Melodrama & the Nation

This insightful analysis of popular Bombay cinema presents a comprehensive discussion of its contemporary history background financing and social and political underpinnings. It maps the cultural landscape of this medium tracing the relationship between the state nation cinema and society. It reviews the ways in which gender and sexuality are articulated in their cinematic organisation and representation and demonstrates how heterosexuality operates as a stabiliser within this constellation. More generally it looks at the emergence of heroes and anti-heroes at the changing faces of masculinity at femininity and the regulation of desire and at Bollywood's construction of gender sexuality and the nation.