Shadowing Lines of Stardom and Politics: Deconstructing Image of “Rebel Star” Ambareesh

Introduction

It will not be a fair ascription if Indian films referred to films made lonely in the Hindi language, primarily produced through studios based in Mumbai. South Indian films comprise of movies made in four states with evidently demarked regional acceptation and film stars enjoying a dissimilar fandom. Rajinikanth, Chiranjeevi, Mohanlal, Vishnuvardhan, and Ambareesh are (were) the stalwarts of contemporary South Indian films which gained fame in the late 1970s as superstars in their respective film spaces (Raghavendra, 2017). Among these, the first four actors consciously turned people’s admiration to systematically imaginer themselves in cinema’s area and to politics occasionally. However, Kannada actor and politician M. H Ambareesh’s populism and charisma surpass the glory of his contemporary actors, despite him never tried to do so. He never tried to build a deliberate positive public image for himself. He ironically lived as one of the unruliest personalities in the Southern film fraternity by unabashedly indulging himself in gambling and boozing despite those instances becoming a controversy often. He was ill-reputed for making chauvinistic public statements yet garnered considerable public support, which is difficult to explain.

Despite being an active politician who elected to the Parliament and the state legislature for over seven times in total, he found himself wound up in innumerable controversies. That said, unlike his fellow politicians, the public never viewed him as an imposter or a Tartuffe. Many of the experts interviewed for this research attributed this strange public regard towards Ambareesh to his dialect (precisely Mandya or old Mysore slang), which inadvertently led him to create a distinctly credible identity from the mass, helping him find a strong political base. Despite avidly resorting to inappropriate language, Ambareesh was perceived as a do-gooder and straight shooter, especially when it came to troubleshooting Karnataka film industry-related controversies. Then the question of what accurately creates a fandom arises. Was it the widely perceived on-screen charm or off-screen psyche that accepted Mr Ambareesh as he is? Does his Mandya dialect add fuel to the regional jingoistic and chauvinistic craving of the mass, making him the people’s representative? Or was he just a mere construction of cinema that eventually helped him attain political success? Could the success of Ambareesh be owed to his allegiance to a dominant caste base in Southern Karnataka (Raghavendra, 2011)? These questions will investigate the arguments presented further in this chapter.

There is an abundance of television interviews principally on the lines of the whimsical nature of Ambareesh’s public statements and a couple of informative books in Kannada, essentially appeasing Ambareesh fans. However, the current researcher could not find a single critical article constructing or deconstructing the image of Ambareesh on his stardom or populist personality. Hence, this chapter follows a partially ethnographic analysis that includes personal conversations with Ambareesh’s fan and interviews from the journalist community who have had the opportunity to engage in close encounters with Mr Ambareesh over the last few decades. Also, popular films of Mr Ambareesh’s quoted as and when required, which are mostly subjective interpretations of the author.