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Reflexive Global Bollywood and Metacinematic Gender Politics in Om Shanti Om (2007), Luck By Chance (2008), and Dhobi Ghat (2010)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Anne Ciecko
Anne Ciecko*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts-Amherst, USA
*
Anne Ciecko, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, PO Box 25, Amherst, Massachusetts 01004, USA. Email: ciecko@comm.umass.edu, umasscinephile@hotmail.com
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Abstract

This essay examines reflexive strategies in three contemporary Hindi-language feature films directed by women, Om Shanti Om (2007), Luck By Chance (2008), and Dhobi Ghat/Mumbai Diaries (2010). These Mumbai-set films, directed and written by Farah Khan, Zoya Akhtar, and Kiran Rao, respectively, offer insider industry perspectives and a variety of outlooks on Bollywood and Indian society more generally. I introduce the concepts of “selective reflection” to critically examine self-conscious representations of the excessively star-driven world of Bollywood filmmaking in an age of globalization (and the dominant figure of the male hero), directing styles and strategies of image-making, and the blurred boundaries between reality and artifice. This article presents a close analysis of narrative tropes (especially “breaking in” to Bollywood), filmi references, casting, spectator dynamics, and gendered agency in films that represent a taxonomic range from commercial blockbuster to art cinema.

Type
Articles
Information
Diogenes , Volume 62 , Issue 1: Gender, globalisation, and cinema , February 2015 , pp. 24 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2016

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