Abstract:

In this paper I look at the 'other' as something implicit in the very idea of the new Indian middle class coeval to post liberalization Bollywood. I read the recurrence of disabilities in the central protagonists of a spate of films as signaling a crisis of legitimacy of the dominant film form as well as a problem inherent to the consolidation of a new middle class subject posited as the subject of cinema in this period.I propose the concept of the 'untimely bildungsroman' to account for the appearance in a succession of films of deliberately regressed characters such that they must trace a path to normalcy. I will proceed with special emphasis on two texts: Sanjay Leela Bhansali's *Black *(2005) and A.R.Murugadoss' *Ghajini *(2008). I unpack *Black, *by paying attention to how it is placed within Bansali's filmography, as an attempt to legitimize the form specific to popular Bombay cinema, which is also intimately tied with the notion of a 'good meaningful cinema' in FFC discourse. I read the second film, *Ghajini*, to analyse its acquisitive drive, which functions to flesh out both the contemporary popular film form and the new subject at its heart.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Paramita Brahmachari works on mainstream Bombay Cinema of the period following the economic liberalization of India. She received her PhD in Film Studies from Jadavpur University. Her doctoral thesis 'Othering Spaces, Forging Selves: Contemporary Cinema, Globalization and the New Indian Middle Class' looks at the textual production and consolidation of a new middle class that becomes the subject of cinema in this period, as both its addressee and the constituency populating its content, inspatial, narrative, and representational terms. Paramita has written features and reviews on film, music, visual arts and literature for *The Telegraph* and other publications in Kolkata.