5 - Films

Summary

The relationship between Tamil cinema's consumers and producers, and the impact of this relationship on cinematic content, is much as it is in popular entertainment everywhere. Producers of commercial entertainment generally find it necessary to respond to a modicum of the entertainment desires, both conscious and unconscious, of their paying audience. Speaking of North Indian movies, Kakar has portrayed popular cinema as “a collective fantasy containing unconscious material and the hidden wishes of a vast number of people” (1981: 12). While the makers of popular cinema may have different “unconscious” desires and needs than their audiences, he argues, they are nonetheless motivated to discover prospective viewers' own needs by the goal of financial success:

The prospect of financial gain, like the opportunity for sexual liaison, does wonderful things for increasing the perception of the needs and desires of those who hold the key to these gratifications. The quest for the comforting sound of busy cash-registers at the box-office ensures that the film-makers develop a daydream which is not idiosyncratic. They must intuitively appeal to those concerns of the audience which are shared; if they do not, the film's appeal is bound to be disastrously limited. (Kakar 1981: 12–13)

The dependence of filmmakers on healthy financial returns ensures that they will try to fill their movies with the elements that viewers consciously and unconsciously seek from entertainment.