Screening Masculine Anxiety

The chapter looks at the representation of men in new Hindi cinema, and the rise of masculine anxiety and its critique on screen. It argues that the emergence of neoliberalism brought new cultural codes to India, and one of the key cultural innovations is a shifting gender balance. Hypermasculinity or masculine anxiety emerges as a defensive response to increasing gender equality and signifies the potentiality of patriarchal loss of power. Looking at the problem from the point of view of psychoanalysis and sociology, the chapter unpacks it by looking at another dominant trend in new Hindi cinema, male violence, and among other works, continues the analysis of the films by Anurag Kashyap and offers an alternative reading of his films.

Haunting and Uncanny Cities of Neoliberal India

This chapter analyses the concept of the uncanny vis-à-vis the cultural developments in post-liberalization India, specifically looking at the urban developments and the emergence of shopping mall culture. What many of the new Hindi cinema films share is the feeling of the uncanny and this, Freudian concept, is one of the central ones in this book. In unpacking these questions, the chapter looks at some of the recent horror films that represent the haunted spaces of contemporary urban India—Raat, Bhoot, Darr @ The Mall and Phobia most importantly. The chapter argues that the haunted space of a shopping mall or a luxury apartment building or gated community illustrates the insecurity the new middle classes feel in a new urban and social environment. At the same time the figure of a ghost emerges as history repressed by the neoliberal spatial reconfiguration.

Objects in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

The chapter looks at the problem of urban centre and the periphery, as well as the production of the Other in neoliberal India and new Hindi cinema. The Other here means one that is outside of the new emergent middle class—it can be a rural otherness, but often—the urban, deprived lower orders of the society. Drawing heavily upon psychoanalysis and the work of Slavoj Žižek, the chapter theorizes the insecurity of the urban middle class and its relationship to its Other, and the urban periphery by taking films NH10 and Highway as key examples.

Film Noir and the Dark Spaces of New Hindi Cinema

This chapter explores another dimension of the urban uncanny and dark imagination by dealing with a cinematic form, which has become if not dominant, then visible in most of the new Hindi films—film noir. The chapter argues that the emergence of film noir globally always coincides with a state of crisis, be it social, cultural, political or economic, or a mixture of all. Film noir began to emerge in India as a key film form of new Hindi cinema in early 2000s—a decade after the neoliberal reforms, and signified the uncertainty, isolation and violence in an urban space in India. The chapter analyses the work of Anurag Kashyap, one of the key filmmakers of film noir in India.

Understanding Cinematic Transformations and Neoliberal Culture in India

The chapter theorizes the emergence of new Hindi cinema and looks at the methodological problems arising from understanding new Hindi cinema as a cinematic phenomenon. What is “new” in new Hindi cinema? How should we understand the emergence of this film form? Is it a mere extension of indie cinema, or is it something else? Is it a part of Bollywood, or is it outside of it? The chapter criticizes the dominant approaches to new Hindi cinema, and provides new theoretical tools for understanding this cinematic phenomenon as the result of neoliberal transformations in India.