Contributed by Vihari Polapragada
Heroism and Telugu Cinema are two inseparable words. In fact, we at South Cinema worship our heroes. They are our demigods, We love them when they demolished every bad thing in the world. We love them when they flirted with heroines, tease them. In short, we love everything our hero does onscreen. Over the years, Telugu Cinema has evolved a lot. We have seen different types of heroism in Telugu Cinema. Let us have a look at them.
1. Ramu is a good boy :
Initial days of Telugu Cinema, we saw our heroes to be extremely good, doing all good things, preaching good to others. They are epitome to all goodness in the world.
2. Teasing Heroines :
After all the goodness, the audience got bored to be too good. Then there is a shift in heroism. Heroes started to tease heroines in their movies. They flirted, roamed around, sing teasing songs made them fall in love.
3. Negative Shades :
Slowly, while teasing is going on, negative shade for heroes entered Telugu Cinema. Heroes looked erratic, yet we loved them. Such is our unconditional love towards the hero. However, hero transforms into a good boy in the middle or before the climax.
3. Faction heroism :
Factionism which was an integral part of our Telugu lands entered Telugu Cinema. We have seen numerous films on faction heroism. We loved when our hero holds a weapon and demolishes rival party. We kept aside common sense and whistled when our hero just killed goons at one go. This is the time we saw swirling mustaches and thigh slappings.
4. Over the top heroism :
This was the time when faction heroes are just getting bored, there is a slight shift and heroes started to go over the top with their heroism. There is just no count on how many they fight, irrespective of what they hold guns or knives, our hero just answered with his fist. We just loved it.
5. Family heroism :
This is another kind of heroism we slowly got accustomed to. Just when all the other things are getting boring, our directors introduced family heroism, where our hero does what a perfect man in real life do. Love his family first. of course, he just has to fight in the last, no matter what.
6. Society concerned heroism :
Heroism just evolved to be better and heroes started to keep their personal quests aside and fight for a cause in society. We have searched heroism in this aspect as well.
7. Complete Negativeness :
This is just opposite what we discussed above. A Hero in this phase is extremely negative or share a grey shaded mindset. Contrary to our expectation, he doesn’t transform into a good boy at last. He remains as a bad boy and justifies why he turned into one creating empathy for his character.
Have we missed any? We’re sure we missed a few. Post them in comments below.
