Viral fever: The curious spectacle of campaign films

Potent tools for disseminating political ideologies and pushing stereotypes, these films offer insights into elections as well as everyday realities.

Folk Artists perform at Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief N. Chandrababu Naidu’s election campaign at Vuyyuru in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh on April 8, 2024. TDP, founded by N.T. Rama Rao, makes extensive use of spectacles, including song, dance and cinema, in its election campaigns. | Photo Credit: G.N. RAO

According to media reports, “at least 10” Hindi films that are either “brazen propaganda” or “promote Modi politics by embracing Hindu nationalism” are scheduled to be released before the 2024 general election. The list includes Article 370, Bastar: The Naxal Story, Swatantra Veer Savarkar, Razakar: The Silent Genocide of Hyderabad, Accident or Conspiracy: Godhra, JNU: Jahangir National University, and The Sabarmati Report (the last three were not released when this article was written). Less discussed in English language commentaries are the Telugu films focussing on Andhra Pradesh politics: Yatra 2, Raajadhani Files, Vyooham, Shapadham, and Vivekam.

Both sets may be categorised as campaign films in that they reinforce claims and narratives floated by parties, exaggerate and glorify achievements of leaders, or ridicule and demonise party leaders and unaffiliated rights activists alike. They are promoted by their makers as fictionalised but truthful statements on politics, and come with taglines such as “Based on real events.”

In a manner of speaking, campaign films are destined for box-office doom. As of early April, Article 370 is the only commercial success. If production and box-office figures reported by media outlets are accurate, this year’s Hindi and Telugu campaign films stand to lose more than Rs.100 crore.

At first glance, campaign films are redundant, and not only because of their commercial failure. A popular YouTuber discussing a campaign film made in Telugu remarked that even the conspiracy theory it promotes is a rehash of speculations that have been repeated for five years. Every Hindi campaign film promotes the BJP. No new geographies or constituencies are addressed by these films because the BJP’s domination of print, television, and social media platforms is anyway unchallenged. Moreover, film viewership has been on a decline. What, then, is the efficacy of films as campaign material? How and why are campaign films being made?

Harnessing trends

A clarification is in order before attempting to address these questions. Electoral outcomes are determined by multiple factors, from pre-election assurances, alliances, voting day mobilisation of voters, to cash handouts, gifts in kind, and so on. The extent to which campaign materials are able to determine voting behaviour is difficult to ascertain.

A reason why campaign films are made is the opportunity afforded by elections. Campaign films attempt to harness trends, narratives, and conspiracy theories that are anyway amplified during elections. This election season’s line-up includes films by producers and creative workers attempting to replicate their own earlier successes. For example, Aditya Dhar, the screenwriter of Uri: The Surgical Strike, co-wrote the screenplay for Article 370 and is also one of its producers. Bastar: The Naxal Story and The Kerala Story (2023) have the same producer, director, and lead actor. In genre terms, they are political thrillers, mysteries fortified with conspiracy theories, and hagiographical biopics, which have been around since 2014. Satires lampooning leaders appear to be a Telugu speciality. This genre has been revisited frequently in recent years by Ram Gopal Varma, who made two films for the 2024 election.

A disastrous performance at the box office is not a sign that campaign films will stop being made. Commercial failure is not new to Indian film producers; most Indian films do not recover production costs. Film industries in India survive because producers excel in workarounds. Elections are, in fact, proving to be a good time for producers to raise funding from some sources. Whether or not claims about “deep Sanghi pockets” and “NRI doctors” bankrolling campaign films is correct, politically exposed persons, known supporters of political parties, their family members, or those holding nominated posts, and ticket aspirants have funded campaign films in the recent past.

A still from Razakar: The Silent Genocide of Hyderabad. | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

Take for example, Razakar: The Silent Genocide of Hyderabad, made in Telugu and dubbed into Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam. It reportedly cost Rs.40 crore and is unlikely to recover that amount. The film’s producer describes himself as a “proud Karyakarta [worker] of BJP” and was the party’s candidate from the Bhongir Assembly constituency in Telangana. Ram Gopal Varma’s Vyooham and Shapadham are produced by a supporter of the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP).

Politics of mobilisation

A useful starting point to understand the place of films in election campaigns is N.T. Rama Rao’s (NTR’s) first election in 1982-83. During NTR’s campaign, spread over nine months, movie theatres screened a number of old and recent NTR hits as the campaign peaked. However, cinema halls were not the only places where the future voter encountered the star’s films. Images and sounds sourced from his films leaked into streets and other public spaces. Posters and stills advertising his films covered walls and appeared on the pages of newspapers and magazines. Audio cassettes of songs and dialogues from NTR’s films were played in roadside shops (and at political rallies, of course). Mimicry artistes converted monologues from NTR films like Dana Veera Sura Karna (1977) into anti-Congress speeches. All this was happening in public spaces that were already saturated with images and sounds associated with NTR: he toured the State several times by road. Recordings of his speeches were being sold by enterprising cassette shop owners. His campaign was covered extensively by the Telugu press, and Eenadu, the most widely read Telugu newspaper, made no bones about supporting him.

N.T Rama Rao campaigning from his iconic Chaitanya Ratham in the early 1980s. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives

In 1989, video was adopted by the BJP to transform news coverage into propaganda. Today, “circulation engines”, to borrow the media theorist Ravi Sundaram’s coinage, repurpose a range of materials for electoral and other mobilisations. The gap between what were earlier considered more or less autonomous and unrelated domains and politics has narrowed considerably with the steady creep of the politics of mobilisation into all domains.

NTR as the epic hero Karna in the movie Dana Veera Sura Karna (1977). Mimicry artistes converted monologues from the movie into anti-Congress speeches. | Photo Credit: Wiki Commons

The manner in which NTR’s films were disassembled into stand-alone images and audio tracks, and then dispersed, anticipates our encounters with cinema in the digital present. Today, we are far more likely to watch teasers, songs, and other clips from films, memes, and remixes based on film scenes rather than complete films. In the early years of YouTube, the film scholar M. Madhava Prasad pointed out that Indian popular cinema is particularly suitable for disassembly and clip creation because films are loosely assembled to begin with. The song, the fight, the comedy track, and other components that make up a film are discrete “items” and not necessarily related to the story. Any of these components can thus become a stand-alone clip and circulate independently of the film.

Contemporary campaign films are made for digital dispersal and for audiences who may never watch them. To understand if and how they work politically, we should turn our attention to the modes and extent of their dispersal.

Months before a campaign film’s completion, its trailers and teasers whip up controversies, as they are meant to. Well-rehearsed reactions ensue: spokespersons of political parties, influencers, and media outlets affiliated to them condemn or support the film in question. In May 2023, the trailer of The Diary of West Bengal resulted in a police case against the director, Sanoj Mishra, for allegedly trying to hurt religious sentiments and fan communal tension through the movie. But Amit Malviya, incharge of the BJP’s National Information and Technology Department, claimed on X that it was “a movie based on true events, on the prevailing condition in the State”. No one had seen the film at this point.

Economic logic

The unfolding scenario in Andhra Pradesh, which votes for the Lok Sabha and the Assembly on May 13, throws light on the economic logic of campaign films and on how they become campaign materials. The ruling YSRCP is pitted against the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the JanaSena Party, and the BJP alliance as well as the Congress led by Y.S. Sharmila, sister of Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy. Four of the five campaign films released so far are fairly straightforward.

Highlights

• Campaign films bank on the opportunity afforded by elections. They are made for digital dispersal and for audiences who may never watch them
• The unfolding scenario in Andhra Pradesh, which votes for the Lok Sabha and the Assembly on May 13, throws light on the economic logic of campaign films and how they become campaign materials

Yatra 2, a sequel to Yatra (2019), is an expensively produced biopic. Both films feature the Malayalam superstar Mammootty, and the sequel traces the evolution of Jagan Mohan Reddy into a political leader after the death of his father, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy. Yatra 2 is the least controversial and most decent of all the five campaign films released up to this point.

Yatra 2 traces the evolution of Jagan Mohan Reddy into a political leader after the death of his father, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy. | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

Ram Gopal Varma’s Vyooham and Shapadham, as noted earlier, are political satires produced by a YSRCP supporter. Vyooham is a thinly disguised attack on TDP leader Nara Chandrababu Naidu and his politician son, Nara Lokesh. The Naidu character is vicious and manipulative while the son is a clown who eats his way through major political developments in the State. Shapadham was not released theatrically.

A still from Vyooham, which is a thinly disguised attack on TDP leader Nara Chandrababu Naidu and his politician son, Nara Lokesh. | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

Raajadhani Files is produced by Ravi Shankar Kantamneni of the TDP. Various politicians and the strategist Prashant Kishor, who worked for the YSRCP, are easily identifiable in the film. The Chief Minister character and his lackeys scuttle the Naidu character’s plan to build a “world- class capital” through land pooling. The film ends with the defeat of the Chief Minister and assassination of the Kishor character.

Vivekam’s example

Vivekam stands out among campaign films, offering us a ringside view of how a film becomes campaign material. This is a biopic of Y.S. Vivekananda Reddy, the younger brother of former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy and uncle of the current Chief Minister, Jagan Mohan Reddy. Vivekananda Reddy was murdered in March 2019. TDP and YSRCP leaders have accused each other of the murder since then. Vivekam claims to be based on the CBI’s charge sheet on the murder. It reinforces the allegations by TDP leaders as well as by Vivekananda Reddy’s daughter, Suneetha Narreddy, that the Chief Minister is shielding the culprits.

The murder investigation became the subject of live coverage in June 2023, when Avinash Reddy, an MP belonging to the YSRCP, was arrested by the CBI. Avinash Reddy is Jagan Mohan Reddy’s cousin and one of the accused. He was released on bail within days, but media speculation continued.

The case assumed renewed political significance with Sharmila’s nomination as the Congress candidate from Kadapa, Vivekananda Reddy’s (and Avinash Reddy’s) parliamentary constituency. During her campaign, Sharmila reportedly accused her brother of shielding her uncle’s murderers and vowed to “end murder politics”. Regardless of Sharmila’s high profile, the Congress is not seen as a significant political party in the State. That the film benefits the TDP-JanaSena-BJP alliance is not in doubt.

Like the murder on which it is based, the film too is a whodunnit. There was no pre-release publicity of any kind before March 17, when pro-TDP and pro-JanaSena social media handles announced that a Vivekananda biopic would be released on vivekabiopic.com on a pay-per-view basis. The film’s trailer, too, began to circulate on the same day on X but gained visibility only after it was uploaded on YouTube a few days later. The YouTube handle of the television channel ABN, perceived to be pro-TDP, was among the uploaders. The trailer prompted the YSRCP to approach the Election Commission seeking a stay on the film’s release.

Vivekam was the most-watched movie in March 2024 in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

On March 28, social media handles announced that the film would be released on YouTube on the following day. Sure enough, on March 29, the complete movie was uploaded on YouTube, X, and possibly other platforms too, by multiple users. News of the “release” was publicised by old and new media.

The buzz around the film coincided with repeated accusations by Chandrababu Naidu at election rallies that Jagan Mohan Reddy had murdered his own uncle. On March 31, iTDP Official, an official X account of the TDP, posted a video of Naidu recommending the film at a public meeting. Throughout these eventful weeks, nothing was known about the film’s director, “Team S Cube”, and producer, Bhargav Reddy Valli. Google searches for them did not throw up any results other than the entry on the film on the Internet Movie Database mentioning their names. Regardless of who made it and why, the film was owned by the TDP. This is clear from Naidu’s references to the murder and the film. There are other pointers to the ownership of the film: the cover image of the YouTube upload by a verified user who goes by the name TDP Activist is a crudely morphed image of Jagan Mohan Reddy wielding an axe, the weapon chosen by Vivekananda Reddy’s murderer(s). Anonymity of filmmakers notwithstanding, there is no room for mystery here. The upload had over three million views within a week.

Campaign films reinforce familiar narratives and stereotypes. They do not even promise novel conspiracy theories. They nevertheless have utility politically, whether or not they are released theatrically. Their most important function is to feed circulation engines operated by thousands of paid workers and volunteers spread across the political spectrum, albeit non-uniformly.

The most important insight that campaign films offer is not into our elections but our everyday reality. Governments and political parties are permanently in campaign mode. Circulation engines are never at rest. Why be surprised when one of the villains of a film made in the election season is India’s most famous public intellectual? We have heard that one several times in the past, and between elections.

S.V. Srinivas teaches at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. His research focusses on the linkages between popular cinema and politics. The content and opinions expressed here are that of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Azim Premji University.