikanth, who is actually of Marathi+Kannadiga ancestry, attained the utmost admiration and love of the Tamil people.
Imagine this happening in Telugu cinema, where the male protagonist has been firmly held in the hands of Kammas and other son of the soil.
Bollywood too, would always roots for a Punjabi/Sindhi/UP/Bihari/or Muslim North Indians as the male lead — few exceptions of Mithunda (a Bengali) or Sachin (a Marathi) or a South Indian (Kamal Hassan, Madhavan) are too few to reckon.
While the actresses from all hues and regions had been accepted in Bollywood— as long as she is young and fair. Vajayanthi Mala, Meenakshi Sheshadri, Aishwarya, Hema Malini, Deepika Padukone — all southies have garnered as much success, as the Bengali — Bipasha, Rani, Maushami, Sharmila.
The pan-Indian mindset is to watch a hero-driven story, a Ram who drives the Ramayana or the Krishna/Arjun who drives the Mahabharata.
The stories and roles for women had been plagued with centuries of stereotypes against them — this even when — most CBSE toppers has been girls in every state of India for last two decades, IAS toppers has been women— girls can outperform boys in every task, every exam, every IITJEE, every GRE, every math's Olympiad— Sakuntala Devi the human computer genius was such a South Indian Kannadiga Brahmin women.
Unlike the Indian movies, the career of a Hollywood actress lasts almost equal to her male counterpart. Meryl Streep, Elizabeth Taylor, Judy Garland — numerous examples of women artists in USA, UK, Europe, who have a extended flourishing career — almost like Lata Manesghkar and Asha Bhosle enjoyed as a singers — again too few to reckon.
One positive outcome of this Tamil-actress-doing good in Bollywood and North-Indian-actress-doing good in Tamil/Telugu cinema is similar to the effect of the Indian cricket team. It helps, indirectly, the cementing the unity of the Indian Republic.
I feel that, any such glue, which could keep this unique human experiment of unifying such a diverse ethnic groups of people under one mosaic of India — is welcome.
Mithu — a Bengali, managed to become the King of Bollywood albeit B Grade movies for a decade— he knew dancing too :P
Rajnikanth — a Marathi/Kannadiga — become the all time superstar of the Tamil Cinema
Sakuntala Devi
Siva E. Loganathan
Maverick Damirican
38w ago
Personally I feel sick of it. It’s a turn off for me and I skip movies with north Indian leading actresses. Recently I was going to watch the movie Dharma Durai as it received good reviews. But the fact that the leading heroine is a fair skinned actress from North India in stark contrast to the hero put me off. So I stopped watching the film. Majority of actresses in Tamil films are fair but fair skin is not that common in Tamil Nadu. They get cast because of India’s national obsession with fair skin. I think it’s a form of racism and self-denial to have foreigners play the role of local women. They are neither racially nor linguistically Tamil, what purpose do they serve other than to satisfy the fair skin obsession of perverted men? When Hollywood casts Whites for the role of Asians everyone loses their minds, but Kollywood has been getting away with similar thing for too long which needs to change.
It’s pretty silly to see actors who look like Vijayakanth being paired with a young, lean and beautiful fair skinned north Indian model. It sends the wrong impression to mediocre looking gullible fanboys who try to emulate their heroes and think they can score a beauty like them. It doesn’t turn out well for these women when they reject advances from these entitled creeps.
I believe there are many desperate sex perverts in the film industry who expect sexual favours from beautiful women in exchange for roles. These old nasty perverts could only dream of even going anywhere near a young and pretty fair skinned model. So when they get the chance they exploit it to their full advantage to fulfil their dark desires. The type of women they cast in their movies is indicative of their perverted mindset. It’s like an exploration into the sex fantasy of the filmmakers than anything.
Here’s the proof of my strong accusations…
Director Suraj, who makes crappy masala films, made the following lewd comment about North Indian actresses who he admits to objectifying in his movies:
“Basically, we are a bit of a low class audience. The audience pays money to watch the hero put up a fight and to see the heroine in full glamour. I’m not a big fan of the heroine wearing a full saree; if we’re paying good money to watch a film, we should expect Tamannah to be completely glamourous. If you’re expecting a movie dedicated to art, then that’s something else altogether; a commercial movie should have glamour … because the heroines who have made it big today are the ones who have done these glamourous roles. Boys should enjoy the film in the end, that’s what I say. My costume designer would present me my heroine covered till her knees. I’d ask him to cut it short. He’d say madam would get angry. I’d reply go tell madam that the audience will end up thrashing me. It’s not for nothing they're paid in lakhs and crores!”[1]
Recently the Tamil actress Varalaxmi Sarathkumar opened up about the “casting couch culture” within the film industry:
Varalaxmi, who works in the Tamil film industry, wrote that in a recent working meeting she had been propositioned by a programming head of a leading TV channel."Towards the end of the half hour meeting, he asked me, 'So when can we meet outside?' To which I replied, 'Regarding some other work?' He said, 'No... for other things'," she said in a postthat has been liked thousands of times.She declined the offer, writing: "I didn't come to the industry to be treated like a piece of meat.""Women in the film industry have accepted the fate of the 'casting couch'," Varalaxmi told BBC Trending, referring to the widely alleged practice whereby actresses are given parts in films in return for granting sexual favours."They act like it's like normal," she says.[2]
The claim that there’s a popular demand by the audience for these glamour women is I think overblown by these perverts to justify their own fetishes. In any society an elite minority group with their power and influence can and do shape the prevailing mores of society at large.
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