Rated A : Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mini, Darshana Sreedhar.

Series:

Feminist Media Histories Series

Feminist Media Histories Series ; v.8

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Pornographic film industry--India--Kerala--20th century.

Pornographic film industry.

Pornographic films--India--Kerala--20th century.

Pornographic films.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (238 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, 2024.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Cover

Series

Title

Copyright

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Soft-Porn 101

1. Madakarani

2. Waiting for Kodambakkam

3. Embodied Vulnerabilities

4. The Alternative Transnational

5. (Dis)Appearances

Conclusion: In Praise of Bad Women

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

ISBN:

9780520397460