4 Zoya Akhtar as a Screenwriter: Making Niche the New Mainstream

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. List of Figures vii
4. Notes on Contributors viii
5. Introduction: Intersecting Industries 1
6. Part I Growing up Industry
7. 1 Loving but Critical: The Empathetic Gaze of Luck by Chance 21
8. 2 Relocating Bollywood: Gully Boy and the Worlds of Hip-hop 38
9. 3 New Forms, New Stories: Zoya Akhtar’s Short Films 59
10. 4 Zoya Akhtar as a Screenwriter: Making Niche the New Mainstream 75
11. Part II Reworking Bollywood Themes
12. 5 The Heterotopia of Family Relation-Ship in Dil Dhadakne Do 93
13. 6 Sabka Time Aayega: Language and the City in Gully Boy 108
14. 7 Queer Love: He is Also Made in Heaven 126
15. Part III A New Era of Gendered Politics
16. 8 Conflicted and Confused: The Changing Complexity of Masculinity in Zoya Akhtar’s Films 147
17. 9 Señoritas at Work: Gendered Work, Aspiration and Leisure in the Films of Zoya Akhtar 164
18. 10 Self-made vs Self-respect: The Politics of Belonging in Zoya Akhtar’s Films 180
19. Part IV The Word and the Screen
20. 11 Deconstructing the Perception of ‘The Elite Class Filmmaker’: A Critical Analysis of Mainstream Film Reviews of Zoya Akhtar’s Cinema 199
21. 12 The Final Word: An Interview with Zoya Akhtar 217
22. General Index 232
23. Index of Films 238