“Apna Time Aayega” (“Our Time Will Come”): Post-Crisis Masculinity and the Rags-to-Riches Hero in New Hindi Cinema

Abstract

Drawing on new Hindi cinema, this paper examines the contemporary mediatization of the rags-to-riches hero as a site of cultural production that appropriates masculinity within a feminist template, while reproducing masculine expectations under neoliberal dictates of efficiency and enterprise. The myth of upward social mobility is commodified in contemporary Indian audio-visual cultures, ranging from reality shows and biopics to ‘viral’ social media sensations about exceptional life stories. While post-globalization Hindi cinema captures masculinity through masculine protest (Paunksnis 2019), metrosexuality (Gehlawat 2015), and vernacular masculinity (Sinha 2013) among other forms, neoliberalisation reified the progressive arc of social mobility into the aspirational male archetype of the rags-to-riches hero. This paper interrogates such gendered reconfiguration in select cinematic treatments of social mobility– namely, Gully Boy (2019), Serious Men (2020) and 12th Fail (2023)– to complicate the commodification of the precariat non-/hero in neoliberal media ecology. The contemporary rags-to-riches hero, influenced by media discourses of gender equality, emerges as a figure of ‘post-crisis masculinity’, posturing as a caregiver and emotionally responsive man. This paper further argues that these new masculinities in turn re-enact the essentialist gender expectation as a provider, refashioning ideas of potent manhood in a culture of social media surveillance and virality.