Thanks to the Tamil Nadu assembly election results, we now have a 100-plus opinion pieces explaining why Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) emerged as the single largest party. What makes these pieces interesting is that none of these political commentators saw it coming. They are now performing post-mortem analyses to make sense of what happened. This piece may not be very different. It too is an attempt to understand what catapulted Vijay to success. The first obvious reason for Vijay’s ascension to the CM’s desk lies in how Tamil Nadu continues to sustain a deep connection between cinema and politics. The communities, cartels, groups, and families that produce cinema also have a strong stake in the state’s political functioning. The success and future of both cinema and politics are often determined by the same working-class groups. This overlap, both in production structures and consumption patterns, allows cinema and politics to remain deeply intertwined.…