LONG BEFORE C Joseph Vijay asked Tamil Nadu for political power, he had already asked, and got, something more intimate: recognition.For three decades, he had found a space in homes across Tamil Nadu, arriving through first-day-first-show whistles, television reruns, college dance floors, festival releases and YouTube clips.So by the time he launched Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) in February 2024, Vijay could make a political claim that other new entrants would have found impossible to match: “I did not enter homes after launching TVK,” he would tell supporters. “I launched TVK only after entering every home through cinema.”In a state where cinema has been a key medium to represent and reinforce Tamil/Dravidian culture and identity politics, Vijay fits into a familiar pattern — from C N Annadurai and M Karunanidhi, who used theatre and film dialogues to carry Dravidian ideas into popular imagination, to M G Ramachandran and later, Jayalalithaa, who commanded both cinematic and political loyalty.
Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) chief Vijay.Yet, Vijay also breaks that tradition. While his astonishing electoral success within two years of his political launch has invited the inevitable comparison with MGR, the other superstar who went on to be Chief Minister, there are crucial differences.
While MGR came from inside the Dravidian movement before founding the AIADMK, Vijay’s politics did not grow out of party apprenticeship or public agitation. It grew from fandom first, then welfare activity, then carefully rationed political speech. That makes him both less prepared than MGR and, in another sense, more mysterious.
So when his TVK ended up as the single biggest party in the Tamil Nadu elections, Vijay left almost everyone stunned, except perhaps those in whose homes he had existed since much before, as a poster, as a song, as dialogues or as dance moves.Story continues below this ad
Romantic hero to Thalapathy
To understand Vijay’s politics, one must first understand Vijay the screen figure.
He was not always the swaggering “Thalapathy” or commander, the honorary title bestowed on him by his fans. The early Vijay was softer, leaner, more boyish. In the 1990s, he became a romantic hero with a particular middle-class accessibility. In films such as Poove Unakkaga, Kadhalukku Mariyadhai, Love Today and Thulladha Manamum Thullum, he was the young man who suffered politely, loved earnestly and waited long enough for the audience to bless him.
Tamil cinema has produced many macho heroes. But here was a hero who was not merely beating villains; he was convincing mothers, sisters and college girls that he could be trusted.
Then came the transformation. The lover slowly became the mass hero. Ghilli gave him speed, comic timing, physical assurance and the velocity of a star who had learned how to move a crowd. Thirupaachi, Sivakasi, Pokkiri and later Thuppakki, Kaththi, Mersal, Sarkar, Master, Beast, Varisu and Leo built different versions of the same promise: here was a man who could dance, joke, love, suffer insult, explode into violence and then return to the centre of the frame.Story continues below this ad
So when his TVK ended up as the single biggest party in the Tamil Nadu elections, Vijay left almost everyone stunned, except perhaps those in whose homes he had existed since much before, as a poster, as a song, as dialogues or as dance moves.But it was his dance moves — fast and uninhibited — that travelled before his speeches did. In Tamil Nadu, dance is more than just an accessory to stardom. If Rajinikanth had style and Kamal had craft, Vijay had a certain rhythm that young men could imitate and children could attempt at school functions.
In his movies, Vijay is often wronged but not broken. He may mock power, but he does not look powerless. He carries on his shoulders a certain Tamil commercial-film ethic: protect the weak, punish the corrupt, respect mothers, distrust arrogant elites, and deliver justice with enough style to
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