Full Description
This book explores the consequences of unbridled expansion of neoliberal values within India through the lens of popular film and culture. The focus of the book is the neoliberal self, which, far from being a stable marker of urban, liberal, millennial Indian identity, has a schizophrenic quality, one that is replete with contradictions and oppositions, unable to sustain the weight of its own need for self-promotion, optimism, and belief in a narrative of progress and prosperity that has marked mainstream cultural discourse in India. The unstable and schizophrenic neoliberal identity that is the concern of this book, however, belies this narrative and lays bare the sense of precarity and inherent inequality that neoliberal regimes confer upon their subjects.
The analysis is explicitly political and draws upon theories of feminist media studies, popular culture analyses, and film studies to critique mainstream Hindi cinema texts produced in the last two decades. Rele Sathe also examine a variety of other peripheral 'texts' in her analysis such as the film star, the urban space, web series, YouTube videos, and social media content.
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Future that Never Was
1. The Maladjusted Metrosexual: Urban Masculinity, Neoliberal Workplaces, and Romantic Dysfunction
2. At Home in the City: Women, Sexuality, and Democratic Politics in the Urban Space
3. Forging a Fairytale: New Rituals of Romance and Marriage in Neoliberal India
4. Brand 'Priyanka Chopra': The Cult of Individuality, Citizenship, and the Transnational Female Celebrity
Epilogue: Fraying Selves and Disintegrating Realities
Notes
Bibliography
