Beautiful Thing
Literary reportage and Bombay
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2178922 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Emma Bird (0000-0002-9603-3434) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 380-394 |
| Publication date | 2015-07-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17449855.2015.1009151 |
| OpenAlex | W1999234040 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 9 |
There are few contemporary cities as recognizable as Bombay/Mumbai. It is especially familiar to global and local audiences via the circulation of popular cinema, and has been the subject of much recent critical discussion in postcolonial studies. This article considers the portrayal of the city in Sonia Faleiro’s acclaimed non-fictional work Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars (2010). This book, which documents the lives of the city’s bar dancers, both alludes to and yet ultimately critiques the more popular image of Bombay as a mediated and hyperreal city of easy cosmopolitanism. Faleiro deploys what Graham Huggan would term “strategic exoticism” in order to undermine the sensational and decidedly gendered portrayal of Bombay found in Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City (2004). Through the figure of Leela, the teenage bar dancer who acts as Faleiro’s guide, Beautiful Thing gives voice to the unspectacular and ordinary experiences of the city’s most vulnerable subjects
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Cosmopolitanism · Dance · Exoticism · Literature · Media studies · Movie theater · Order (exchange · Political science · Sociology · Subject (documents · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism · South Asian Cinema and Culture · History · Law
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,33 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2025 (3) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |