Tamil Nadu is the birth place of cinema and from here films in all four regional languages, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada, were made in the past.  Over the years, cinema became the most prevalent entertainment in the rural areas of Tamil Nadu. One can go even without a dinner but not a cinema show run in those “touring talkies” as they were called. They were present everywhere in the village side and the maximum number of cinema theatres in the country were in this State.  Even when there were other forms of entertainment, cinema occupies a special place in the life of people in Tamil Nadu. People took the events in movies so seriously and they believed them to be true real life stuff. Thus one will not dismiss filmy events like dressing by young heroes and heroines. New fashions in dresses will be set in motion by new movies and the dress will become the fashion for the day until a new dress fashion is introduced by a new movie. Heroes in cinema became demigods. The path-breaking development was the entry of the popular hero actor, M.

To go into the various causes and circumstances that led to this development is a very difficult task. Shorn of all details, the political arena was ripe for a cinema personality to take over political lead. Also, the cinema field developed a hero based on political followings. M.G.R. could not have shined as a hero because he did not have any theoretical talents for becoming a leading hero.  What he did was very unique. He adopted some theoretic tactics to address the basic instinct appealing to a large extent of rural masses. For instance, he will act only in a role of helping the poor and always fight for justice in all his movies. The hero will not smoke nor did he consume alcohol. Also he will be always coming to the rescue of everybody in distress and his fight against the worst enemy of poor people either in the rural village settings or in the highly populous slums of Madras. He invariably shall rescue the heroine in distress. The heroine being always an attractive woman she will be after him rather than the hero making advances to her. At last he will marry her after rescuing her from many rough hooligans who are the villain’s men in Tamil cinema. M.G.R. also worshiped his mother in all his movies and always shall have unmatched out of the world affection for his sister and in many movies propose to forsake his love to get his loving sister to marry to a scheming bridegroom whose father would be a declared enemy of the lover’s father. It is very difficult to locate a movie that characterizes a brother or uncle for MGR.

Yes. You are right by now you could have correctly guessed! The planned characterizations in his movies were originally meant for pulling crowds to the MGR movies to make them box office hits.

But, in the later years problems started. Many party leaders felt that he was slowly elbowing them out and it was particularly Mr. M. Karunanidhi in those days succeeding Mr. Annadurai felt that MGR is a force within the DMK and on principles of party politics it is detrimental to allow MGR in the party.  Mr. M.Karunanidhi wanted to curtail the growth of M.G.R. clout in DMK.   Various things happened that lead to the expulsion of M.G.R. from the D.M.K. party.  M.G.R. was forced to start a political outfit and the ADMK was born.  A new chapter has been written in the political history of Tamilnadu.

For those of you who are uninitiated, the party was originally called, Anna DMK. But, when there was a move by the Government of India to ban Regional Political Parties MGR rechristened his party as All India Anna DMK. Now it is an “all-India” party and you cannot ban it.

What is the status of cinema Vs politics even now, there is a possibility that another hero may be developed as a political leader and become a chief minister in T.N.