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This paper argues for the significance of sex work as a figurative and affective reference point in the production of ideas of romance, risk and respectability in public culture through a reading of contemporary Hindi cinema. Reading the films Jab We Met (2007) and Pink (2016), I ask what the sex worker does in the films' narratives when she herself is absented from it but brought up suggestively. I propose suggestion as a figurative technique deployed in the films to mediate a tension about knowing and identifying sex work as well as to produce an ideology of romance, personhood and injury, critical to assemblages of femininity in these films. This paper argues that such a reading of films that privileges the figuration of sex work through what may otherwise be seen as a minor invocation, presents the opportunity to critically examine naturalised ideas of romance, risk and respectability that find expression in them. It makes the case for the figure of the sex worker as an important node of affective intensification in the larger sphere of public sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the evolution of Bollywood villains in the 1980s as representations of socio-political and cultural contexts. Topics include the influence of Indian mythology on villainy, the portrayal of villains as political figures, gangsters, and supernatural beings, and the changing dynamics in Bollywood's depiction of good versus evil during this transformative decade.

The article focuses on the dual nature of Bollywood cinema, contrasting mainstream films that cater primarily to the entertainment needs of the Indian diaspora with a more complex and reflective cinema that engages with cultural heritage and societal issues. It argues that while the former lacks deeper ideological content, the latter demonstrates innovative storytelling and social critique, particularly in response to recent industry controversies and shifting audience expectations.

The article discusses the book "Bollywood, Box Office and Beyond" by L. Jha, which provides a comprehensive analysis of the Indian film industry, commonly known as Bollywood. The book explores various aspects of Bollywood, including its history, evolution, and current state. It covers topics such as film marketing, exhibition, the rise of video-streaming services, and the challenges faced by Bollywood. The book also examines the business side of the film industry, including revenue sources and the impact of digital media on the industry. While the book primarily focuses on the business aspects of Bollywood, it provides valuable insights for aspiring filmmakers and cinema enthusiasts. However, it could benefit from incorporating more stories and perspectives from actors to engage a wider audience. Overall, the book offers a unique perspective on the Indian film industry and its evolution in the digital age. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses Hu Xuehua's Prince of the Himalayas (2006) and Vishal Bhardwaj's Haider (2014) across overlapping local, regional and (inter)national imaginaries of Tibet and Kashmir, and considers the possibilities of rendering the story and circumstances of Hamlet legible within these borderland contact zones. With their exotic backdrop of snowy mountains, rugged frontiers and majestic rivers, these two films can be seen recreating a troubling politics of appropriation at a time of renewed tensions in the Himalayan region. I argue that despite using Shakespeare's cultural capital to depict local conditions and affirm their own political agency, Hu and Bhardwaj's ultimate rejection of Hamlet's revenge motif continue to challenge domestic and international viewers, particularly in their attempts to situate these films within a heterogeneous national cinema encompassing minority cultures in New Chinese Cinema and Bollywood respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 6 September 2018, after decades of queer activism, the Supreme Court of India declared unconstitutional the centuries-old law against sodomy, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. Shelly Chopra Dhar's Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (How Ifelt when Isaw that Girl, 2019) and Hitesh Kewalya's Shubh Mangal Zyaada Saavdhan (Be Extra Wary of Marriage, 2020) were the first two popular Hindi-language films, on same-sex love and desire, to be released after the scrapping of 377. We note the significance of Ek Ladki and Shubh Mangal to destigmatizing non-normative sexualities as well as the identitarian impulse of these films to name, illuminate, and mainstream queer love. We examine these films as they intervene in the broader field of representation and make complex maneuvers to normalize same-sex love and coax the consent of mainstream audiences. They do so by incorporating queer identity and same-sex love in ways that render it non-threatening to the heteronormative status quo. The intertextual allusions to popular Hindi cinema, however, carry queer transgressive potential as they allow for a claiming of a genealogy of queer desire in Hindi cinema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I explore the role of screenwriters and dialogue writers within the more extensive filmmaking process of New Bollywood. Drawing on ethnographic data, I foreground the creative tools, research and negotiations that prompt screenwriters to conceptualise and pitch character arcs that feature disability while positioning the writer as central to diversify film genres. By building on scholarship on production cultures, scripting and disability studies, I draw upon factors that navigate the writer's gaze from non-hereditary filmmaking networks to foreground disabilities in scripts and character arcs in efforts to strategise that they do not classify as reductive pathologisations and supercripping cultures. This article pays close attention to the conditions, identity politics, biases and situated vulnerabilities of writers that shape the assemblages of scripting disability rhetorics. The data from semi-structured interviews, with an explicit focus on three films and their script ideation and production pedagogies, illustrate these interlinkages and insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To a large extent, the dominant worldviews and cultural values of the target demographic are reflected and shaped by the dominant cultural forms that serve them. The last ten years have seen a meteoric surge in the popularity of many types of media, thanks in large part to the proliferation of online video streaming services like Netflix and the Thanks to people watching more and more videos online, pop culture has developed at a dizzying rate in recent years. According to research conducted by Deloitte, media consumption increased from 29.3% of all internet traffic in 2013 to 89.3% in 20181. Thus, it is crucial to examine how media at large has portrayed different demographics. Because of the wide appeal of video content, Netflix's member base has grown from 70.8 million in 2015 to 167 million in 2019. These numbers demonstrate the scope of potential audiences for any media released on Netflix, and hence the potential for societal change. Video content is crucial because it allows us to learn about and engage with aspects of reality that may be difficult to access in our everyday lives. Because of the proliferation of media throughout the world, people from different backgrounds are able to interact and learn from one another, and traditional barriers between societies are being broken down. And that's why it's more important than ever to have positive portrayals of the LGBTQ community in mainstream media. This article examines the complex portrayal of the 'queer' community in audiovisual media, how it has changed over the past several decades, and how it has mirrored and influenced societal attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indian nationalism has remained, for long, an important subtext to Bollywood cinema. However, whether Bollywood cinematic output could be considered as Indian national cinema has encouraged very divisive academic discourses. When Bollywood received the status of an Industry in 1998 in keeping with the promise made in the BJP 1998 electoral manifesto (Bharatiya Janata Party, 2016, p. 232–233), it appeared that the benefits of Economic Liberalisation could finally be enjoyed by the Bombay film establishment. By focusing on Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se  …  (1998) and Kunal Kohli’s ‘Fanaa’ (2006) this paper shall explore in detail how the nascent neoliberalism affected the discourse of Indian nationalism on the Bollywood screen through binary formation, and Othering of minorities; and how such strategies were incorporated within Hindutva style of communal identity formation in the wake of the political discourses engendered by the 2001 Parliament Attack. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent changing tides of social and political climate across the globe has impacted the influence of media and culture (Michael Gurevitch, 1982), and in effect, the social fabric of our globalised society. This paper uses theories from Sturcturalism to understand better the larger socio-cultural structures that lay deeply embedded into our understanding of society as a whole. This cultural understanding is important to look at media (and by extension film) through its power dynamics and capital it provides to the groups that it represents and the groups that it does not. The study of these representations as being in opposition to each other in the way of ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups to understand the ways in which culture and cinema receive minorities, and for this paper, the Indian Christian identity in India. Mainstream cinema or Bollywood helps in the translation of in and out groups into the ‘othering’ of religious minorities (Brons, 2015) while also presenting and confirming the already existing ideas of the identity of minorities. This paper looks to identify the importance of alternative cinema, in this case regional Malayalam Cinema, for minorities that have been marginalised by the media and their role in the repairing the self-image of these minorities. The intrinsic binary between the alternative and mainstream cinema here are representative of the power and lack thereof for these minorities in terms of their social and self-perception.This paper goes a step further by not just looking at Indian Christians as a homogeneous whole but also determining the difference in portrayal and representation of the different denominations of the Indian Christian community. Therefore, this paper attempts to explain the reasons for the invisibility of Indian Christian representation or its ‘other-ing’ in mainstream film while also understanding the binary in the internal cultural dynamics within the Christian population through the lens of popular culture and regional or alternative cinema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the hegemonic gender roles in traditional societies, particularly in India, exploring how these roles limit women's aspirations, career choices and societal perceptions. It analyzes Nitesh Tiwari's film "Dangal" as a reconstruction of gender roles in Indian society, examining how the movie challenges gender hegemony and portrays the societal dynamics surrounding family, gender, and Bollywood drama, shedding light on the representation of women in the Indian film industry.

This article analyzes the localization strategies of Netflix and Disney+ Hotstar, positing India as a distinctive cultural-industrial contact zone. The Indian market's size, scale, and cultural and linguistic diversity make it a remarkable region for an epistemic inquiry into global industrial contact zones created by transnational streaming platforms. I map the relative power of Netflix and Disney+ Hotstar in relation to India's strong local film and entertainment industry. In doing so, I identify two types of localization strategies: the cosmopolitan local and the indigenized global. These strategies encompass content, aesthetics, audiences, and local industry dynamics. This essay explains the cultural and global mobility of media forms tied to cricket and Bollywood and argues that these forms accord the Indian mediascape a distinctive agency, presenting an antipodal inversion of imperialistic discourses of Western hegemonic media power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical scholars assert that the Bharatiya Janata Party is using commercial Hindi films, controlled by the censor board, to portray a 'Hindu' version of Indian nationality. Left-liberal intellectuals and activists further claim that Bollywood is also pandering to the diktats of the ruling party by making films which depict a right-wing version of Indian history. Films to a great extent define our social consciousness. This article attempts to show that the two films Bajirao Mastani and Panipat make a conscious attempt regarding the presentist use of medieval Indian history for furthering the process of national integration. Further, these two films partially challenge the patriarchal depiction of women in Indian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parmanu (2018) is a commercial action-cum-spy flick that recounts a highly stylized history of India's efforts to become a Pokhrannuclear weapons state through the narrative device of the Mahabharat, one of India's two great Sanskrit epics. In doing so, it renders India's quest for nuclear weapons in explicitly communal terms rather than national terms. Parmanu exemplifies Modi's co-optation of Bollywood for his personal gain and that of his party, the BJP. It also participates in the BJP's communal agenda of forging new, muscular image of India at home and abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their capacity to directly address audiences of varied nationalities, American-Indian films are important sites of cinema's negotiations with the idea of Indianness. When released on digital platforms, such films have the capacity to turn the idea of a national identity and, by extension, hyphenated identities, into modular and scalable constructs; bracketing, scaling down and slipping in various blocks of Indianness into its song-and-dance sequences to alleviate the lived realities of cultural difference. Identification of these kinds of identity, narrowly defined as Indian, alongside the dominant Bollywood structures makes relevant the analysis of how cinemas transmit national identity. This examines the routes by which American-Indian films, especially those released on digital platforms, mobilize digital logics to modulate their connections with a hegemonic idea of Indianness, often via their association with Bollywood, by examining the song picturizations in the films Spin (2021) and Wedding Season (2022). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article challenges the misconception that all Indian films are Bollywood films and highlights the diversity of Indian cinema, which includes over 40 language film industries. It argues against labeling a Telugu film like RRR as Bollywood, emphasizing its regional identity. The article also addresses the claim that RRR aspires to be a Bollywood film, noting that the friendship theme is not unique to Bollywood. It discusses the issue of regional pride and recognition in Indian cinema, particularly in relation to the success of RRR, and calls for a broader understanding of Indian cinema beyond Bollywood. [Extracted from the article]

'Retooling Trauma' scrutinizes the deployment of the Partition trope in 21st century Indian cinema. Using three films released between 2013 and 2017—Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, Rajkahini, and Begum Jaan—the paper elaborates on these films' popular cultural maneuver of evoking historical trauma eventually to sideline it, for the sake of political-esthetic legitimacy. Far from the raw jingoism of the turn-of-the-millennium Partition films such as Gadar, Hé Ram, and Pinjar, these films adopt Partition trauma as backstory, coopting Partition violence as accelerant for otherwise weak plotlines. The advertisements and trailers of the films, however, highlight Partition as the driving force behind the narratives. How does this approach—of marketing a film around a political essence—compare with the earlier strategies of over-iteration and over-performance of Partition violence? The paper will answer this question through a contextual explication of these films' style and content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of Indian films on popular culture and the influence of dominant political ideology on Indian films are interspersed with dialectical variations. Although a binary representation of these subtleties remains elusive, while promoting ideological superstructures in society, ‘the relatively mixed, confused, incomplete, or inarticulate consciousness' is replaced with a ‘generalised system'. In practice, the tendencies governing public emotions during moments of crisis are employed as tropes in Bollywood films. However, the ontology of political underpinnings and subversive ideological possibilities that enmesh lived experiences remain smothered by an unproblematic representation of historical events. With this rationale, the paper analyses three Bollywood films Panipat (2019), Tanhaji (2020) and Samrat Prithviraj (2022). These films seem to auger the idea of Dharma and Ramrajya in the construction of a Nation catering to the populist notion of a safe and secure nation under just Hindu rule. The paper argues that these films cater to the framework of historiography promulgated by the colonial historians on one hand; and function as a contrapuntal response to the ideological moorings of the leaders of the All-India Muslim League. This objective is achieved by a stereotypical and binary projection of good and evil by glossing over the ‘mixed consciousness’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore how Afghanistan is represented in two mainstream Bollywood films from the pre-9/11 period using Orientalism as a theoretical framework. While much literature exists on Afghanistan being Orientalized in Hollywood films, Bollywood representations of Afghanistan have not been studied from similar critical lenses. With the recent takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban after a twenty-year-long war, it is more urgent than ever today to examine Bollywood representations of Afghanistan given the crucial importance of India as a key geopolitical entity in the region. The paper shall study two films from the pre-9/11 period in order to understand if Bollywood has Orientalized the region like mainstream Hollywood films. Bollywood films well known for taking their influences from Hollywood productions, make it likely to be the case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media consumption includes a lot of movies. Film and culture interact in complex ways. Although art is meant to challenge established structures, mainstream Bollywood's profit-driven objective sometimes requires it to fulfil specific promises to a wide audience, minimizing disruption of traditional conceptions. A recent Indian film offers promise, though not much. They dare to raise social taboos to challenge normative beliefs. Sameer Sanjay Vidwans’ Satyaprem Ki Katha and Behzad Khambata's A Thursday offer a fresh take on the topics of date rape and the failures of the system in addressing the pleas of survivors, highlighting concerns of neglect and conspiracy. This study analysed films about rape and related issues and compared them to real-life data. The study also involves an examination of how society attributes rape instances and the experiences of survivors. It asserts that the Bollywood business has just started undertaking initiatives to create a platform for discussing taboo issues that have previously been devoid of free discussion. The observation suggests that contemporary films focusing on taboo issues are grabbing larger audiences and thus achieving commercial success, in contrast to their predecessors. This also signifies a shift in contemporary culture and attitude towards rapes and related occurrences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the portrayal of masculinity in Bollywood cop films, specifically focusing on the movies Sooryavanshi and Simmba directed by Rohit Shetty. It argues that these films depict the male hero as a hypermasculine figure who uses violence to establish dominance and protect the nation, while female characters are often objectified and portrayed as vulnerable. The article suggests that these representations contribute to the perpetuation of traditional gender roles and ideals of masculinity in Indian society. It calls for alternative representations of masculinity and equal agency for women in mainstream Bollywood narratives. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the release of the film "Pathaan" and the subsequent visual culture that emerged around it. The film's release generated a frenzy of fan-generated content, live dancing at theaters, and media coverage. The article explores how the film became an "event film" by reawakening the single-screen audience and mobilizing a networked space. It also highlights several key moments involving Shah Rukh Khan, the film's star, including his visit to Arthur Road Jail, his gesture at Lata Mangeshkar's funeral, and his speech at the Kolkata Film Festival. These moments garnered attention and sparked online discussions and controversies. The article discusses the success of the film "Pathaan" and its connection to the concept of virality and crisis in the digital age. The film, starring Shah Rukh Khan (SRK), became a media event and spectacle due to its engagement with online platforms and the creation of a counternarrative. The article explores how the film's viral moments, such as the dancing sequence in the song "Jhoome Jo Pathaan," transformed theaters into affective spaces and created a sense of immersive milieus. The success of the film was attributed to the combination of planned and spontaneous actions, as well as the engagement of networked spectators in collapsing the distinction between physical and online crowds. [Extracted from the article]

In recent times, Bollywood comedies have evidenced a shift in their attitude and perspective towards body image. In earlier comedies, people of different physical appearances were stigmatized. That approach has changed of late and as a result, these movies now serve as powerful catalysts for positive change in society. This article offers an overview of the transformative role played by Bollywood comedy films in contributing to body positivity and promoting self-acceptance. Through an analysis of a selection of films such as Bala (2019), Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015), and Gippi (2013), this study explores how these movies influence individuals’ perceptions, destigmatize identity, challenge stereotypes, and advocate for self-acceptance. This study also emphasizes the role of humour as a central element to engage audiences in sensitive discussions surrounding body image. In a nutshell, this research highlights the profound impact of comedy films on individuals and how these films reshape societal perceptions from body shaming to body acceptance.