Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India
Author | : Darshana Sreedhar Mini |
Publisher | : Zubaan |
Total Pages | : 327 |
Release | : 2024-09-13 |
ISBN-10 | : 9789390514984 |
ISBN-13 | : 9390514983 |
Rating | : 4/5 (983 Downloads) |
Download or read book Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India written by Darshana Sreedhar Mini and published by Zubaan. This book was released on 2024-09-13 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1990s, India’s mediascape saw the efflorescence of edgy soft-porn films in the Malayalam-speaking state of Kerala. In Rated A, Darshana Sreedhar Mini examines the local and transnational influences that shaped Malayalam soft-porn cinema—such as vernacular pulp fiction, illustrated erotic tales, and American exploitation cinema—and maps the genre’s circulation among blue-collar workers of the Indian diaspora in the Middle East, where pirated versions circulate alongside low-budget Bangladeshi films and Pakistani mujra dance films as South Asian pornography. Through a mix of archival and ethnographic research, Mini also explores the soft-porn industry’s utilization of gendered labor and trust-based arrangements, as well as how actresses and production personnel who are marked by their involvement with a taboo form negotiate their social lives. By locating the tense negotiations between sexuality, import policy, and censorship in contemporary India, this study offers a model for understanding film genres outside of screen space, emphasizing that they constitute not just industrial formations but entire fields of social relations and gendered imaginaries.