The reason I bring up Singeetham is to move on to the transition between the 80s and 90s, and how the State and establishment became a lens to view the city. This man had no issues negotiating his linguistic, cultural and aesthetic identities clearly. Nor did he pull any punches.
Take Jwaalamukhi for example; Rajkumar plays a firebrand Journalist/activist involved in a criminal court case being fought to expose the crimes of man of great power in the town. Of course, for me Jwaalamukhi will be remembered for this earworm of a song:
Moving into the 90's marks the beginning of a significant love affair between Kannada cinema, and upright, righteous, incorruptible cop with the heart of gold and marshmallows. 
Our cop is so morally right, that Police brutality is an acceptable means to a 'just' end. In that era, i don't think a single Kannada lead played anything but a Good cop. Hard to remember if there was any grey there..
And if ever the establishment was corrupt, our Good cop would correct it single handedly and save the day. They were our exceptional superheroes who fought like they were from DCU, swag-ed like they were from MCU and romanced like they were from Nottinghill.
Fast forward a few years, and the superhero cop was the butt of our jokes. The righteousness was arrogance, and their judgement compromised by proximity to power and money. Sadhu Kokila parodies all the Macho cops before him. dailymotion.com/video/x2tbn5w
Why this happened is because of a significant realignment of the identity of the average Bangalorean in Kannada cinema. The most memorable of such redefined roles was the spectacular, pathbreaking OM. Directed by Upendra, starring Hattrick hero Shivarajkumar.
Satya is a good boy turned bad, turns good again. Madhu is a scheming vamp but only to avenge injustices she faces. The language is purposely coarse, staging and movements abrasive to the viewer. Prema's intensity contributes immensely to Shivanna's grunge
Why this is such a departure from the then norm is best explained by MK Raghavendra (no relation to me :P) in his book Bipolar Identity. A excellent summation and explanation of Kannada cinema from the very beginning to as it stands in 2008 (when the book was published)
Mr. Raghavendra explains; Kannada filmdom has a 'slight' preoccupation with the Mysore state identity of the erstwhile princely state. He says that while geographically there is a Karnataka formed out of 4+ Kannada speaking regions, one has a hegemonic influence in film culture.
This is not difficult to see now, every other film has a song referencing Mysooru, the glory, the grace, the opulence. And Bangalore is the untrustworthy legacy of the Brits. Always referred to in cold, mechanical terms.
Mr. Raghavendra illustrates with examples over the course of decades, how the Nation-state, the kingdom figure in the film's psyches, drawing allegories of the establishment to Mothers, the Patriarch, even the Police. Highly recommended that anyone interested pick up this book.
Om subverts our notions of heroism; showing us for the first time an Anti-hero protagonist. Forcing us to see the good in the dank and violent. Obviously you can spot the influences of Nayagan, and by extension The Godfather in the depiction of the Central character.
The Director takes our expectation of a Goody two shoes hero and transforms him into a Grotesque survivor of circumstances. The many levels of the city's hierarchies and underbelly are depicted with some spectacle and a touch of empathy.
Om also opened the floodgates to a veritable explosion of Gangster/Rowdy Laangu/Macchu (machette/curved coconut-hacking knife). movies. There were other films and heroes during this time, but the city wasn't important or was derided by them, we'll get to that.
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