Orientalist framings of movie stars in South Indian politics tend to reduce the phenomenon of actors gaining political power to a weakness in the electorate, where the voter is described as foolish or incapable of distinguishing between reel and real life. These framings misunderstand the role of cinema in politics. The electoral success of C. Joseph Vijay in Tamil Nadu is about more than celebrity worship. While the tools used by his campaign are the products of modern fan culture, his victory is indicative of a deeper discontent with the status quo. It points to the existence of a sufficiently large segment of the electorate not finding adequate political expression in the formal political discourse. Vijay, by offering a charismatic blank slate on to which this population can project their own varied (and sometimes contradictory) political desires, has become the chosen vehicle for the political expression of these desires. Cine-politicsTwo aspects of what cultural studies scholar Madhava Prasad describes as cine-politics are relevant to building our understanding of Vijay as a politician. First, the cine-politician is not a simple byproduct of cinema fame. Rajnikant, who is arguably the most famous star the industry has produced, did not manage to find a suitable entrance into politics. Beyond fame, the successful cine-politician must tap (consciously or unconsciously) into the political desires of their fans. Second, the “megastar” as a concept extends beyond the personality of the actor in question. It is a manufactured character that develops over the years through the actor’s interactions with his fans. The megastar is both shaped and contained by what his fandom wants. The languages the megastar works in, the roles he plays, and the politics (or lack thereof) of his films are dependent on the consent of the fans. While the online dimensions of Vijay’s fandom are new, Tamil Nadu politics is no stranger to the ability of organised fandoms to convert star power into political power. M.G. Ramachandran’s manrams, or fan clubs, who formed the core of his political strength within the DMK, and later became the first cadres of the AIADMK, when it was formed, were crucial to the formation of his megastar persona.M. G. Ramachandran collecting the petitions from the public. Photo: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).As the character of the megastar is in itself a political formation, the cine-politician’s engagement with the electorate does not begin when they enter formal politics or launch a party. It begins when the fans first see their political desires reflected in their star’s films. The question to ask with Vijay then is not why people vote for him, despite his political inexperience, but what political desires his mega stardom has already come to speak for.The representation deficitAs capital tends to see mass political participation as an inefficiency, growth in post-liberalisation India has been accompanied by spaces being deliberately depoliticised. This has over the years led to the erosion of political spaces for young people including campus politics and workplace unions. While the elite is taught to despise “politics”, the working-class is actively prevented from organising. Tamil Nadu has not been an exception.This depoliticisation impacts people at two levels. First, the people at the receiving end of the inequalities generated by neoliberal growth are expected to be placated with welfare. While excellent welfare schemes can bridge the impacts of inequality on nutrition, health, or education, they cannot replace the sense of representation created by grassroots political action and the value people place on their own rights. The DMK’s responses to the strike called for by sanitation workers in Chennai against privatisation in August 2025, and the Samsung unionisation effort in 2024 were both indicative of a political discourse that wished to erase working class politics from the mainstream. Second, even for its beneficiaries, neoliberal growth does not dismantle the human need for political engagement. While spaces can be depoliticised, people typically cannot, and depoliticised young people simply begin to seek political expression outside traditional politics. As the avenues for formal political engagement in their everyday lives recede, they turn to other organised structures that closely resemble politics – like fandoms – for their political expression. As people seek political expression in fan culture, the star’s cinematic power becomes converted into political power. As many of these young people are formulating their politics from first principles, without theoretical grounding, they begin to wish for things like “change” before they can articulate what that change should look like. Young people in Tamil Nadu, who have overwhelmingly voted for Vijay appear to be a testament to this. Finally, there are the caste contradictions that have historically plagued Dravidian politics and its interpretations of caste-justice. The DMK government’s response to a spate of caste-honour killings of Dalit men during their tenure, for example, and their handling of the demand for a law to curb such killings, have been inadequate. The politics of silence While it would be difficult for an ordinary politician to tap into and weave these diverse sources of political alienation into a coherent new movement, the cine-politician has an inherent advantage – he has a public personality that already encourages people to project their own desires on to him. When fans view cinema, they do not simply see the star on screen. They experience the star through their own emotions. On screen conflict, no matter how unreal, finds its emotional parallel within the viewer, and the resolution of the onscreen conflict, provides a sense of resolution to the everyday turmoil of the viewer. How each viewer interprets the star is therefore unique. When this personality is carried into politics, each fan continues to believe that the star represents their own political desires. They instinctively amplify what confirms that belief and ignore what does not. The somewhat surface-level politics of Vijay’s films in the last decade creates room for diverse groups of people to project their own politics onto him. By playing the well-educated, well-intentioned, boy next door, who is forced to resolve structural injustice in the system with individualised violence, Vijay offers his fans a sense of validation for the issues they face, without committing to any specific ideological solution. If one were to search for a loose parallel to Vijay’s messaging in Hindi cinema, the 2006 blockbuster Rang De Basanti comes to mind. As New Delhi will remember from the India Against Corruption movement and the rise of the Aam Aadmi Party in 2014, a generic anti-corruption, good governance, anti-injustice, and pro “change” persona, divorced from overt ideology, can be a very big, and initially appealing, tent. Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) and Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) supporters outside VCK party headquarters as party Treasurer SS Balaji and spokesperson KK Pavalan address a press conference on the official stand on supporting Vijay’s TVK in forming the government in Tamil Nadu, in Chennai, Saturday, May 9, 2026. Photo: PTI.The fact that the fans are not politically homogenous and that their desires might be mutually contradictory does not typically become an issue in a fandom unless the star himself makes it one by publicly taking sides. This, Vijay is careful not to do. Simply put, he participates in the political system by not participating it. Contrary to what one might expect from an enthusiastic new entrant to politics, he has been frugal with the frequency of his public appearances. He did not even make an election victory speech to his supporters on the day of the results. By holding himself above the common political fray, making few statements, and allowing his fans and detractors to battle it out among themselves without his help, Vijay becomes difficult to define, let alone taint. The success of this approach is evident in how he has transcended events that would ordinarily be expected to derail a political career, including a tragic stampede that killed 41 people at his rally in Karur.This aloofness has also allowed Vijay to comfortably absorb multiple contradictions into his own political persona. He can simultaneously be a rationalist whose manifesto speaks against pseudo-scientific practices and field a celebrity astrologer candidate. While he has met striking sanitation workers, and promises the expansion of public healthcare, his anxieties about the level of state debt are more typically echoed by fiscal conservatives in their push towards privatization. While his manifesto is Dravidian and speaks of state autonomy, the abolition of governors, and of the importance of Tamil as the language of governance, he has not publicly criticised Tamil Nadu governor Rajendra Arlekar’s unjustified over-reach this week. His swearing in ceremony also complied, without protest, with the new Union government mandate that ‘Vande Mataram’ be sung in official ceremonies. His sharing of his swearing-in stage with Rahul Gandhi (who brings five MLAs to the alliance) also points to an attitude towards New Delhi, that is perhaps not as openly confrontational as that of his predecessors. It will be interesting to see how much further the politics of silence can carry Vijay as he begins to govern the state. Governance typically requires decision-making, and with a politically diverse support base, those decisions will rarely be universally approved. Further, each of these decisions will pin down and give concrete form to his currently amorphous political personality and make him less of a blank slate on to which voters can project their desires. How Vijay responds to the hardening of his political character, and the dissent that will inevitably accompany that hardening, will tell us more about his politics in the years to come. While he has been credited with breaking down traditional vote groupings based on caste and creating new ones, based on age, it is useful to remember that structures like caste are not easily broken. They may recede briefly but tend to re-emerge under pressure. Which of his voters he chooses to hold on to, and which of them are sacrificed along the way when conflicts created by these structures reemerge will speak louder than words. Finally, as the battle with the governor to have the popular mandate of this election recognised tells us, fighting for federalism in India today requires more than silent articulation of the principle in a manifesto. It requires state governments to be willing to go to the trenches on every incursion by the Union into state spaces. It remains to be seen whether Vijay has the willingness for that fight. Sarayu Pani is a lawyer by training and posts on X @sarayupani.Missing Link is her column on the social aspects of the events that move India.