Abstract
The symbolism of characters in mainstream Hindi cinema is a reflection of cultural discourses in families generating potent visualisations of roles both in concurrence with or in dissidence with popular culture. With an interest to study how the roles of fathers and their involvement with children are reflected in Hindi cinema, we chose a purposive sample of popular Hindi commercial movies, seven with the father in the role of a protagonist and ten in which the role of the father was played by Amitabh Bachchan, who is widely regarded as the most popular superstar of Hindi cinema. We analysed their content, to understand emerging common themes in father-child relations and father’s commitment. Applying concepts from the generative fathering model, we elucidated themes of fathering that receive maximum attention in representations, the deep impact of father-child relations, differences in fathering a boy and girl and how fathers learn and change over time. We also looked into whether the visualisation of father’s roles make or break stereotypes in popular Hindi movies.
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Shah, M., Takwani, D., Sharma, P., Sriram, R. (2019). Pitaji, Papa and Paa: Reflections of Fathering in Hindi Movies. In: Sriram, R. (eds) Fathering in India. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1715-6_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1715-6_11
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