Page 125 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

110 Stephen Putnam Hughes

films could be plotted as part of a nationalist mainstream, they were also
read as a regionalist celebration of Tamil language and culture.
In this regard the increasing prominence of devotional films in the lat-
ter half of the 1930s offered important referents for articulating claims
about Tamil identity. Devotional films were used to construct a shared
imagination in a Tamil religious past. For example, one of the first hugely
successful Tamil devotional films was Pattinathar (Lotus Pictures 1935),
which was advertised as “The soul stirring life of the miracle working saint
of the 10th century known to every Tamilian. It depicts the riches and life
of Tamil Nad a thousand years ago.” The producers hoped to evoke a glo-
rious Tamil past that had survived intact as a continuous living tradition
over one thousand years. And in order to distinguish this film from other
mythological subjects, they prominently advertised it as being based on the
“True historical background designed by University Professors of Research”
(The Hindu, 19 April 1935).

Figure 4.5 The Hindu, 17 September 1935.