Reimagining Indian Realism Masaan and Ship of Theseus as Cinematic Extensions of Postcolonial Literary Aesthetics
Keywords:
Postcolonial aesthetics, Indian realism, hybridity, subalternity, Masaan, Ship of Theseus, new Indian cinema, fragmented narrative, identity, vernacular modernityAbstract
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This paper examines Neeraj Ghaywans Masaan (2015) and Anand Gandhis Ship of Theseus (2012) as cinematic texts that extend the concerns of postcolonial Indian literature into contemporary film. Reading both films through the lenses of hybridity, subalternity, fragmented modernity, and the negotiation between tradition and change, the paper argues that Indian art cinema has inherited and reworked the aesthetic strategies of postcolonial fiction including vernacular realism, multiple narrative structures, and the ethical interrogation of selfhood. Both films, it contends, function as literary texts in visual form, continuing the postcolonial project of representing Indias plural, unresolved modernity.