Vadivelu mocks all of these, not from a distance, the way his contemporary Vivek did, which appeared holier-than-thou. He does it from within, playing characters seemingly similar to the heroes, yet, having his facade crumble spectacularly, exposing our hypocrisies and vulnerabilities. Take Maruthamalai (2007), for instance, where he plays Encounter Ekambaram, a police head constable. At one point, he walks up to the market and threatens a vegetable vendor for a bribe. The shopkeeper treats them both equally, flicking coins at their faces, which Ekambaram fails to catch. What follows is a hilarious takedown of the police. So much so that at one stage, when Ekambaram chides the beggar, “Haven’t I asked you not to beg where I’m claiming my bribe?”, he retorts: “Haven’t I told you not to claim your bribes where I come to beg?”īut Vadivelu had his share of problems. For much of his 25 years as a comedian, his work was rejected by serious critics as slapstick and crude.Ĭasteist slurs, blatant misogyny, rape jokes - and rape as joke - are sprinkled all over his oeuvre. After an ill-fated tryst in politics, Vadivelu’s career petered out by the 2011 election, in which he campaigned for the DMK, which lost, leaving the ruling AIADMK adequately angered. The several alleged resurrections failed to bring his career back up. Vadivelu’s distinct ability to embody the hypocrisies of the common man, find comedy in real-life situations - even if tragicomic - and create believable characters, has made him a somewhat fortuitous theorist of modern Tamil society. His exaggerated facial expressions and loaded body language lent themselves incredibly to “meme” culture, which needed captivating visuals to tell its story. Vadivelu saying “Ahaan?” and “Is it?” are now part of legitimate language to respond sarcastically to fake news or false claims. Various kinds of Vadivelu laughter have been cathartic for those who celebrated Tamilisai Soundararajan and H Raja of the BJP losing in the recent Lok Sabha elections, for instance.
His “Venaam, valikkudhu, azhudhuduven (No, it hurts, I’m about to cry)” has been the balm for many cornered souls. His “Vada poche! (Alas! The vada is gone!)” was once used to explain Hilary Clinton’s electoral loss. The already cinema-happy Tamil people find in Vadivelu the power of mockery and satire as a way to explain life. He has a portfolio so vast that there’s a meme-worthy scene for every situation.
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