See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311550478 Rajinikanth and Brando: Carnivalesque performances of two Ageing Superstars Article in Studies in South Asian Film and Media · October 2016 DOI: 10.1386/safm.8.1.27_1 CITATIONS 0 READS 7,642 3 authors, including: Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Asian Cinema View project Peter C. Pugsley University of Adelaide 33 PUBLICATIONS 121 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Ben Mccann University of Adelaide 40 PUBLICATIONS 226 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE All content following this page was uploaded by Peter C. Pugsley on 26 February 2018. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.
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See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311550478
Rajinikanth and Brando: Carnivalesque performances of two Ageing
Superstars
Article in Studies in South Asian Film and Media · October 2016
DOI: 10.1386/safm.8.1.27_1
CITATIONS
0READS
7,642
3 authors, including:
Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:
Asian Cinema View project
Peter C. Pugsley
University of Adelaide
33 PUBLICATIONS 121 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE
Ben Mccann
University of Adelaide
40 PUBLICATIONS 226 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE
All content following this page was uploaded by Peter C. Pugsley on 26 February 2018.
The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.
PETER C. PUGSLEY, DHAMU PONGIYANNAN AND BEN MCCANNUniversity of Adelaide
Rajinikanth and Brando:
Carnivalesque performances
of two ageing superstars
ABSTRACT
Film stars are seldom out of the media spotlight. They are subject to a Bakhtinian ‘carnivalesque’ world in which the intrusiveness of the media turns their every move into performance. This study explores the lives of two very different ‘superstar’ actors: Kollywood’s Rajinikanth and Hollywood’s Marlon Brando. Rajinikanth is a stalwart of India’s Tamil cinema and a revered public figure who has appeared in over 150 films. His fame and adulation increases with each successive film or appearance, despite his advancing years. On the other hand, Brando’s reputation as an actor of global importance became overshadowed by his tumultuous personal life, ballooning weight and reluctance to embrace ageing that reflected a ‘grotesque realism’ and ultimately damaged his reputation. This comparative study investi-gates how Brando and Rajinikanth’s on- and off-screen personas are refracted as carnivalesque performances through their successive personal and physical crises, and then reconfigured and displayed again for audiences.
INTRODUCTION
The death of famed Hollywood actor Marlon Brando in 2004 was reported in the New York Times as the end of an era for a man increasingly known as ‘a tabloid curiosity, an overweight target for late night comics’ (Lyman 2004). No
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such indignity has been bestowed upon the ageing Tamil actor Rajinikanth (born c.1950) – popularly known as Rajini and no less a superstar in India than Brando in the west. Both men lived much of their lives in the creatively multivocal, carnivalesque (in the Bakhtinian sense) ‘world upside down’ of the film star (Stallybrass and White 1986). In radically contrasting societies, both stars overturned expectations of social propriety and fixed class posi-tions in their acting, and both experienced suffering under the intrusiveness of the media eager to turn everyday life into performance. However, while the lives and careers of these two very different actors, both truly deserving of the title ‘cinematic superstar’, have played out as carnivalesque perfor-mances, Rajinikanth is the one to have emerged with his dignity intact; a stalwart of Tamil cinema who has appeared in over 150 films and become a revered public figure. On the other hand, Brando’s career trajectory is tradi-tionally seen as one of immense promise squandered, with the early historic film performances brutally obscured by the jobbing bit-parts of his last years. Brando has been extensively studied, first as a Method Actor whose influence loomed large over a whole swath of post-1970s American film actors (Pacino, De Niro, Nicholson), and then as an example of a performer who fell out of love with the craft of acting, retreating to a desert island as one personal tragedy after another emerged. Adding to these personal crises, critics of his work were unrelentingly savage; even upon his death one critic wrote that most of the film work Brando did was ‘shameful junk, ill chosen, slapdash and devoid of soul’ (Thomson 2004).1 Like Brando in Hollywood, Rajinikanth garnered a profile as one of the most influential actors in the cinematic history of his culture. Often referred to as ‘Rajini’, he remains – into his 60s, and with a series of personal crises behind him – a film icon of abiding appeal and popularity, although one that remains virtually unknown in the West. Through textual analysis of films, press materials, academic and biographical publications we investigate the physical transformation and dramatic reinven-tions of these two iconic actors as they concealed, endured and struggled with painful personal crises that either fed into or problematized their status as timeless artists.
Analysis of events in the lives of both actors, both on- and off-screen, reveals that the personal suffering of Brando and Rajini both complicated and colluded with their screen performances and the identification of audi-ences with their characters. Perhaps the most striking difference between the personae of the two actors is that the Brando established himself acting as a hero (or anti-hero) from the start while Rajini’s cinematic persona evolved from playing minor roles, then roles as a villain before establishing himself as a cinematic hero and superstar. The voyeuristic intentions of the audi-ence, armed with prior knowledge of an actor’s personal life, feeds into Philip Drake’s contention that ‘conceptualizing performance involves not just read-ing actors’ performances, […] but also a wider consideration of the ontology of film and of the epistemological frames through which screen performance makes sense’ (2006: 84). In other words, spectators construct meaning from a performance through an accumulation of not only the sound and vision on the screen, but anchor this (in a Bourdieusian sense) to their specific ‘cultural capital, expectations, and memories of previous performances’ (Drake 2006: 85). The epistemological framing of the tumultuous and often tortured personal lives of both Rajini and Brando provides audiences with a tempo-ral lens through which to view Bakhtin’s ‘grotesque realism’ as found in the ageing bodies of these cinematic superstars. Before turning to reasons why
1. Thomsonliststheflops:Désiree(1954),The Teahouse Of The August Moon(1956),Sayonara (1957),The Young Lions(1958),Mutiny on the Bounty(1962),The Ugly American(1963),Bedtime Story (1964),The Saboteur Codenamed Morituri(1965),Appaloosa(1966),A Countess From Hong Kong(1967),Candy (1968),The Night Of The Following Day(1969),The Nightcomers(1971), Superman(1978),The Formula(1981)andChristopher Columbus(1992).
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these two actors have encountered different experiences as ageing stars, it is instructive to look at the background of these two very unique personalities, and it is to Rajini that we first turn, to explore how public and private percep-tions of him as man and as actor were characterized by a frequently positive network of meanings. On the other hand Brando encapsulated carnivalesque disorder in the Bakhtinian sense, by pulling down the barrier between ‘actor’ and performer. In his denunciation of screen acting, and the Hollywood model in particular, he rejected the formally aesthetic and symmetrical for the chaotic and vulgar.
RAJINIKANTH
Rajini’s life, like Brando’s, seems to have had every move documented, with his star identity established early in his career. In contrast to Brando’s stormy life (both on- and off-screen) and the American icon’s physical decline, Rajinikanth’s carefully negotiated public persona and his private life have remained relatively stable, despite some controversies and painful life experi-ences. Rajini’s on-screen characters inhabit a seemingly ageless world where he always has a full head of jet-black hair and (usually) a neatly trimmed moustache. He is the ideal action star, making time stand still as a perma-nent 40-year-old. Off-screen he is quite at ease as the older gentleman, a proud grandfather with his balding head prominent and either clean-shaven or sporting scruffy grey stubble. While Brando suffered through ballooning weight and a seemingly despondent reluctance to embrace the indicators of ageing, Rajini makes no attempt to hide his corporeal transformations in his everyday life. Both actors underwent periods of hospitalization (for Brando in 1966, 2001 and 2003, and for Rajini most notably in 2011), which invited mass comment and speculation.
As with Brando’s modest upbringing, Rajini’s humble beginnings appeared to offer little promise. His place of birth is listed variously as Bangalore, India, or, in some accounts, in the state of Tamil Nadu itself, but we do know that he was born Shivaji Rao Gaekwad (also spelt Gaikwad), and had two older brothers and an older sister. His mother died when he was just 5 years old, and when he was in his teens he took up his first job as a carpenter, then as a bus conductor (Pongiyannan 2015: 103). He became increasingly interested in the theatre, but with neither a theatrical background nor any support because of his lowly place in a poverty-stricken system, the young Shivaji Rao had slim prospects. He eventually moved from the state of Karnataka to the neighbour-ing state of Tamil Nadu, and its capital city of Chennai (formerly Madras), to what is commonly called Kollywood, the film capital of South India.2 Success was not immediate, though, for Tamil was not his mother tongue and he was unable to effectively communicate in his new linguistic and cultural environ-ment (Sreekanth 2008).
Just as Brando arrived in Hollywood during a dramatic move towards ‘method acting’, Shivaji Rao arrived in Chennai as Tamil cinema was witness-ing a paradigm shift in terms of storytelling, equated with the revival of cinema spurred by the French New Wave. The New Wave in Tamil cinema saw the rise of young and ambitious directors eager to break from the traditional forms of Tamil cinema, and they sought actors beyond the orthodox mould of melodramatic Tamil actors in their attempt to inject a sense of realism in the new cinema. The young Shivaji Rao arrived at the right time and met up with the right people. Darker in complexion than any previous or existing
Tamil film hero, Rajini had facial features that did not match the postcard handsomeness of earlier matinee idols (Pongiyannan 2015: 103). Nonetheless, noted director K. Balachandar saw something in this new and exciting young stage actor, and encouraged him to learn to speak Tamil. With his distinctive demeanour, strange affectations and weird Tamil accent, Shivaji Rao made his debut as Rajinikanth – the new name suggested by Balachandar to avoid confusion with another actor, Sivaji Ganesan (1928–2001). Barely two years before Rajini’s entry, the departure of Tamil cinema’s previously unconquera-ble actor Marudhur Gopalan Ramachandran (known universally as MGR and feted as a ‘saint of the poor’) had left a crater in the Tamil film industry. Tamil cinema was ripe for a new, slightly exotic Everyman who could represent hope for outsiders and the downtrodden. Other actors, such as M. K. Muthu, attempted to emulate MGR, but such performers were not well received by audiences. Rajini’s debut in the film industry was through Apoorva Raagangal/The Rare Melodies (Balachandar, 1975). His role (Pandiyan) – a runaway husband who returns to his estranged wife on the verge of his death – brings chaos in this controversial narrative where his middle-aged wife is about to remarry a young man. In such a polyphonic complexity, Pandiyan enters as a dominant orthodoxy (marriage) that resists change (remarriage) and acts as a defining feature of the story. After this film, Rajini went on to star in movies in over seven different languages, including Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali and English (Anandhan 2004: 26.1).
Much like Brando, Rajini created – either spontaneously or as a desper-ate attempt to find his space in the film industry – his own charismatic style, which made him popular even in Bollywood’s Hindi cinema.3 Rajini’s success in Tamil cinema prompted invitations to co-star with the legendary Hindi actor Amitabh Bachchan, an unusual gesture coming from the hegemonic Hindi film industry. Meanwhile, Rajini’s unconventional appearance and ability to infuse some rather peculiar elements in his acting continued to be acclaimed by Tamil audiences. For instance, his delivery of rapidly paced dialogue was different from the measured theatrical speech of conventional actors, and the ways he defiantly flicked his cigar or cigarette, or carelessly drank alcohol, delighted his fans. Former leading actors had never exhib-ited such outrageous behaviour in films. Rajini was also praised for his stunt scenes, as his agility and swift movements differed from other actors, most of whom relied on stunt-people to perform their acts of daring. On top of this, while fair-skinned actors such as MGR were seen as extraordinarily hand-some, Rajini was viewed as the Tamil Everyman whose dark skin and caste were constant reminders of his non-elite status in society. Brando similarly projected the image of the common man in his early years, despite his pretty-boy good looks exemplified by his working-class depiction of Kowalski in a T-shirt in Streetcar.
Rajini’s on-screen behaviours made smoking and drinking not only masculine activities but normalized these transgressive actions as sophisti-cated, modern pursuits. The image of the rebellious Rajini began with his very first film, Apoorava Raagangal, where such activities were remarked upon in the dialogue, with Rajini’s character philosophically uttering in Dharmathin Thalaivan/Righteous Leader (Muthuraman, 1988), ‘Non-alcoholics suffer from many diseases whereas drinkers will have only one disease – death’. Rajini even became noted for the exceptionally funny (and often poignant) drunken soliloquies in his films. In Padayappa (Ravikumar, 1999) for instance, Rajini lip-syncs the song ‘kick-u erudhe!’ (‘I get a kick!’) after drinking alcohol.
The song is packed with lyrics on social discourse underscoring the differ-ent phases of human life, and begins with the line that he is acquiring great wisdom as he drinks.
In addition to the association of drinking and smoking with masculin-ity, Rajini’s films connect these activities with maturity and enlightenment. In the later part of Padayappa, his cheroot serves as a motif of the rich, old and wise Rajini. At the end of every important scene where Rajini smokes a cheroot he is brought into sudden close-up, accompanied by a loud, trium-phant musical score. Other important sequences and establishing shots fade in with slow-motion takes of Rajini walking towards the audience as smoke from the cigar drifts upward from his mouth. Rajini continued to smoke in films until 2010 when he stopped smoking on-screen due to a combination of vocal opposition from the outspoken but highly influential (and caste-ist) political group, the Working People’s Party (Paattaali Makkal Katchi, PMK), and Rajini’s own concern that he was influencing his audience. The PMK opposed Rajini’s films by saying that his films were morally questionable because they encouraged smoking and drinking among the vulnerable youth and equated these activities with wisdom, truthfulness and heroics, without showing their possible harmful effects. The political opposition to Rajini’s smoking in films is an indicator of the influential role of film in Tamil society. While the on-screen Rajini no longer smokes, he admitted in an interview to a Tamil private TV channel in 2011 that he still smokes in his private life. This again makes Rajini different from MGR, who reportedly maintained a smoke- and alcohol-free personal life.
Rajini’s personal life was also marked by two major controversies: a nerv-ous breakdown in the early 1980s and his first daughter’s romantic involve-ment with the young actor Simbu. Unlike Brando (whose illustrious career was to be blighted by failed marriages and a troubled lifestyle), Rajini was better able to withstand the tumult these controversies caused in the media and to insulate his public persona from scrutiny. His nervous breakdown was blamed on his eighteen-hour workdays, yet rumours abound as to the real reason for the breakdown (Sreekanth 2008). Some said that Rajini’s addiction to marijuana was the cause, while others proposed that Rajini pretended to have the breakdown to avoid an order of execution from MGR (who was by now the powerful Chief Minister – akin to State Governor – of Tamil Nadu), because of Rajini’s alleged affair with MGR’s girlfriend, the actor Latha. However, the veracity of these rumours was never verified. Rajini also received some bad press when he engaged in a heated argument with airport customs officials in the early 1980s, and later when he manhandled some overzealous reporters covering his wedding in 1981.
Rajini’s private life was in the news again in 2004 when Tamil media reported that his eldest daughter Aishwarya was having an affair, dating upcoming actor Dhanush while still in the process of dumping another actor, Simbu. It was alleged that Simbu leaked a number of controversial private audio and video images online to exact revenge on Aishwarya. Rajini went public with the accusations and brought into the open his daughter’s romance with Dhanush by announcing his intention to allow them to marry. This scan-dal must be seen in the conservative cultural context of Tamil society, where romantic relationships before marriage are seen as bringing disrepute to parents, especially if it is a daughter who engages in such activities.
Despite these controversies, Rajini has managed to maintain two differ-ent images between his screen facade and his private persona. Rajini has remained the superhero of Tamil cinema, acting out love scenes at the age of 62 with former Miss World, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (at nearly half his age), in the enormously successful Endhiran/The Robot (Shankar, 2010), where he played the dual lead roles in a very physically demanding film. As noted, the off-screen Rajini is comfortable to go without covering his balding head or colouring his grey hair and beard (Ethiraj 2009), projecting a self-effacing persona. The much published image of Rajini as a private individual is that he is simple and spiritual, an affectionate father, uncorrupted family man, loyal husband, humanist thinker and hard worker. Correspondingly, much of his on-screen image is crafted to overlap to some degree with perceptions of his personal identity, projecting both versions of Rajini as a morally upright Tamil, although often as a lone figure rather than a happily married family man, perhaps to maintain an edgy or unconventional veneer.
One of Rajini’s most successful films, 1999’s Padayappa, revolves around three generations and emphasizes the enduring attractiveness of his grace-fully ageing body. In the second half of the film Padayappa (Rajini) appears as an aged Patriarch with (obviously fake) grey hair, moustache and beard, of course, with his characteristic sunglasses and cheroot. The film is scripted in such a way that Padayappa’s age is admired by other characters from differ-ent generations. At one point, middle-aged Nilambiri (Ramya Krishnan), who has long desired Padayappa, looks longingly at him and says, ‘Electrifying man! Do you know why everybody likes you? Though [you have] aged, your style and beauty have not gone away’. In the climax Padayappa gets into a series of extremely physical fights to protect his son-in-law. Astonished by Padayappa’s rapidity, the son-in-law says, ‘What a man! You never age!’ Rajini has also appeared in films that valorize age and wisdom in his eponymous
Figure 4: Rajini (right) off-screen (2000).
Figure 5: Rajini as Robot in Enthiran (2010).
Figure 6: Rajini off-screen (c.2010).
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roles as a sage in Valli (Nataraj, 1993) and an aged patriarch in Dharma Durai (Rajasekar, 1991).
Extending MSS Pandian’s (1992) term ‘image trap’, one can argue that being a superstar in India, in general, and Tamil Nadu, in particular, can be a trap where the established actors often are unwilling to break the roles that differ from the ones that made them popular, fearing a backlash from their fans. When Rajini played the role of a saint-reincarnate in Baba (Krishna, 2002) the film was not commercially successful. Some critics even argued that the ‘gold does not glitter anymore’ (Nair, 2012). However, Rajini bounced back with success in his next film Chandramukhi (Vasu, 2005). Since then, the commercial success of Rajini’s films have been a roller coaster ride as witnessed in the success of films such as Sivaji (Shankar, 2007), Kuselan (Vasu, 2008), Endhiran/The Robot, and the lesser popularity of Kochadaiyaan (Aswin, 2014) and Lingaa (Ravikumar, 2014). In the forthcoming, Kabali (Ranjith, 2016), Rajini plays the role of an ageing gangster, with critics suggesting that Kabali may be the litmus test for Rajini’s popularity.
MARLON BRANDO
Born in Nebraska, 1924, Marlon ‘Bud’ Brando Jr spent his formative years living through the Great Depression in America’s heartland, albeit in a comforta-bly middle-class environment, before going on to become one of the great-est figures in western cinema history. Small-town, middle America was too stifling for the young Brando, so he escaped to New York at the age of 19 and was immediately attracted to the stage. He soon worked his way into a series of long-running productions, all the while absorbing books on philosophy and branching out to study the alternative mode of method acting under the tute-lage of Stella Adler. In spite of the relative ease of his entry into acting, Brando was not one to crow about his success; in fact, as David Downing notes
He not only played down his success, he even, according to some, went out of his way to avoid anyone who could help him with his career. He seemed to want to avoid stardom, and the reasons for his reluctance would haunt him long after he became a star.
(1984: 18)
Brando was, as Stefan Kanfer was later to quip, like some tragic folkloric figure that could bask in ‘fame, riches, beautiful women, power – provided he couldn’t enjoy it’ (2008: xii). This seemingly masochistic streak could be attributed to the notion that he was a man ‘who already knew that the success on offer was ultimately meaningless, that the values behind it were manufac-tured, false’ (Downing 1984: 18).
It was Brando’s approach to acting that drew the most public attention, equipping him well for his entry into film. Downing notes Elia Kazan’s appre-ciation of method acting, where ‘the actor’s concentration on what the char-acter wants, on what has happened fictionally before the scene he’s actually playing’, provide a deeper contextual space for the actor (1984: 22). In Kazan’s words, these internalized feelings ‘are cinematic in that they take the reliance off the dialogue, off the spoken word, and put it in activity, inner activity, desire, objects, partners – partners being the people you play with’ (Downing 1984: 22). Having been impressed by the new Tom ‘Tennessee’ Williams play, The Glass Menagerie, Brando recognized the type of honest, raw theatre in
which he wanted to be included. Before Brando could, or would, team up with Williams (and Kazan, who needed convincing that the young Marlon was the wunderkind of contemporary theatre, despite the insistence of many around him), the future star was to build a formidable reputation.
Brando’s entry into Hollywood was far from smooth, though; his strong sense of cynicism towards the West Coast film industry (presumably a result of snobbery fostered in the New York theatre scene) was untempered. Making an impact through a powerhouse performance as Stanley Kowalski in the 1947 Broadway stage production of Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, Brando was soon headed for bigger things. Upon arrival in Hollywood to shoot his first feature, The Men (Zinnemann, 1950), Brando reportedly said, only half-jokingly, ‘The only reason I’m here is because I don’t have the moral strength to turn down the money’ (Downing 1984: 27). Brando’s performance was to garner him plenty of critical support, with the New York Herald Tribune reporting that his stellar performance was not reliant on ‘personality, but entirely on the understanding of character and technical virtuosity’ (Downing 1984: 28). His inexorable, if unwilling, path to stardom was assured when he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his role in Elia Kazan’s 1951 film version of A Streetcar Named Desire.
Brando’s involvement with Mutiny on the Bounty (Milestone, 1962), for which he had a contractual right to approve scripting on the final section of the movie, proved problematic from the start. When the budget blew out, shooting was first delayed and then postponed for a variety of reasons, includ-ing the overlooked onset of the wet season in the Pacific island location. With Brando’s insistence on numerous rewrites, critics began looking at the central star as a possible scapegoat. As Downing notes
The actor’s alleged overweight, his alleged malingering, his alleged egotism, anything that could be used to portray Brando as the spoilt child of the movie business was dredged up, spiced with back-biting quotes, and set down as evidence for the prosecution. Suddenly all the film’s problems were Brando’s fault. All Hollywood’s problems were Brando’s fault.
(1984: 96)
Brando’s attempts to influence (some would say interfere with) the film-making process again surfaced during shooting of The Appaloosa (aka Southwest to Sonora, Furie, 1966), when the star insisted on politicizing what had seemed a straightforward shoot ‘em up western. The seriousness that Brando brought
Figure 7: Brando as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954).
Figure 8: Brando as Freddy Benson (centre) in Bedtime Story (1964).
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to the role meant that ‘the overriding sensation is one of dissonance, as Brando’s sheer presence and quality as an actor dwarf both the plot and the character he inhabits’ (Downing 1984: 118). Brando’s political convictions had been forged at an early age. Even in high school in the segregated Chicago of the 1930s (where his family had moved), he deliberately flouted convention by hanging out with the only black children in the entire school. As Kanfer suggests, this was Marlon assuaging his conscience in an emotional response arising ‘out of a need to identify with the outsider’ (2008: 10). Brando’s outsider roles also included as the renegade Johnny Strabler in his black leather jacket in The Wild One (Benedek, 1953), and the once-great boxer Terry Malloy in On The Waterfront (Kazan, 1954). These roles all contributed to an idealized figure of the tortured male, ‘inarticulate, morose, and often violent’ (Thomson 2002: 100), trapped in a society that would never cut him a break.
With his memorable performance as the quietly menacing Don Corleone in The Godfather (Coppola, 1972), Brando re-emerged from a decade of profes-sional difficulties with a reprisal of the kind of acting tour de force that had transformed cinema back in the early 1950s. It was the moment when Brando reaffirmed his talent, and ‘suddenly all the people who’d been lamenting his inevitable eclipse were basking in the light of his “comeback”’ (Downing 1984: 142). As Corleone, Brando is ‘real from the minutiae of accent and gestures to the aura of ambiguity which his personality radiates’, and his portrayal is of a man who is ‘fearsome yet oddly pathetic’ (Downing 1984: 142).
Brando had also been to Paris where he met acclaimed Italian direc-tor Bernardo Bertolucci. The two men struck up a friendship built on mutual admiration, formed because ‘both men were idealistically inclined veterans of psychoanalysis, and they shared a similar vision of cinema’s place in the world’ (Downing 1984: 160). While developing Last Tango in Paris (Bertolucci, 1972), the director consulted closely with Brando to the point that ‘the character in the screenplay was fast becoming Brando, for the simple reason that Bertolucci found Brando more interesting’ (Downing 1984: 160). The confrontational honesty of Brando’s performance saw him in a reflective mood, stating that ‘never again will I make a film like this one’, and that ‘for the first time, I have felt a violation of my innermost self … It should be the last time’ (Downing 1984: 162). Given Brando’s troubled private life, by now public knowledge, Downing suggests that ‘paradoxically, the universality of the film’s tragic theme is made all the more apparent by the presence of a very particular actor’, and quotes Pauline Kael’s perhaps unkind quip: ‘If Brando knows this hell, why should we pretend we don’t?’ (1984: 166). Certainly, this role foreshadowed Brando’s performance in Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979), which would later offer up a new vision of a man (both as character and actor) in purgatory.
One of Brando’s final films, the Johnny Depp-led Don Juan DeMarco (Leven, 1995), co-starring Faye Dunaway, was not completely removed from Brando’s real-life reputation. Playing a psychiatrist to Depp’s delusional Don R. Marco, Brando returns to the idea of romance and tropical islands in his edgy performance as Dr Jack Mickler. Ziauddin Sardar believes the film
[…] reiterates the Orientalist messages relayed at its beginning: it is highly derivative and reminiscent of the previous fin de siècle exoticism of Pierre Lotti, whose stories of ennui and sexual liberation in Oriental settings inspired a whole generation of French writers to turn their gaze on the exotic Orient.
Ever since Brando’s journey to Tahiti for the shooting of Mutiny on the Bounty, and the ensuing romance, marriage and inevitable divorce to co-star Tarita Teriipaia, he idealized the natural environment of tropical islands, far from the madness of Hollywood. Tragically, just nine days after the moderately successful release of Don Juan DeMarco, Brando’s daughter Tarita Cheyenne committed suicide at the home Brando still kept in Tahiti (Kanfer 2008: 297). From that point on, Brando’s career choices descended into the bizarre and off-kilter, working on The Island of Dr. Moreau (Frankenheimer, 1996) in the immediate aftermath of Cheyenne’s death, delivering a rambling perfor-mance. When he teamed up with Robert De Niro and Edward Norton for The Score (Oz, 2001), any hope that three generations of muscular acting styles would craft a compelling exploration of the Method was sadly extinguished by Brando’s lazy, sedentary turn.
Other unpredictable, carnivalesque-type ‘performances’ from Brando were equally peculiar: Brando and his new buddy, the increasingly eccentric singer Michael Jackson, allegedly drove with Elizabeth Taylor across America in the days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and he appeared in the music video for Jackson’s ‘You Rock My World’ in 2001 (also making several visits to Jackson’s Neverland ranch in his final years). His response to family tragedy was to reject outright the trappings of ‘acting’ and the machinery of the film indus-try. Work became a simple economic transaction, and the Brando persona became ripe fodder for stand-up comedians and impressionists. By now, his incredible beauty was a long-forgotten memory, and those who still held out hope for a return to the bravura acting performances of old were to be sorely disappointed. It seems that the public appreciated Brando’s carnivalesque overturning of hierarchies insofar as they added to the mythology of stardom, but not to the extent that they painfully undermined the glamour of his star persona or questioned the convention of stardom itself.
BAKHTIN AND THE CARNIVALESQUE
Given the background of these two stars, we contend that Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin’s interpretation of the carnivalesque offers a particularly useful way to conceptualize the public and private perceptions of Rajinikanth and Brando and to analyse their performative capabilities as both men age. In his key work Rabelais and His World ([1965] 1984), a study of the great French Renaissance writer, Bakhtin suggests that during the Middle Ages, carnivals played an important role in people’s everyday lives, and that activities such as fairs, feasts and processions became transformative sites where usually
Figure 9: Brando as ‘Paul’ in Last Tango in Paris (1972).
Figure 10: Brando as Max in The Score (2001).
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rigid boundaries between pure and impure, sacred and profane, and high and low culture were joyfully elided. Within Bakhtin’s conception of carni-valesque discourse reside two worlds – an official, hierarchical one, governed by the rule of feudalism and religion; and an unofficial one, in which parody, song, and the transgressive power of laughter overturn hierarchical distinc-tions, social norms and prohibitions, and dispel the fear of death by bringing birth and death together ([1965] 1984: 51). In this sense the carnivalesque is a ‘world inside out’. Laughter is deployed to mock official political systems, religious beliefs and authority figures, and the celebration of grotesque real-ism joyfully foregrounds many of the material functions of the body (eating, drinking, defecation, copulation, death). Other distinguishing characteris-tics of carnivalesque discourse include the use of masquerade and disguise to obliterate the distinction between high and low culture, the caricature of the body, an increased emphasis on physical transformation, and blending of public and private spaces into one endless set of ritual spectacles. Ultimately, the transgression of hierarchical norms implies a constant ambivalence in which laughter and excess push to one side seriousness to fashion ‘a special type of communication impossible in everyday life’ (Bakhtin [1965] 1984: 7). In this context, the carnival becomes both ridicule of societal norms and utopian projection of a world in which the voice possesses a double signifi-cance, saying two things at once (which are often at odds with one another).
One area in which both Rajinikanth and Brando offer useful test cases for the applicability of Bakhtin’s ideas is through the study of their physical bodies. The changes in shape and size of both actors as they aged become fertile textual sites for the celebration of carnivalesque disorder as outlined in Bakhtin’s work. His central category for understanding the carnivalesque in Rabelais is what he terms ‘grotesque realism’: ‘The essential principle of grotesque realism is degradation, the lowering of all that is high, spiritual, ideal, abstract; it is a transfer to the material level’ (Bakhtin [1965] 1984: 19). In the case of Brando, ‘grotesque realism’ works as a useful concept for fram-ing the actor’s career decline against the backdrop of his steadily balloon-ing weight. Writing about 1980s Hollywood action stars, Martin Flanagan notes that the traditional male bodies in films like Rambo (1982–1988) and Die Hard (1988–2013) were not ‘protruding, multiple and excessive’, but were rather exemplars of a ‘finished, hard body’ that signalled ‘the unimpeacha-ble integrity of the hero’ (2009: 72–73). On the other hand, the carnivalesque body as described by Bakhtin in Rabelais and His World privileges multiple meanings and ‘all signs of duality’ ([1965] 1984: 321). The ‘grotesque body’ is irreverent, fragmented and regenerative; ‘it is a body in the act of becom-ing. It is never finished, never completed; it is continually built, created, and builds and creates another body. Moreover, the body swallows the world and is itself swallowed by the world’ (Bakhtin [1965] 1984: 317). Such observa-tions fit Rajinikanth and Brando’s career trajectories in illuminating ways, not least because both actors exhibited their ‘protruding, multiple, and excessive’ features. In Brando’s case, this can be taken literally, as in The Score, in which he wears a bathrobe for most of his scenes, revealing his weighty body along-side the leaner, fitter Edward Norton and Robert De Niro.
Rajini, on the other hand, negotiates his ageing body in films either as an affluent rich man or an monk-like ascetic (both highly admired in the Tamil culture). Although Rajini’s physique may be a little stouter than in his younger years, he has still maintained an active body that has allowed him to show a high degree of athleticism into his 60s.
There are also contradictions in Rajini’s physical presentation of the body. Unlike other iconic Tamil actors such as MGR, Sivaji Ganesan and Kamal Hassan who invested considerable effort trying to cover up their age with make-up, the off-screen Rajini has always offered ‘simple and natural’ public appear-ances. This image seemed to be in line with his screen roles in the 1990s. For instance, in Annamalai (Krishna, 1992) Rajini appears as a financially successful and socially respectable middle-aged father of a teenager girl. This slim Rajini concedes a few grey hairs to frame his face, while wearing a very conservative blazer, shirt and tie, and neat trousers. In Muthu (Ravikumar, 1995) Rajini plays dual roles, one of which is as an ascetic who appears with long grey hair and an unruly grey moustache and beard. In this role he wears a long saffron gown, a typical sagely form of Hindu dress. The ageing body of the character and, by extension, the actor, is presented in a favourable light because of his associa-tion with spirituality and wisdom. Yet in recent years, as Rajini has moved into his 60s, he has appeared only in films that present him with the opportunity to reflect a man in his 40s, not in his 60s, perhaps in a concession to the demand of a growing youth culture’s influence on star iconography.
Bakhtin’s conception of the carnival as a participatory event in which any and every one may be involved is useful in explaining fan perception and audience reception of both Rajinikanth and Brando. In Bakhtin’s earlier Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, he suggests that carnival is ‘a pageant with-out footlights and without a division into performers and spectators’ ([1963] 1984: 122). Participants do not watch the carnival but rather live in it, with its attendant deferral of ‘hierarchical structure and all the forms of terror, reverence, piety, and etiquette connected with it’ ([1963] 1984: 122). Bakhtin also notes that carnivals allow for ‘free and familiar contact between people’ who are ordinarily separated hierarchically, thus allowing for ‘mass action’ ([1963] 1984: 123). This blurring is achieved through masquerade and the physical act of putting on masks. In this sense, the mask can be seen as link-ing to the regenerative powers of change and reincarnation, and rejection of uniformity and similarity. For film actors, of course, the metaphor of the mask is a fundamental part of the craft of acting – the literal ‘wearing’ of different faces, modifying and modulating physical characteristics, and using disguises to hide the real person acting from film to film. Rajini’s film roles can be viewed in this sense of the carnival, as his characters parody and mock authoritative figures. Rajini’s Everyman transcends the corrupt and power-hungry politicians, long seen as major contributors to India’s social
and economic malaise. For both Rajinikanth and Brando, the carnivalesque mask operates in the physical sense as it relates to transition and metamor-phosis in many of their films. Masks have been a feature of Rajinikanth’s career: his dual role in Enthiran/The Robot as both scientist and robot required extensive make-up and grafting of a cyborg mask onto the actor’s face. For The Godfather Brando’s face is altered via make-up and crushed cotton balls wedged in his mouth to create the puffy, lined appearance of Don Corleone. Even back in 1957 Truman Capote’s revealing feature on Brando notes how the young actor’s increasing fame and celebrity status seemed to have altered him physically. Not only was his hair thinner and his body thicker, but ‘when he went out in public […] he deemed it wise to hide his face not only by wearing dark glasses but by donning a surgeon’s gauze mask as well’ (Capote 1957). Like Brando during the 1950s, Rajinikanth disguises himself in public, frequently wearing masks, using a walking stick and various forms of head-gear to remain incognito when he visits cinemas, returns to his home town, or performs his famous yearly pilgrimage to the Himalayas (Madhav 2010). This mask though, is one to avoid recognition from his thousands upon thousands of fans, rather than an attempt to deny his ageing appearance.
For Rajinikanth and Brando, the approaches to ageing and the transition from middle age to old age diverge wildly. In both cultures, older film stars are obliged to constantly resist or defy the onset of age; in Catherine Mayer’s term, they need to be seen as amortal, ‘liv[ing] in the same way, at the same pitch, doing and consuming much the same things, from late teens right up until death’ (2009).4 Rajinikanth has clearly embraced the transition in films such as Annamalai and Muthu, and like Clint Eastwood in his self-directed Space Cowboys (2000) and Gran Torino (2008), Rajini has chosen roles that both gently poke fun at his physical condition and empower him, as the older man, to act as a more paternal authority figure. There has been no appar-ent vigorous physical or cosmetic improvement, so that for Rajinikanth, the ageing process has signalled an inevitable reshaping and shifting in his physi-cal, vocal and performative capabilities. He has mobilized a new set of skills to persuade his ardent audiences that he is still a star. In many of his recent films Rajinikanth has played dual roles, often the protagonist as well as the antago-nist, as in Endhiran. This trend began in 2005 with Chandramukhi and was seen as the actor’s deliberate attempt to rebuild a connection with his audi-ence after the disappointing reception and box office returns of his previous film, Baba.
Rajinikanth’s career has lasted nearly 40 years. The careful management of his star persona – achieved primarily through his savvy choice of varied roles, friendly relationship with the media, and frequent producer credits on box office hits – has allowed for profitable career longevity and a fluid transition from ‘young’ to ‘old’ actor. He is comfortable not just with the physical exter-nal manifestation of ageing, but also with the new performance requirements that these processes inevitably entail. In Tamil film culture, the divergences between actor-as-youth and the ageing actor are highly scrutinized. Actors who were known for a specific look and acting style when they were younger must now navigate new tensions as audience tastes and sensibilities shift. The roles offered to ageing actors are more proscribed, and paratextual discourses (fan clubs, interviews, television appearances, gossip columns) become ever more obsessed with the actor’s visible signs of ageing. In Bakhtinian terms, Rajinikanth seeks to subvert conventional aesthetic judgements of what it means to be ‘old’ or ‘attractive’ by locating in his performance styles and
approach to acting what Robert Stam calls a ‘popular, convulsive, rebellious beauty, one that dares to reveal the grotesquerie of the powerful and the latent beauty of the “vulgar”’ (2000: 156).
On the other hand, Brando seems the perfect embodiment of the kind of star who burns more brightly early on in his career, but for a number of reasons (physical, financial, motivational, industrial) seems unable to maintain the upward trajectory that his initial startling breakthrough seemed to herald. In the period between his first Academy Award in 1955 for On The Waterfront and his second in 1973 for The Godfather, Brando made nearly twenty films, but his screen appearances afterward became less and less frequent, more and more troubled. And while fans waited for his triumphant return to the screen, the complex merging of Brando’s characters with his real-life persona were amplified in an increasing number of erratic interviews and television appearances.
THE CARNIVALESQUE RAJINIKANTH AND BRANDO
Perhaps the most revealing parallel between Rajinikanth and Marlon Brando is the way they either handled or failed to handle their stardom. Unlike Brando who arrived in cinema as an acknowledged star of the stage, the struggle for Rajini during the 1970s and 1980s was not to become a star but to find a place as an actor while facing fierce competition from his contemporaries such as Kamal Hassan. Dyer defines stardom as ‘an image of the way stars live’ (1998: 35), and Rajini has been careful to maintain a unified personal image in public appearances and through media exposure. In his public persona he presents himself as simple and humble, unafraid to be seen without make-up, and freely dressed in a saffron ‘dhoti’, regarded as the clothing of those low in socio-economic and cultural status, not typical of a man of his stature. Rajini openly confronts his baldness in public speeches, reasoning that he went bald due to the excessive use of hair colour to hide his grey hair for the screen. These aspects of Rajini’s lifestyle contain parallels with the younger Brando, as portrayed in Dyer’s words
Much of the early publicity surrounding Marlon Brando concerns his unshaven, unkempt appearance and his unruly behaviour at parties, matters that signified a rejection of the general lifestyle of stardom.
(1998: 35)
Of course, the film role most frequently mentioned when referring to Brando’s later ‘grotesque realism’ is of Walter Kurtz, the renegade colonel in Apocalypse Now. The production of that film has long since passed into the realm of myth: Brando was to get $1 million up front, $250,000 a week if his schedule ran over, and 11.3 per cent of the gross receipts once they passed $8.85 million. He came to the Philippines heavily overweight, out of condi-tion, and woefully unprepared. He had not read Heart of Darkness, the Joseph Conrad novella on which the film was based, and when it came to filming his scenes, Brando insisted on reading from cue cards posted up around the set. To compensate for Brando’s girth, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro was forced to film the actor only in shadow, wearing black pyjamas to conceal his size; only Brando’s shaved skull is visible, ‘slipping in and out of the light to resemble shifting phases of the moon’ (San Filippo 2001).
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But while the Bakhtinian ‘grotesque realism’ of the body that seemed to complete Brando’s downfall was readily apparent in Apocalypse Now, Rajini has reserved that spectacle of the balding ageing man for his presentation of private self, while on-screen his vitality remains. And while Brando was merci-lessly pilloried through grotesque parodies and caricatures, Rajini is held in a much higher reverence in parodies. In the ‘Lungi Dance’ song in Chennai Express (Shetty, 2013), for instance, Bollywood royalty Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone (and rapper Yo Yo Honey Singh) wear lungi, a traditional sari-like South Indian garment sometimes worn by Rajini in his films. They dance in a tribute to Rajini, gently mimicking his trademark actions and referring to him as Thalaiva (‘the boss’), while images of the superstar are projected in the background. But how long can Rajini maintain this cinematic facade? Chris Holmlund ponders how another ageing cinematic superstar, Jackie Chan, can continue to maintain a high profile on the silver screen in an environment where
Old people may attempt to disguise their ageing but such masquerades are doomed, in the final analysis, to failure. Does middle age function differently? Can we transform our middle-aged bodies into youthful ones, exteriorising ‘identity’, if you will?
(2010: 97)
While an increasing number of ageing people resort to external means – Botox injections, fillers and plastic surgery – for Rajinikanth and Brando, their attempts to be ‘successfully rejuvenated’ have not been seen as solutions to the ageing process (Holmlund 2010: 97). Certainly Rajini has been increasingly reli-ant on CGI effects in his stunts, but how long can he continue as the leading romantic hero? Will he shift to Clint Eastwood-type roles requiring more of an elderly statesman-like performance? Philippa Gates notes that ‘the gradual disappearance of middle-aged, muscled action stars and their replacement with youth stars’ in the 1990s saw older actors shift to roles that were less demand-ing of their physicality and more demanding of their comic talents (2010: 276). Brando’s solution to this dilemma in his last few films (Don Juan DeMarco and The Score in particular) was not necessarily to reach for the comedic, but to have his characters remain seated for almost the entirety of his on-screen time. As his physical mobility deteriorated, this form of acting only seemed to invoke the ire of critics and – judging from the declining box office takings – his audience.
These strategies perhaps reflect nineteenth-century attitudes that ‘embraced a dualistic model of aging that lauded “good” old age (health, vigor, self-reliance) and devalued “bad” old age (sin, decay, dependence)’ (Addison 2006: 4). However, by the twentieth century this model began to break down with the arrival of Hollywood ‘not only as a center of film produc-tion, but also as a cultural institution that valued conspicuous consumption, sexual display, physical culture, and youth’(Addison 2006: 6). As evidence that such attitudes still exist, Holmlund points to the prejudicial, ageist ranking of the American Screen Actors Guild (SAG) that ‘continues to take [age] 40 as the cut-off point for the statistics it publishes on male and female actors working in theatrical and television productions’ (2010: 106). So what are the options for ageing actors?
One possible solution is a wholesale recalibration of the way in which national film industries frame the ageing process, which should not necessar-ily mean physical deterioration or corporeal slow-down, but rather a transfor-mational practice in which seniority implies wisdom and experience as well as
amplified, refined beauty. Holmlund expresses her hope that ‘we will move towards differing ways of understanding ageing, finding role models where star “allure” is not irrevocably linked with “disintegration” or “ruin”’ (2010: 99). Rather cynically, Addison claims that in the first half of the twentieth century, ‘much of Hollywood’s youthfulness was a product not of fact but of the repeated circulation of youthful ballyhoo’, and the median age of actors had risen above that of the general public (2006: 9). Addison suggests that the earlier noted ‘dualistic archetype of aging – endorsed and one might argue, augmented and reified by Hollywood – is still in evidence today’ (2006: 21). The spectacle of the ageing superstar seems to hold little promise for cinema audiences, where the mainstream spectator seems hell-bent on action, action, and more action. While some actors such as Eastwood, Robert Redford, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino or Amitabh Bachchan have sustained a strong screen pres-ence, their roles have been increasingly low key. Their action counterparts, on the other hand – Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris or Jean-Claude Van Damme – have had to cling to their action status (despite the risk of injury) in order to remain bankable at the box office.
Rajini has shown an innate ability to perform dual roles in more than fifteen films throughout his career, from Billa in 1980 (Krishnamurthy) to the much-hyped sci-fi blockbuster Endhiran/The Robot (Shankar) in 2012. Playing his own nemesis or parental, sage-like figure, Rajini has therefore been seen by his audiences in many different bodily forms – including young, old, light-skinned and overweight. Brando also performed at times in heavy make-up, most notably as Don Corleone in The Godfather, but this was less a feature of his cinematic persona. Rajini’s recent and successful dual role in Endhiran, saw him playing Dr Vasu (scientist) and Chitti (a humanoid robot created by Dr Vasu in his own image). In this film, the hero’s creation becomes his villain and becomes romantically obsessed with his creator’s lover, Sana (played by Aishwarya Rai Bachchan). The death-defying Chitti tries to convince Sana to marry him, declaring that unlike Vasu, his robot form will never grow old and his beauty will never vanish. Given that Rajini was in his sixties and had lost his hair when he played this role, this was seen as a humorous, self-deprecat-ing narrative.
The physical and mental deterioration of an actor disrupts the public’s sense of the eternal nature of star identity. Rajini’s admission at the age of 61 to an Intensive Care Unit in 2011 while filming Rana (Ravikumar) brought with it a realization for many that he was not indestructible. It introduced a new vulnerability for a star well known for his on-screen bravado and independence, as exemplified in his 1995 Muthu, where he sings, ‘I’ll never age, nor will my sweetness ever be lost’. Brando’s frequent hospitalization in his later years, due in part to weight problems and depression, similarly hinted at the end of an era for one of Hollywood’s most iconic actors. His death in 2004 was met with a somewhat resigned response – it had been a long time coming. The first hints of his decline began with the suddenly middle-aged Brando in Last Tango in Paris, and continued with the bloated Kurtz in Apocalypse Now to the rotund, avuncular Dr Mickler in Don Juan DeMarco with Johnny Depp. The end was nigh.
CONCLUSION
The carnivalesque manifests itself in different ways for these two icons of the screen. Rajini’s apparent ability to live a (mostly) pious life and maintain an
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active physical regime that allow him to continue to dance and perform stunts in his films contrasts sharply with the avert-your-eyes horror of Brando’s suffering, as an aged and obese parody of his former self. While both figures aged in the public eye, Brando struggled to internalize his pain; it was visible in every performance. For this ultimate method actor, divorcing reality from performance was never an option. Here we see the major distinction between Brando and Rajini, the latter whose performance style conforms with Drake’s conception of acting ‘designed to disturb or put aside questions of narrative coherence and motivation, in order to concentrate on spectacle – the osten-tatious presentation of performance’ (2006: 93). Therefore, unlike Brando, Rajini’s on- and off-screen personas maintain a clear-cut distinction. The grotesque realism of both ageing actors is found in their fragmented existence as cinematic superstars and as human beings trapped in the carnivalesque world of the entertainment industry, where spectacle is not confined to the screen. Brando seemed unable to reconcile the painful competing demands of professional obligation and personal duty; Rajini, on the other hand, contin-ues to negotiate this slippage between the public and private realm, moving seamlessly back and forth with little residual tension, ambient pain or open disparagement of the industry that sustains him. It remains to be seen which star will leave the most enduring legacy: the one whose personal suffering seems to bleed into every performance, or the one whose deft refusal to suffer publicly fulfils our wishes, embodying the fantasy of the invulnerable star.
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SUGGESTED CITATION
Pugsley, P. C., Pongiyannan, D. and McCann, B. (2016), ‘Rajinikanth and Brando: Carnivalesque performances of two ageing superstars’, Studies in South Asian Film & Media, 8: 1, pp. 27–45, doi: 10.1386/safm.8.1.27_1
CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Associate Professor Peter C. Pugsley is Head of Media and teaches Asian Screen Media at the University of Adelaide. He is the author of Morality and Sexuality in Asian Cinema: Cinematic Boundaries (2015, Routledge) and Tradition, Culture and Aesthetics in Contemporary Asian Cinema (2013, Ashgate). He has published on Indian cinema in Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, and The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics (eds Y. Tzioumakis and C. Molloy, 2016, Routledge).
Contact: Associate Professor Peter C. Pugsley, School of Humanities, The University of Adelaide, South Australia 5005, Australia.E-mail: [email protected]
Associate Professor Ben McCann teaches cinema studies in the Discipline of French Studies at the University of Adelaide. He has published extensively on French cinema, including Ripping Open the Set: French Film Design 1930–1939 (2013, Peter Lang) and Le Jour se lève (Ciné-file French Film Guides) (2013, I.B. Tauris). He co-edited Cinema Utopia: The Cinema of Michael Haneke (2011, Wallflower Press).
Contact: Associate Professor Ben McCann, School of Humanities, The University of Adelaide, South Australia 5005, Australia.E-mail: [email protected]
Dr Dhamu Pongiyannan is a 2016 Visiting Research Fellow in Media Studies at the University of Adelaide and a freelance journalist. He is the author of Film and Politics in India: Cinematic Charisma as a Political Gateway (2015, Peter Lang) and was a journalist and blogger in India. His multi-episode radio docu-mentary on Tamil cinema was broadcast by SBS Radio in Australia in 2016.
Contact: Dr Dhamu Pongiyannan, School of Humanities, The University of Adelaide, South Australia 5005, Australia.E-mail: [email protected]
Peter C. Pugsley, Dhamu Pongiyannan and Ben McCann have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.
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