Raj, Sony JalarajanSuresh, Adith K.2023-05-252023-05-252022Raj, S.J., & Suresh, A.K. (2022). Surgical strikes on screen: Narrations of terrorism and military cross-border violence in Bollywood cinema. In: Choe, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Violence in Film and Media. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05390-0_9https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14078/3103Violence, as a concept can take many forms, especially with a touch of human imagination, it exceeds the legal, moral, and geographical demarcations to achieve a state of aesthetic artistry when employed as a source of inspiration. The quality of violence is discursive and the way it attracts spectators to its depiction in fictional modes cannot be adequately explained using a single context (Zillmann 1998). When cinema uses violence as an important theme to visualize a world, it creates an effect that highlights the complex social, cultural, and political functioning of societies. The popular cinema of India the Bollywood film industry that produces films in the Hindi language is a perfect niche for the study of such societies once we discover the fundamental attitude of its cinematic narratives has been notorious for generating a mass cultural appeal. One of the salient features of the Bollywood ideology includes box-office-oriented productions with exaggerated storylines and action-packed melodramas. The high dramatic action is associated with the larger-than-life superstardom of actors, which is usually embellished through choreographed fight sequences, dialogue deliveries, and the aesthetics of character construction and portrayal.enAll Rights Reservedviolencemotion picturesBollywoodBook Chapterhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05390-0_9