A01=Meenaatchi Saverimuttu
Author_Meenaatchi Saverimuttu
Category=ATF
celebrity
cinema
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
fan culture
film
forthcoming
India
South Asia
stardom
Product details
- ISBN 9781350449466
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 15 Oct 2026
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Exploring the career and work of the iconic “superstar” Rajinikanth, this in-depth study examines the ways in which Tamil masala cinema, plays with, reflects and comments on its own canon, history and contexts.
Taking in the full length of Rajinikanth’s career from his “golden age” in the 1990s through to his established status as one of the most popular stars of Indian cinema, the book explores the trajectory of his screen image as it has built up through call backs, repeated gags and recurring tropes over several decades. Meenaatchi Saverimuttu demonstrates in this way how Rajinikanth has become an exemplar of the Tamil cinema star as ‘paratexts’ in their own right, reflecting on their own status and cultural position on- and off-screen.
Meenaatchi Saverimuttu is a Lecturer at Cardiff University, UK. She has expertise in film studies, stardom and fan studies, gender and queer theory and postcolonial theory. Her work on race and gender politics in Tamil cinema has been featured in the edited collection Tamil Cinema in the 21st Century: Politics, Genre and Technology (2021) edited by Selvaraj Velayutham and Vijay Devadas and Bioscope: South Asian Cinema Studies. Her forthcoming book Rajinikanth, Self Reflexivity and the Tamil Star as Paratext (Bloomsbury, 2025) combines contemporary stardom, fandom and film studies to conceptualise Tamil stars as cumulative paratexts, separate from both the offscreen star and their onscreen character. These paratexts exist across the stars career and are easily uncoupled from individual films to be referenced by fans and film texts alike.
