Failed Masculinities: The Men in Satyajit Ray’s Films
Author:
Devapriya Sanyal
ISBN:
9789395474405
Binding:
Hardcover
Year:
2025
Pages:
184
Size:
16 x 24 cm
Price:
INR
1395.00
FORTHCOMING
The first comprehensive study of men and masculinity in the cinema of Satyajit Ray.• Links Ray’s male characters with India’s national trajectory in its early post-independence years.• Interrogates the director’s standing as a national filmmaker.• Situates Ray within post-colonial filmmaking and realist cinema traditions.Satyajit Ray belonged to a category of filmmakers and artists from newly independent countries whose work was used to define ‘national culture’.Failed Masculinities: The Men in Satyajit Ray’s Films argues that a study of his films will give us a purchase on the moral trajectory of India in its first few decades of independence, particularly through examination of his male characters and their narratives. Films discussed by Sanyal include the Apu Trilogy, Shakha Prasakha, Ghare Baire and Kapurush.
Devapriya Sanyal
Devapriya Sanyal is Assistant Professor of English at St Joseph’s University, Bangalore. She has degrees in Literature and Cinema from Lady Brabourne College, Calcutta and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is the author of Salman Khan: The Man, The Actor, The Legend (2022).
Editorial Reviews
“This is a marvelous volume that shows how a filmmaker, a national industry, and emerging modern masculinity impact one another, deepening questions of identity and manhood. Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.”
—G.R. Butters Jr, CHOICE
“Sanyal draws some fascinating conclusions when reviewing the different kinds of ineffectual males populating Satyajit Ray’s films from the 1950s to the early 1990s. Notions of modernity and nationhood intersect with masculinity to illuminate this historically contextualised study in which women – whether strong or subjugated – play a critical role too.”
—Martin Shingler, author of Diana Dors: Film Star and Actor