Diverting Diseases

Abstract

This essay is about a genre of films that was most probably inaugurated by Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Anand (Hindi, 1971) and includes his Mili (Hindi, 1975); Mani Rathnam’s Geethanjali (Telugu, 1989) and Anjali (Tamil, 1990); and then Black (Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Hindi, 2005), Taare Zameen Par (Aamir Khan, Hindi, 2007), Paa (R. Balki, Hindi, 2009) and My Name is Khan (Karan Johar, Hindi, 2010). This latest round has been the most prolific, so far yielding four big budget films featuring some of Hindi cinema’s biggest stars including Rani Mukherji, Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, and Kajol. Employing the gambit of “genre mixing as creative fabrication,” 1 I will present whatever evidence I am able to muster, in order to suggest that the unstable/unable body genre covers the earliest representation of drunken swaying on the screen (in versions of Devdas ) to the latest overt ( My Name is Khan ) or surreptitious ( 3 Idiots ) attempts to exploit the “idiot savant” theme by movie stars whose star images are mortgaged to advertising companies. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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