Remembering Silk Smitha on her 60th Birthday
Content Warning:
Mention of suicide
Image: Asianet Newsable
Silk Smitha, who would have turned 60 years old today, continues to shape the discourse around sexuality and pleasure within the Tamil community. Silk Smitha's powerful on-screen presence remains influential among multiple generations. This tribute to Silk Smitha's life, career, and eternal spirit will explore the power structures that created her image and how the same power structures subsequently tarnish her legacy today.
Silk Smitha, whose off-screen name was Vijayalakshmi Vadlapati, was born on December 2nd, 1960, to a poor working-class Telugu family in Eluru, Andhra Pradesh. As a result of poverty, Silk Smitha dropped out of school at eight years old and entered the workforce to support her family. As poverty continued to dictate her family's choices, she was coerced into marriage while still relatively young. She later left the abusive relationship and moved to Chennai, Tamil Nadu. She lived with her aunt and during this time was discovered by the late Tamil director Vinu Chakravarthy. Earning the name "Silk" after her character "Siluku" in the movie Vandichakaram (1980), she rose to fame while carving out a unique space for herself in the industry. Her contributions to the industry, arguably, has yet to be matched by her many successors.
“This tribute to Silk Smitha’s life, career, and eternal spirit will explore the power structures that created her image and the same power structures that subsequently tarnish her legacy today.”
Despite having starred in over 450 films, Silk Smitha's most crucial role is the one she plays in young Tamil women's lives: one of empowerment, especially in the realm of self-love and exploration of sexuality. To a question regarding Silk Smitha's impact on their lives shared on Thaen Pot's Instagram story, one person responded, Silk Smitha has "been my idol since I was little…the baddest b*tch of that era & Tamil cinema." Another respondent pointed to "the way she embraced herself" and "the confidence in her sexuality" as Silk Smitha's most influential characteristics. Being part of a community that never openly speaks about pleasure, Silk Smitha's presence in our homes, while that may be entirely through screens, influenced our relationships with our bodies. However, the power structures that uphold the dehumanization of marginalized women should not get lost in our celebration of the icon, as many of these factors contributed, according to multiple reports, to Silk Smitha's untimely death. She died by suicide on September 23rd, 1996, although it may be argued, ultimately it was the patriarchy that was responsible for her passing.
Image: Asianet Newsable
Who was "Silk Smitha" created for?
The reclamation of Silk Smitha's on-screen presence in our journey to sexual liberation must also involve interrogating the image of female sexuality manufactured by an industry dominated by cishet men. The systems of oppression that inform the hypersexualization of dark skin, poor working-class, and marginalized caste women that shaped the image of Silk Smitha as a "sex symbol" is essential to unpack.
A Times of India article written earlier this year, honouring her memory 24 years after her death, mentioned that Chakravarty "arranged dancing, acting and etiquette classes for her" prior to her official entry into Tamil films. The industry carefully invented Silk Smitha's image for the sole purpose of capitalist consumption. We need to confront the oppressive power structures in play that render women who are dark skin, from poor working-class, and marginalized caste backgrounds as “objects” who can be exploited in this way. The act of ownership of Silk Smitha’s body, exercised by Chakravarty in his attempt to build this image also speaks to this objectification. Furthermore, in a society where sex and sexuality remain highly contentious and often condemned by our families, the value or "productiveness", as defined by capitalism, of Silk Smitha's image made it acceptable for it to enter our lives and homes.
The term "sex symbol text" is defined as "to the ways in which various mass-produced media texts – such as films, criticism and commentaries, interviews and biographical legends, and promotional and publicity material – together manufacture and manage a celebrity image that derives its dominant meaning and affect from sex."*
In Tamil movies the weight of song sequences, or rather “item songs”, and their contributions to this type of celebrity image construction is important to consider. For example, her image was so powerful that adding a song featuring Silk Smitha reverted the entire value of films that initially had trouble being picked up by distributors. Silk Smitha's influence transcended being a mere representation of sexuality as her labour continued to garner capital for industry giants.
“Furthermore, in a society where sex and sexuality remain highly contentious and often condemned by our families, the value or “productiveness”, as defined by capitalism, of Silk Smitha’s image made it acceptable for it to enter our lives and homes.”
However, how did her "value" translate behind the scenes? Silk Smitha mentioned in an interview that she was expected to return costumes she had worn while other actresses were rewarded them as a part of their compensation for their labour. This reminds us of the exploitation of certain women’s labour, especially women from poor working-class and marginalized caste backgrounds, is involved in their subsequent dehumanization. Further, who is deemed pure and worthy enough to remain respected in this space and society as a whole?
How is Silk remembered today?
In 2011, the Ryerson University's Tamil Students' Association (RyeTSA), in Toronto, held a pub night named after one of Silk Smitha's most famous songs: "Nethu Rathiri Yemma." Young student organizers on the RyeTSA were bombarded with backlash online centred around the apparent inappropriateness of the title. Despite being wrong in their translation of the title, criticism was predominantly from older Tamil men who often police of young people, especially around issues of sexuality and how they chose to express it. The consistent attacks resulted in RyeTSA shortening the title. Although this incident may have seemed trivial to some at the time, it offers a broader commentary on our community's regulation and suppression of public depictions of sexuality. This reaction to the mere title of a song featuring Silk Smitha only touches the surface of how difficult it is for young people in our community to express and safely explore their sexuality. Additionally, it depicts the monitoring of Silk Smitha’s image and where it is “allowed” to exist. The shift from being confined within a song, in this particular example, existing for the consumption of cishet men and, by extension, a capitalist society, to being attributed to a public event organized by young people became threatening.
In addition to various community responses to Silk Smitha's work, it is essential to investigate the Indian film industry’s role in tarnishing her legacy today. In 2011, in a failed attempt to memorialize Silk Smitha's life and career, Bollywood released "The Dirty Picture". The movie's creators and actors deny that it is based on Silk Smitha's life, despite notable plot points suggesting otherwise. Bollywood's attempts to whitewash and repackage South Indian narratives to make it more palatable for the light-skinned North Indian audience was evident in "The Dirty Picture." For starters, Vidya Balan, who plays Silk Smitha in the movie, is a light skin upper-class Tamil Brahmin woman. Balan's casting alone is a mockery of Silk Smitha's legacy and minimizes the harm she endured throughout her career. But it doesn't stop there. Silk Smitha's family, concerned with the use of her story in this way, commenced a legal challenge citing the industry didn’t have permission to produce a film on Silk Smitha's life. Andhra High court later dismissed the petition. The film went on to gain commercial success and receive multiple accolades, including praise and national acting awards for Balan. Different regional film industries released similar movies inspired by Silk Smitha's life story, including in Kerala, and featured light skin actresses as the lead. After her death, the industry finds more ways to capitalize off her body while effectively stripping her of her identity and participating in her legacy's erasure through dishonest portrayals of her life.
In a sea of tributes to Silk Smitha, many of them written to satisfy the male gaze, may this piece honour her legacy by encouraging folks to continue working toward the dismantling of power structures that police and profit off of racialized women’s sexuality.
References:
*Will Scheibel (2013) Marilyn Monroe, 'sex symbol': film performance, gender politics and 1950s Hollywood celebrity, Celebrity Studies, 4:1, 4-13, DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2012.750095
