ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that one of the ways the 'mass hero' has been reinvented in contemporary Tamil cinema is through the referencing of the male star as a 'student' or an engineering graduate, which helps the viewer to place him as an everyman of contemporary, neoliberal Tamil society. It argues that the rise of the 'engineer hero' helps the reader to identify the evolution of the Tamil mass hero and examines the discourses behind his continued relevance to Tamil society. In order to understand how the Tamil mass hero becomes constantly referenced as the everyman of Tamil society by affiliating his position as an engineer, it is important to turn to the histories and the shifting meanings of technical education within Tamil Nadu. The chapter attempts to demonstrate the evolution of the mass hero in twenty-first-century Tamil cinema by examining the popular casting of the Tamil hero as a graduate or student of engineering.
