UC Press Blog

The article was originally published in The News Minute

The very mention of the word porn among a circle of Malayalis can, even now, turn faces pale, make conversations uncomfortable, and bring forth harsh judgments or worse, awkward silences. Forget porn, sex is still a whispered word, and even a kiss does not get a free pass. Into this cover of prudeness, an academic has bravely set sail to shatter pretences and dig out stories about Malayalam cinema’s soft porn industry, which had thrived for decades. 

Darshana Sreedhar Mini’s book Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India emerged from a project about sex education and took a decade of travel and research between Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Dubai to complete. An assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Darshana not only went meticulously through archives of publications and did dozens of interviews, but also had a stint working as a dubbing artiste and getting an insider’s perspective. The result is a well-accounted narrative, spanning the beginning, the growth and the decline of soft porn. 

In her book, written and published before the Hema Committee report’s release last year, Darshana writes about the “compromises” asked of the women actors, the exchange of “favors using their bodies”. The Hema Committee, constituted in 2017 to study the issues of women in Malayalam cinema, reported how mainstream actors get asked the same kind of questions, the words ‘adjust’ and ‘compromise’ being regularly thrown at them as a euphemism for demanding sexual favors. 

The report’s findings did not surprise Darshana, she says, having heard many similar accounts. “The report’s relevance is in the fact that it also doubles up as a source where survivors came forward to register their grievances. As in many other instances of sexual harassment, including #MeToo revelations, where legal filing and redressal of cases have been drawn out, for many women who testified it was a big leap. The report exposes systemic problems women face in a predominantly male-dominated work arrangement, where arbitrary hiring practices normalise informal arrangements where certain individuals/caucuses can openly flaunt their power to make and break careers of workers,” she says.

In her research, she found similar instances, but also related to the ways labour operates in the film industry. Moreover, she says, “Considering soft porn as disrespectful and actors who were part of this as of questionable morals, should not dissuade us from considering questions of labour in the industry.” 

The anonymous world of soft porn making

The idea for the book sprang from a project in 2010 when Darshana spoke to several young men for her research on sex education and heard them mention soft porn and several of its aspects. She became curious about these films, which “despite their hypervisibility were made anonymously by producers using fictitious names and not spoken or written in dominant film historical accounts as valid creative productions.” 

In Rated A, Darshana says, she examines “how soft porn cinema’s interaction with larger debates on sex-education, censorship and gender non-conformity influence the shape of media discourses in India’s public sphere.”

One of her biggest revelations was how labour is organised in soft porn cinema, which often consisted of a pool of people who waited for a break in mainstream films. These included make-up men, production assistants, cameramen and migrants from the Gulf who remained as silent partners. Mainstream technicians, when they became part of soft porn, would use fictitious names. In fact, using pseudonyms was such a common practice that when she encountered a real name (Purushan Alappuzha), it took her two years to realise it. 

Darshana writes in Rated A: “The ecology of soft porn film production was so steeped in anonymity or pseudonymous practices that even real names were sometimes mistaken as fake ones. And in a context where the crew sought anonymity, the hypervisibility of the female star replaced the filmic author.”

In Rated A, Darshana says, she examines “how soft porn cinema’s interaction with larger debates on sex-education, censorship and gender non-conformity influence the shape of media discourses in India’s public sphere.”

One of her biggest revelations was how labour is organised in soft porn cinema, which often consisted of a pool of people who waited for a break in mainstream films. These included make-up men, production assistants, cameramen and migrants from the Gulf who remained as silent partners. Mainstream technicians, when they became part of soft porn, would use fictitious names. In fact, using pseudonyms was such a common practice that when she encountered a real name (Purushan Alappuzha), it took her two years to realise it. 

Darshana writes in Rated A: “The ecology of soft porn film production was so steeped in anonymity or pseudonymous practices that even real names were sometimes mistaken as fake ones. And in a context where the crew sought anonymity, the hypervisibility of the female star replaced the filmic author.”

The female star, of course, becomes the primary and most often the only focus of these films in the eyes of not just the audience but many who ventured to comment or critique soft porn. Darshana has dedicated chapters to the women, taking them out of the imageries they have been trapped in, and touching their ignored, misunderstood, or ridiculed lives. Silk Smitha, Shakeela and other known and unknown actors, who became known as “madakarani”s (seductresses) are written about in detail.

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