Tamil Nadu Flex Banners

• Make the star or leader the largest figure on the board, a photograph cut from its ground on screen that towers over the road and everyone else in the picture, and hunt for rare stills or unusual combinations so the board stands out from the rival boards around it.
• Put the sponsors' own photographs beside the hero and rank them by office, with the club president and district leaders closest to the star and larger than the rest.
• Name everyone and everything: the star's title, the film or occasion, the fan club or party unit, each sponsor and their town, and the studio that designed the board.
• Set the figures on a film still, a saturated gradient or a plain white ground, and fill the remaining space with Tamil display lettering in yellow, red or white, outlined or shadowed in a contrasting colour.
• On a party board, carry the party: its colours, such as the DMK's red and black, its emblem, and its leaders ranked from the top of the board down to the local functionaries who paid, so that the board declares a camp as well as a person.
• Repeat the boards along the approach to the cinema, hall or rally, so that their size and number measure the power of the star and of the people who paid for them.

Chennai, Puducherry and the towns of Tamil Nadu. The first digitally designed and printed vinyl hoarding went up in Chennai in 2000 (Osamu Note 2007, cited by Gerritsen 2012) and vinyl took hold in Puducherry after 2002. DT Next (2026) dates the decline of hand-painted banners to the late 2000s, with flex printing and government restrictions, and the Chennai advertising consultant Mara Varman estimates that 75% of banner artists moved to other jobs; Gita Hudson's documentary Deskilling of Art (2011) recorded how flex printing reshaped the painters' livelihoods, and by the end of Gerritsen's fieldwork in 2010 fan clubs made virtually no hand-painted signboards or cut-outs (Gerritsen 2012, p. 167). The boards inherit the formats, patrons and sites of the hand-painted cinema and political banners and of the cut-outs built from wooden planks, sometimes 60 feet high, that grew with the bond between cinema and politics which, in the art historian Preminda Jacob's words, 'has shaped the modern history of Tamil Nadu' (The News Minute's 2020 report of a Chennai Photo Biennale panel with Jacob and S. Theodore Baskaran). Gerritsen places that painted banner style within the calendar or bazaar art of popular images, noting that Chennai banner artists interviewed by Jacob cited Ravi Varma as an inspiration (p. 159). In 2017 most of the DMK's official banners were made by the agency Arasu Arts, and printers such as Mega Digital in Chintadripet worked from a vast file of high-resolution images, in sizes from 6 × 3 to 15 × 30 feet (DT Next, January 2017). Banners and cut-outs of film stars are the norm in almost every Indian state (MyNation, 2019); what is Tamil is the fan clubs (manrams), the cine-politics of the Dravidian parties and the scale of the display. Giant cut-outs still go up beside the boards at cinemas, party meetings and celebrations (The News Minute, 2019; Deccan Chronicle, 2026), but the sources consulted do not say how they are now made, so this entry covers the printed boards.

1. Roos Gerritsen, Fandom on Display: Intimate Visualities and the Politics of Spectacle (PhD thesis, Leiden University, 2012), esp. p. 20 (Annadurai's portrait, the DMK's rising sun and its colours red and black inserted into films, and party publicity modelled on film publicity), p. 104 (party members display party emblems, party colours and the leader on the invitation to a family function), pp. 158–162 (K. Madhavan at Gemini Studios; the painted banner style within 'calendar or bazaar art', with Chennai banner artists citing Ravi Varma, p. 159; the banner companies of Pondicherry), pp. 149–175 (flex banners competing with hand-painted hoardings and cloth banners at the turn of the century; the first digitally designed and printed vinyl hoarding in Chennai in 2000, after Note 2007, and vinyl in Pondicherry only after 2002, p. 166; fan clubs making 'virtually no hand-painted signboards or cutouts anymore', p. 167; the painter Muthu on how other digital banner artists 'usually leave the background of the picture blank or white', p. 168; 'Corelpaint and Photoshop' the most common programs, p. 171 n. 9; the insertion of fans' photos as 'the most important design potential of vinyl', with presidents and district leaders 'always shown closest to the star, and larger than the others', p. 171; the reused Gingee hoarding and the access road decorated with DMK flags and hoardings 'for about five hundred meters', p. 174; figures 51–54, pp. 172–175), p. 182 (continuous lines of political hoardings, 'each one bigger than the next') and p. 192 (the DMK's 'cut the cutout culture!'); fieldwork 2006–2010: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/20107
2. Osamu Note, 'Imagining the Politics of the Senses in Public Spaces: Billboards and the Construction of Visuality in Chennai City', South Asian Popular Culture 5:2 (2007): 129–143, DOI 10.1080/14746680701619545 (cited by Gerritsen for the 2000 date; not consulted directly)
3. Preminda Jacob, Celluloid Deities: The Visual Culture of Cinema and Politics in South India (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2009), on the hand-painted predecessors (cited by Gerritsen, p. 159; not consulted directly); reviewed in the Journal of Asian Studies, DOI 10.1017/s0021911810002652
4. Anjana Shekar, 'Why posters and cut-outs in Tamil cinema are much more than advertisements', The News Minute (1 September 2020), on a Chennai Photo Biennale panel with S. Theodore Baskaran, Preminda Jacob, Jeevananthan and Rajiv Menon (hand-painted banners; cut-outs of wooden planks that 'may sometimes go up to 60 feet high'; Jacob on cinema and politics that 'has shaped the modern history of Tamil Nadu'): https://www.thenewsminute.com/tamil-nadu/why-posters-and-cut-outs-tamil-cinema-are-much-more-advertisements-132081
5. Vaishnavi Deegwal, 'Chennai's forgotten art: How flex printing erased hand-painted banners', DT Next (9 July 2026), dating the decline to the late 2000s 'with the arrival of flex printing and legal restrictions by the government', with Mara Varman's estimate that '75% of banner artists shifted to other jobs' and Gita Hudson's Deskilling of Art (2011): https://www.dtnext.in/lifestyle/chennais-forgotten-art-how-flex-printing-erased-hand-painted-banners
6. 'Poster politics', DT Next (10 January 2017), on Chennai's digital banner printers, Arasu Arts, Mega Digital's 'vast file of high-resolution images', Photoshop, flex sizes, a DMK supporter's request to superimpose Stalin's face on a lion, and the Jayalalithaa tribute banners: https://www.dtnext.in/news/tamilnadu/poster-politics
7. 'Fans steal packets: TN milk dealers' body seeks ban on paal abhishekam for cut-outs', The News Minute (23 January 2019): https://www.thenewsminute.com/amp/story/tamil-nadu/fans-steal-packets-tn-milk-dealers-body-seeks-ban-paal-abhishekam-cut-outs-95531
8. 'Madras HC bans pictures of living persons from banners and signboards in TN', The News Minute (24 October 2017), on Justice S. Vaidyanathan's order under the Tamil Nadu Open Places (Prevention of Disfigurement) Act, 1959: https://www.thenewsminute.com/tamil-nadu/madras-hc-bans-pictures-living-persons-banners-and-signboards-tn-70503
9. 'Madras HC reverses ban on use of live persons in Banners, Hoardings', Bar & Bench (20 December 2017), on the division bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice R. Hemalatha setting aside Justice S. Vaidyanathan's ban: https://barandbench.com/news/madras-hc-reverses-ban-banners
10. Priyanka Thirumurthy and Sreedevi Jayarajan, 'Despite Subhasri's death, TN's political parties fight to keep banner culture', The News Minute (17 September 2019), including the four AIADMK cut-outs for the Annadurai birth-anniversary meeting of the Sholinganallur constituency, according to the complainant David Manohar: https://www.thenewsminute.com/amp/story/tamil-nadu/despite-subhasris-death-tns-political-parties-fight-keep-banner-culture-109051
11. 'Stars say no to banners', Deccan Chronicle (16 September 2019), on Vijay (Bigil audio launch) and Suriya (Kaappaan) asking fans not to put up banners and cut-outs after Subhasri's death: https://deccanchronicle.com/entertainment/kollywood/160919/stars-say-no-to-banners.html
12. T. Sudheesh, 'TVK MLA's call for change of cut-out culture is food for thought', Deccan Chronicle (14 October 2026), on flex boards and cut-outs for birthdays and electoral victories after TVK 'came to power', including a large cut-out of Vijay with Royapuram MLA K. Vijay Dhamu, and on Subhashree, who 'lost control of her two-wheeler and fell in front of a water tanker' in 2019: https://www.deccanchronicle.com/southern-states/tamil-nadu/tvk-mlas-call-for-change-of-cut-out-culture-is-food-for-thought-1995627
13. Subash Chandra Bose, 'From child star to CM: Vijay's rise from cinema to ‘Thalapathy’ of Tamil Nadu politics', The South First (10 May 2026), on Vijay formally announcing TVK in February 2024 and taking oath as Chief Minister after TVK won 108 of 234 seats: https://thesouthfirst.com/tamilnadu/from-child-star-to-cm-vijays-rise-from-cinema-to-thalapathy-of-tamil-nadu-politics/
14. Balakumar Kuppuswamy, 'Ban the Banner: Cutout culture was pioneered in Tamil Nadu due to film-politics nexus', MyNation (14 September 2019), on cut-outs and huge banners for film stars as 'the norm in almost all states' and Tamil Nadu as the pioneer of cut-outs for politicians: https://www.mynation.com/views/ban-the-banner-cutout-culture-was-pioneered-in-tamil-nadu-due-to-film-politics-nexus-pxtlq4

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