Pawan Kalyan. The enigma. The mass leader. The Power Star. Mana Balu. Mana Thammudu. Mana Badri.
He is like the past we think was always beautiful. He is the saying “Old is always gold”. He represents a class of citizens who refuse to believe the past was 15 years ago.
If the person you adored is not the same anymore, is it right to keep adoring him for what he was 15 years ago? While the person inside has always been the same, the person on screen has undergone transformations. Not in a positive way either.
While Thammudu, Tholiprema, Kushi reprsented his energetic self, his charisma, his exuberance and his connect with youth, his recent offerings represent a star who is disconnected with today, looks tired on screen and appears mostly disinterested throughout.
Yet, irrespective of the success or failure of his movies, the craze for any new release of his is always unprecedented. There is a wave of festivity. What drives this? Is it that image of past that people refuse to wash away. Does it represent some sort of tokenism of each individual not wanting to leave their own past and move on? A happy memory that one does not want to let go with the fear of what they might see?
If you were a fan of Pawan Kalyan like me through his early career, you would have to agree that if he was the same actor he would never have done any of these mass appealing movies with forced dance steps and forced dialogues that he is uncomfortable doing. He says he does it for money now and for his fans.
But his fans did not become fans of him because he did crazy dance steps or made heroic thigh slapping dialogues in his initial movies. They became a fan of him because of his next door simplicity that was found in his movies. So how then did we arrive at this junction where neither the expectation of his fans nor his abiding by their requirements make any sense?
The other narrative of audience being a fan of his personality more than his acting skills also makes no sense of their expectation then to watch him do these outrageous stuff that has no matching with his personality. What is this then that has been created?
The significance of a Pawan Kalyan movie has now moved away from being a story being told, from acting, from anything related to a regular movie. It has now become an event that people await for. The event that takes them back to 90s. The event that takes them to their childhood. The event that is their happy go to place. The event that has created a false illusion of something that does not exist.
