This article focuses more on the south Indian films, comparing and contrasting them with the north Indian (Hindi) ones. T Rama Rao plays him, explicitly refers to him as a Dravidian. Though Telugu films usually do not mention Ravana's ethnicity, one film, where the superstar N. Remarkably, Kampan's epic comes together with its opponent, Dravidian politics, to produce a glorious image of Ravana in film as a Tamil king who is a musician-scholar with mastery over the vlna. I find that this image of Ravana has a strong influence in Tamil films, and to some extent in Telugu films.
Ravana is seen as a great Dravidian leader, who was killed by the Aryan Rama.
Adherents of this stream of politics argue that the Ramayana-including the 12th-century Tamil Ramayana by Kampan-served to impose north Indian Brahminical Aryan culture onto the Dravidian people of southern India. I also argue that films from south India, especially Tamil ones, tone down the evil aspect more than those from the north, possibly owing to influences from Dravidian politics. I argue that film (cinema and TV) portrayals are more nuanced than his generally 'evil' image in ancient and medieval versions of the epic. My work brings out the contrast between his character in the epics and on screen, and the fundamental differences in how he is perceived in films in Hindi and in south Indian languages.
His consciousness of his supreme powers and great knowledge soon gives way to ahankara (hubris) and lust, which leads to his eventual downfall and death at the hands of Rama, a human avatar of the god Visnu.
His passion for the vlna, a string instrument with divine associations, is so great that this instrument adorns his royal flag as its emblem. Abstract : Ravana, the ten-headed Raksasa ('demon') king of the epic the Ramayana, is the most fascinating of all the antagonists in films based on Hindu mythology, so powerful that even the Sun cannot rise without his orders, and celebrated as an unparalleled musician-scholar and great devotee of the god Siva.
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