Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India (Feminist Media Histories #8)

Synopsis

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. 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.

Copyright:

2024

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

236 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780520397460

Related ISBNs:

9780520397453

Publisher:

University of California Press

Date of Addition:

08/06/24

Copyrighted By:

Darshana Sreedhar Mini

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Entertainment, Nonfiction, Art and Architecture, Psychology, Social Studies, Sociology

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.