Sridevi and Senior Citizens: India's grand cinematic tradition of heroes and their celluloid child-bride substitutes

There are two ways to look at the pre-woke history of Sridevi's Telugu and Tamil films when she was the leading lady to men who were so senior (and in some cases senior citizens!) that its an embarrassing indictment of an industry with a long lurid history of toting out older men with increasingly younger women in romantic leads. And everyone just going along with it for decades without batting, let alone raising, an eye-lid.   

To put that into a Hollywood-en context and perspective, this review of a popular blockbuster where these lines resonate; "There's a tummy-churning tradition of pensionable movie blokes getting paired up with beautiful babes…" complained OK! in its review. "We barely believed Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer in The Russia House; a decade later, Sean and Catherine Zeta-Jones? You gotta be kidding."

That's an excerpt from a review of Entrapment (1999), when, at the time, leading man Sean Connery was 69 years old and Catherine Zeta Jones was... 30! 

Sridevi acted in films as a teenager with co-stars who were 38, 40 and 42 years older than her. She acted with as a child artist, teenager and adult - with the same men who were her co-stars as grandfather, father, uncle and then hero! 

When asked about this age-gap in a televised interview, she laughed it off. It was just the way it was - you can't rewrite history in the age of Buzzfeed and agro-feminism - and retro actively correct it. We can acknowledge that's the way it was - and hope history doesn't repeat itself in such a stomach-churning manner. 

If what's seen on screen is a reflection of what's seen on the streets, then here's a chilling newsbyte;  "Child Marriages Are Up In The Pandemic."  A headline from November 2020, not November 1920 [Spanish Flu Pandemic 1918-1920]. 

Looking back at the films, it's... not as cringe as expected. Most South-Indian films are rather tame, loads of song and dance routines, no explicit scenes, kisses or physical contact between portly poorly-dyed men and their teenage leading-ladies. The camera angles, costumes, innuendo  - well, that's for another time and feature.

In past media interviews, Sridevi has also mentioned that she was honoured to work with stalwarts and thespians in the industry, as she learned everything by "parroting" them on set, "I had been fortunate that the actors whose films, I used to see with my parents - like Rajesh Khanna sir, Jeetendra sir, Akkini Nageshwara sir , N.T.Rama Rao sir and Sivaji Ganesan sir - I got opportunity to act with them. They were simply great in maintaining their personas and getting into their roles easily. All of them had really great career. I feel happy about having worked with legends." 

In a similar vein, Sridevi told MOVIE magazine editor in the early 1990s, "I was cast as the heroine opposite N. T. Rama Rao, earlier I'd played the role of his grand daughter. I was paired with every senior hero. MGR, Nageswara Rao and Sivaji Ganesan. I never felt awkward while acting with them, rather I felt deeply honored. But they did seem to be much taller than me and I'd stand straight up, so I wouldn't look like a little girl."

Kamal Haasan said he used to observe Sridevi and remarked she was like "blotting paper - be it water, ink or acid, it absorbs all. Sridevi absorbed everything by the masters of Indian cinema." 

So while she worked with the OG, the legends, she also learned a bag of tricks from masters in the trade. There was a payoff, a free education for a girl who skipped studies and learned on the set. Unlike her children, Sridevi didn't fly off to NYU to learn the art form, there are no essays read by Sri on the Stanislavski's System or method acting by Lee Strasberg in her head. There was her MGR method, she was cognoscente of how Krishna worked, her Haasan habits. 

Had she just worked with fellow child artists or teen sensations, would Sridevi have ascended to such meteoric heights? Movies with the icons also meant major blockbusters - many of those movies ran purely on the steam of their star power. 

So if we look at it in a Pygmalion-esque context, does that make Sridevi's long history of acting with her seniors, more digestible?! 

The topic of aging actors and their increasingly young co-stars has been brought up on several film blogs recently and, well, ours too. Especially with images of young - and we do mean painfully young - Sara Ali Khan, 25, romancing Akshay Kumar, 53, and Dhanush, 37, in the upcoming Atrangi Re, which has created a buzz online for all the wrong reasons. Recently promos of Salman Khan, 55, with Disha Patani, 28, looks risible too. 

Some bold-font-all-cap-twitterati are outraged by the stunt casting, but to longtime jaded cine-goers and reviewers, it isn't a novelty, in fact, its a tale as old as time. A tradition in cinema - the world over - let alone pandemic-hit Bollywood, gagging for a respite. 

In one of cacophonous talking head news shows, someone asked, "Will we ever see Madhuri Dixit-Nene romancing Ishaan Khatter? Or even his older brother Shahid?" 

Will we indeed. 

Update: This post seems to have a offended a lot of people. Good. Here's a quote to keep in mind;

"History is not there for you to like or dislike. It is there for you to learn from - and if it offends you, even better. Because then you are less likely to repeat it. It's not yours to erase or destroy."