Abstract
This paper proposes a renewed, interdisciplinary approach to the study of popular Hindi film, which uses the notion of genre to understand the relationship between individual films and social questions in contemporary India at large. We argue that ‘text’, ‘genre’, and ‘society’ are three crucial nodes that allow us to access the many levels at which individual films and groups of texts make meaning. The first half of the paper outlines three reading strategies, which we feel are crucial to understanding popular film as a genre. The second half proceeds to demonstrate the use of these strategies by enacting a dialectic and intertextual reading of three popular youth films of the early 2000s: Dil Chahta Hai, Kyon?, and Yuva, for what they reveal about change and postcolonial desire in contemporary urban India.
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