Brown Mirror: Masculinity Crises in Contemporary British-South Asian Cinema

This article analyses three recent films centring British-South Asian men, each of whom are experiencing some sort of psychical and/or physical crisis. In conversation with scholars across the fields of South Asian diaspora studies – particularly regarding film, literature and wider forms of culture – I situate the films in the context of a post-millennial Brown masculinity. I consider the ways in which contemporary British-South Asian cinema responds to Sita Balani’s (2019) contention that the South Asian man in crisis has become a conservative trope. Focusing on Mogul Mowgli (Tariq 2020), In Camera (Khalid 2023) and Sky Peals (Hussain 2023), I argue that Brown masculine crisis represents a new, affective and critical mode of diaspora aesthetic, with the capacity to reconfigure dominant conceptions of racialized masculinity.