Abstract
This essay addresses the problems attendant to the subject-formation of the new Indian middle class by analysing several films from the perspective of the emergence of a new type of cinematic aesthetics. The new film form discussed in the essay is termed neurotic realism. This peculiar film form is part of ‘new’ India’s visual culture, and is instrumental both in constructing and representing new dichotomies of Self and Other. The Other in this case might mean poverty in general, but in the new realist imaginary more often than not otherness manifests itself as formless outside space infused with fear, violence and barbarity – a heterotopian north Indian village space. The article interrogates the current cinematic interest in ‘in-between India’ by posing and examining the crucial fundamental questions: what exactly do we desire and why?
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