{"product_id":"rated-a","title":"Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India","description":"\u003cb\u003eA free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1525\/luminos.195\"\u003ewww.luminosoa.org\u003c\/a\u003e to learn more\u003c\/b\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In the 1990s, India's mediascape saw the efflorescence of edgy soft-porn films in the Malayalam-speaking state of Kerala. In \u003ci\u003eRated A\u003c\/i\u003e, 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.","brand":"None","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46335388582098,"sku":"9780520397453","price":47.03,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0655\/8980\/5233\/files\/1_0e45f5fc-dd2b-4b7d-9a28-cb89409f3624.jpg?v=1763136226","url":"https:\/\/www.indigo.ca\/products\/rated-a","provider":"Indigo","version":"1.0","type":"link"}