Masculine anxiety and ‘new Indian woman’ in the films of Anurag Kashyap

Abstract

This essay examines the portrayal of masculine anxiety and the representation of ‘new Indian women’ in Anurag Kashyap’s films Dev D (2009), Ugly (2013) and Raman Raghav 2.0 (2016). Kashyap in his films, particularly in the films mentioned here, focuses on transforming social relations in post-liberalization urban India. His films often portray the anxiety of contemporary Indian men over the issue of female emancipation and their aggression towards those women who defy the patriarchal code of conduct by attempting to assert their own agency. By situating the neurotic, hyper-masculine heroes at the centre of the narratives, they point at the skewed gender relation which despite the pervasive rhetoric of women’s empowerment echoed throughout neoliberal India is increasingly becoming more and more fractured. Kashyap’s films thus act as representatives of a new social order currently in progress in India and compel us to understand the complex process through which the notion of masculinity is being continually configured. The essay traces the connection between the masculine anxiety and the neoliberal social world by exploring the psychic and social lives of the fictional male characters created in Kashyap’s films.

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