Presentation Schedule
Deciphering the Private Eye: Reconstruction of Bengali Masculinity Through Byomkesh Bakshi Films Post-2010 (97818)
Session Chair: Utsha Sarkar
This presentation will be live-streamed via Zoom (Online Access)
Saturday, 8 November 2025 14:05
Session: Session 2
Room: Live-Stream Room 2
Presentation Type:Live-Stream Presentation
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With the emergence of Critical Masculinity Studies in India from early 1980s, many scholars have noted that masculinity and the position of men in India’s society have been in a state of flux. The colonial understanding of masculinity was presented by Mrinalini Sinha contrasting the Bengali “effeminate babus” and the “manly Englishman”. Joseph Alter espoused the ideals of semen retention, celibacy and Brahmacharya as an existing way of life in North India while the performativity of gender was Butler’s theorisation of gender identity. Although many perspectives have been accounted for, very little has been written on the rise of a nouveau form of masculinity in Bengal. Film texts are utilised as a historical and social document to chart the trajectory of this construction. Through a critical enquiry of contemporary Byomkesh Bakshi films post 2010, this paper tries to structure a discourse of the new Bengali man rising from the ashes of its colonial restraints. Textual analysis coupled with Critical Theory related to masculinity studies and detective cinema, are a few methodological structures applied in this paper. Through a close reading of the multiple texts, I argue that Byomkesh Bakshi, as a socio-cultural icon, is being reconstructed on the silver screen to give rise to a new Bengali masculine identity. The traditionalisation of marital domesticity, dialectical structuring of the Bengali detective against the other men on screen and the final performance of the morally staunch detective in the unmasking of the criminal are some key motifs I investigate in this paper.
Authors:
Utsha Sarkar, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India
About the Presenter(s)
Mr. Utsha Sarkar is a TMA Pai Research Fellow at Department of Liberal Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Manipal Academy of Higher Education.
See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule
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