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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 and maps the genre’s circulation among the Indian diaspora in the Middle East. She explores the soft-porn industry’s precarious labor structure, as well as how actresses and production personnel who are marked by their involvement with a taboo form navigate their social lives. By surveying the tense negotiations among sexuality, import policy, and censorship, this study offers a model for understanding film genres as entire fields of social relations and gendered imaginaries.
“A groundbreaking historical analysis that immediately joins the ranks of essential porn-studies texts.” — Peter Alilunas, author of Smutty Little Movies: The Creation and Regulation of Adult Video
“A model for future film scholars. The decade-long research that went into making this book is evident in its rich historical details, insightful conversations, and multisited fieldwork.” — Monika Mehta, author of Censorship and Sexuality in Bombay Cinema
“A formidably researched counterhistory of Indian cinema and a brilliantly synthetic work of adult-film history, Rated A dazzles with insight.” — Elena Gorfinkel, author of Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s
“Don’t be tempted to think you know porn if you see it. Mini’s analysis invites us to see soft-porn as a social construction that reflects the borders of sexual agency and gendered respectability.” — Vicki Mayer, author of Below the Line: Producers and Production Studies in the New Television Economy
“This remarkable book on the Malayalam-language soft-core porn industry of Kerala arrives as a bold feminist and ‘southern’ intervention in porn studies that is bound to animate conversations across disciplines.” — Bhaskar Sarkar, author of Mourning the Nation: Indian Cinema in the Wake of Partition
This book is included in DOAB.
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Keywords
- 20th century
- film industry
- India
- Kerala
- Pornographic films
- thema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AT Performing arts::ATF Films, cinema
Links
DOI: 10.1525/luminos.195Editions