Body, masculinity and the male hero in Hindi cinema

ABSTRACT

The male body in the Hindi cinema much like its female counterpart, is malleable and ductile, amenable to the hegemonic concerns. The article posits that Hindi cinema has normatively presented idealized male bodies which are symbolically aligned with the changing aspirations of the nation: enervated, lean male bodies as stark reminder of the Mahatma Gandhi’s idealized body in the colonial era; well-fed bodies raised on the “promise of socialist plenty” of the Nehruvian era; bulky, muscular bodies as shaped and demanded by the discourse of Hindutva.

KEYWORDS:

• Hindi cinema
• male body
• masculinity
• Bombay cinema
• male hero

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Meraj Ahmed Mubarki is an Assistant Professor at Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad where he teaches courses of Journalism and Mass Communication. He has contributed articles to Contemporary South Asia, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Visual Anthropology, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, History and Sociology of South Asia, Media Asia. His book “Filming Horror: Hindi Cinema, Ghosts and Ideologies”, exploring the genre of Hindi horror cinema was published by Sage Publications in 2016.

ORCID

Meraj Ahmed Mubarki http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8028-9881

Notes

1 The Age of Consent Act, 1891, also Act X of 1891 raised the age of consent for sexual intercourse for all girls, married or unmarried, from ten to twelve years. Its violation subjected Hindu men to criminal prosecution.

2 Despite being originally made in the Tamil language, the film was dubbed in Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam and Telugu languages.

3 For more on the ways in which the Bombay cinema’s Partition / trauma narratives have come to acquire sectarian outlook see Mubarki (2017).