CONSTRUCTING STARDOM OF RAJ KAPOOR

-ADITYA TYAGI

When the word Showman comes into our mind, we think of Raj Kapoor, our own
Charlie Chaplin of India. He got these nicknames because of his multi-talented
personality by which he broke every norm & aspect of filmmaking culture of that
time. He donned many hats throughout his lifetime and mastered every
department of filmmaking. It would not be wrong to say that he was the first
superstar of his era to get International name & fame especially in Soviet Union
(Russia), China, Middle East & Africa. But why he got such massive fame in these
countries? What were the reasons for it?, despite the fact that the storyline in his
movies talked about Indian subjects. So how did his popularity reached oversees?.
So the primary question arise is, How his Stardom & popularity got constructing?.
To answer these questions I will be using Martin Shingler’s “Star Quality: In Search
of the Prerequisites of Stardom” in Star Studies: A Critical Guide, London: British
Film Institute,2013 & Edgar Morin’s, “Gods & Goddesses” in The Stars: An
Account of the Star System in Cinema,1957 as a base/premise to answer my
questions about the Stardom Of Raj Kapoor. I will also try to draw out the
sociological aspects surrounded his Star image which he portrayed in his work.

According to Martin Shingler, a Star has to full certain prerequisites to attain a

Star status. These qualities are considered sine qua non in mainstream
commercial cinema in various parts of the world. It was assimilated by integrating
various Case Studies from the USA, India, Britain & Europe. The qualities which
are used in this assessment are Glamour, Physical attractiveness (of face &
body)/Photogeny, Vocal Attractiveness/Phonogeny, Distinctiveness/Expressivity &
acting talent. Now let’s talk about the Star figure of Raj Kapoor in the mould of
these Prerequisites.

Glamour is something which makes stars stand out. According to Jane Gaines it is
a perfect amalgamation of Money & Love. If we talk about Raj Kapoor, he was one
the highest paid actor of his times and the image he created was of a romantic
but a relatable protagonist who always belonged to a working class profession or
usually unemployed .His movie plots which were mostly related to Romance
Genre like Awaara, Shree 420 in which the character’s profession like in ‘Jis Desh
Main Ganga Behti Hai (1960)’ he played a role of Sundar(IAF Pilot) or in ‘Shree
420’ as a Con-man. These roles depicted the plight & happenings of a common
man in a newly independent India in a satirical way with a tinge of Romance in it.
If we notice from his early works to his later films he tried to gave up his romantic
hero image into a deglamorized Tramp image with a pinch of comedy in it. When
he was asked why he did that he said it was because it had a greater connect with
the common man because not everybody can become a Don Juan & he as an
actor totally felt alienated with this sense of belonging. As he always wanted to
make films to cater mass audience and the nation just got independent and there
were millions of subjugated men just like his movie characters. It was this
relationship with character and audience which made up his star image in India as
well as in abroad. Just like any other art forms, Comedy draws itself, reflects upon
& shapes the society it dwells in. It structures the signification of the cultural
meaning systems with relation to the society which gave rise to it. Raj Kapoor
drew his acting art from the Charlie Chaplin’s comic art & used the idea of Tramp
in his movies because of the class conflict which was quite evident during that
time as colonialism & imperialism ended an new era of socialism started while the
capitalist agencies flourished but there was still a huge gap between the
Proletariat & the bourgeois class .It was rightly noted by Jackie Stacey that Star
Glamour is not only understood in terms of appearance but also by significance of
confidence, sophistication & self-assurance which was perceived by female
spectators as desirable & inspirational. If we look at the journey of Raj Kapoor, he
started as a clapper boy at the film sets of ‘Vishkanya’(1943) and ended up being
the youngest direct at the age of 24 with ‘Aag’(1948). He mastered almost every
art of filmmaking as well as he marketed them as well. This multi-facet personality
added a different kind of aura around him which gave him a status of a film god.

If we look into the Shingler’s argument he started out with the general
perceptions around Stars and their physical image like they all should be good
looking. This same attitude is still followed around in the Hindi film industry for
decades that the leading man should be tall, fair and good looking. In this mould
of perception Raj Kapoor fitted very well in this mould. He was also called the
‘Clark Gable of India’ by TM Ramachandran. His good looks was well utilized in his
films and his characters were such that it gave him a romantic hero image. If we
notice there always a connection between physical beauty and love, this
attributes and the pattern can be well seen & interpreted in Romantic genre films.
But if we look into the argument made by Edgar Morin in ‘Les Stars’(1957) that
many leading men didn’t had good looks or those star looks but they still made
big in the industry, maybe this was because the spectator was able to relate with
the Star and role he is playing. As talked I about earlier Raj Kapoor tried break this
romantic star image mould and adopted most of his acting & performance style
from Charlie Chaplin because of that was also called as the ‘little tramp’ or the
Charlie Chaplin of India. His screen image and the depiction of Charlie Chaplin in
his movies played a major role in construction of his star image. They both tried to
depict the plight of the downtrodden and make people laugh at the same time.
Most the Chaplin’s comedies depicted a universalism which arose out of the
cultural discourse prevalent in the western society at that time which was quite
similar in case of India as it was suffering from the perils of post-independence of
social & political aftermath. Both of them used comedy as a device to say these
plights of the penniless working class. He mastered the look of a Tramp/
Vagabond like wearing ankle length pants, worn out clothes and an innocent yet
cheerful demeanor on screen. This look helped him in projecting his Star image.
Raj Kapoor’s tramp was always named Raj or Raju just like Charlie Chaplin’s
Charlie. The traces of this Chapinisque image was shown in the films like
Awara(1951), Shri 420 (1955), Jagte Raho (1956) & Jis Desh me Ganga Beheti Hain
(1960). These films were made during the Nehru years after the post-
independence as it witnessed the bursting optimism of the Nehru’s vision of
modern Indian which was a combination of traditional values with the spirit of
modern science & its fading. Raj Kapoor’s oeuvre portrayed the harmony
between tradition and modernity. Morin pointed out that the connection
between youth & beauty in relation with female stars, but Raj Kapoor was also
affected by it in a way that during his post- Awara years ,when he was called in
China as he was popular over there also he refused to go over there because he
believed that his fans would be disappointed to see him in his old age. This Star
image paradox shows us how stars took & perceived their screen image.
Phonogeny or Voice attractiveness is one of the vital requirements to build a star
image. In the case of Raj Kapoor, he was a proficient actor with a theatre
background and worked on his voice & accent according to role he played. He
perfectly mastered the voice of a common man who most of the time came from
some small town village. But Hindi cinema is synonymous with musicals & during
early stages of Hindi cinema, actors use to sing their own songs. Raj Kapoor had a
great interest in music and was quite an accomplished musician and he even
fancied the idea to become a music director. He used to ‘saw’ music, he visualized
it and told exactly what he wanted by the composer itself. But his remembered
association was with the singer Mukesh, he became the voice of Raj Kapoor. He
sung iconic song iconic songs of ‘Awaara’, ‘Aag, ‘Sangam’ etc. When he died Raj
Kapoor said he lost his voice. That was the importance of their association.

The last and the most important attribute to construct a star image is
Distinctiveness, Expressivity & Acting Talent. As I have discussed above his acting
skills were something which gave him that popularity. He was member of Indian
People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) where his ideological convictions developed
into some sort of socialist-realism which coincided with the Nehruvian idea of
Scientific Socialism. Though he started out as a clapper boy he slowly learned and
became director at a very young age. His multi-talented personality was part of
his distinctiveness, through which defined & tested Indian Cinema’s generic rules
like by using the idea of female body in provocative way like in Barsaat(1949)
were there are two shots paired of different women caressing their lover’s feet,
but the gesture signified in these two shots are complex in nature because they
are neither erotic or simply submissive in nature. In his other works he used
subtle concepts of eroticism like using revealing clothes. His expressivity in Art
was inspired by many filmmakers & theatre practitioners around the globe.
Kapoor’s early black & white cinema is inspired from the works of Vittorio de
Sica , Frank Capra & Orson Welles. Like he used the concept of light & shade
which is used Citizen Kane’s cinematography. Even shooting outdoors not in
indoor studios setup was imbibed after the advice which he got from Cesare
Zavattini who wrote screenplay for De Sica. If we study the oeuvre of Raj Kapoor,
he encoded a social teaching and a cultural commentary in his entertainment
films. Kapoor was not satisfied just by showing mundane or sometime the
unpleasant reality , he wanted to offer what is evasive in that reality like
Love,Beauty,happiness and pleasure. It was showed in a dichotomous reality of
‘Satyam, Shivam Sundram’ where the actress Zeenat Aman was playing the role of
a woman whose face was disfigured by a burn and his lover tried to rethink and in
that process ask his viewers to re-examine their own pre-conceived ideas about
beauty & fame and tries to examine his own reality which was somewhat
superimposed by the hero’s own fantasy world.

We have discussed it earlier that because of his IPTA’s influence he had his own
commitment given to social realism and it was not surprise that he was obsessed
with the class. In ‘Baarsat’ he tries to highlten class differences by dramatizing
the conflict between village & city, local & cosmopolitan and their existence in
Indian Modernity. We can even see that in ‘Awaara’ where class conflict is evident
between two lovers which shows logically opposition between indigenous cultural
identity and western influences. In ‘Mera Naam Joker’ the protagonist tries to
critique about the society and its formation which is based on lies, where his
character admits of telling lies to get employment in the circus and thus found
“guilty of being humane”. He even tried to point out ethic or even racial
difference by showing his love stints with three women all from different class,
ethnicity & racial backgrounds and even a Russian woman. In the narrative his
character was mistaken for a Russian. This was aptly pointed out by kapoor as he
used to send a transnational solidarity message to Soviet Union as the post-
colonial idea of India of Nehruviansim coincided with Soviets than to United
Nations that’s why he was welcomed as “Comrade Vagabond”.

REFERENCES-

 Edgar Morin, “Gods and Goddesses” and “The Case of James Dean” in The
Stars: An Account of the Star System in Cinema, 1957.
 Martin Shingler, “Introduction”, “Star Quality: In Search of the Prerequisites
of Stardom” in Star Studies: A Critical Guide, London: British Film Institute,
2013
 Ranjamritkka Bhowmik, “The Eternal Tramp: Chaplin’s Imitation &
Resonace in Raj Kapoor’s Cinema”.
 Anubhav Roy, “Raj Kapoor and India’s Foremost Cinema Soft Power
Breakthrough”.
 Samir Dayal, “Introductory Remarks for the Raj Kapoor Retrospective”.