From Stage to Screen: Examining the Representation of Marginalized Indian Men in Contemporary Indian Drama and Hindi Cinema

Abstract

This study explores the portrayal of marginalised Indian men using three works of theatre and cinema – Dance Like a Man by Mahesh Dattani, Ilham by Manav Kaul and Sharmaji Namkeen by Hitesh Bhatia – to analyse how masculinity is presented as a socially constructed, contested and legible entity within dominant cultural frameworks. The paper suggests that these three contexts of artistic non-conformity, spiritual estrangement and ageing domestic reinvention create marginalised masculinity, using a qualitative comparative method. In Dance Like a Man, Jairaj's journey towards dance Bharatanatyam reveals the policing of masculinity through laughter and patriarchy; in Ilham, Bhagwan's inwardness makes him invisible as a productive and emotionally rational middle-class man; and in Sharmaji Namkeen, retirement and widowhood prompt a crisis of selfhood, which is partially reconfigured through cooking, care and emotional vulnerability. The results of this study reveal that there is no correlation between the notion of marginalisation and masculinity, but rather of failing or refusing to conform to the hegemonic notions of authority, breadwinning and emotional restraint. It also illustrates the figuration of exclusion in the visible body and the live performance of the theatre, and the vulnerability of the cinema in close-up realism and domestic atmosphere. The paper as a whole helps to advance the field of masculinity studies by focusing on marginalized male subjectivities in the cultural contexts of today's India.