Beyond cut, copy and paste: How editors stitch Bollywood’s disability affect

Most scholarship on film production cultures classifies editors as a marginalized workforce, garbed under contemporary neglect and archival absence. In this article, I foreground the role of editors, especially addressing how they navigate the terrains of producing a ‘disability affect’. Here, I define disability affect as the non-linear, intersecting, overlapping and interconnected production cultures that contribute towards mainstreaming disability representation in films as a genre and spectacle, eventually leading to its recognition as a format of diversifying content in contemporary Bollywood. Drawing on insights derived from 15 semi-structured interviews with editors, the following analysis attends to an indispensable, yet understated role played by editors who enhance, reassemble, intuitively decide and embrace the construction, rhythm and narrative sequencing of representing disabilities by moderating shot designs, lighting, jump cuts, closeups, aurality and timing of shots and cliffhangers. In doing so, this study maps how disability genres are contingent on and informed by the commodification, regulatory and commercialization principles developed by editors who continuously rewrite and repackage the ways they feel will most effectively mainstream the core essence of disability representation.