Digital Object Identifier
Mainstream Hindi Bollywood cinema has functioned as a key platform for the construction of “ideational assemblages”, of the nation (Chakraborty 846). Viewed through the lens of Indian sports films, this assemblage showed a noticeable change from the early sports film The Boxer (1984), to Chandu Champion (2024). This paper argues that Indian sports movies have moved from a hypermasculine paradigm, examined by physical endurance, discipline, and an able-bodied, male ideal, to more inclusive stories that seem to move beyond gender, disability, and identity. As early sports films foregrounded success with victory, strength, and national pride and presented sportspersons as the pillars of hard labour and moral strength. Yet, modern-day films, by contrast, redefined the sporting body as a site of struggle, negotiation, and self-assertion, often giving place to females, marginalized people, and people with disabilities. While reconfigured thus, these films encountered dominant beliefs of ability and success and redefined what it means to be a real “champion”, Drawing on the changing subject matter of the films, this manuscript situates Indian sports film as a cultural text through which growing discourses of patriarchy, empowerment, and identity are questioned and reimagined.
Ms. Manisha. “The Metamorphosis of Indian Sports Films: From Boxer (1984) to Chandu Champion (2024).” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 4, August 2026, pp. 103-130. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n4.7.
Open Access · CC BY 4.0 · Crossref DOI ·
the-criterion.com