by Ritesh Mehta
about Ritesh Mehta
Ritesh Mehta works in film and TV development in Los Angeles. He has extensive experience programming for film festivals such as AFI Fest, Outfest, and the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, and as a Reader for the Sundance, Fox and Disney television writers labs focusing on diversity and inclusion. His research has been published in Poetics, Cognition, and Transformative Works and Cultures; he has co-authored the digital book Flows of Reading: Engaging with Texts; and he is a regular contributor to MovieMaker Magazine. Mehta received his PhD in communication from the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California.
Master of None
Abstract: South Asians have rarely been depicted on American television as having normal, fully realized romantic relationships and sexual lives, but Ritesh Mehta explores how Aziz Ansari’s Master of None is a breakthrough exception in this regard. Using Stuart Hall’s theory of decoding to examine protagonist Dev Shah’s relationships, Mehta encourages audiences to consider what constitutes “normal” and how their unique readings of TV programs reflect their position vis-à-vis society’s dominant ideology.