South Asian Popular Culture最新文献

{"title":"Queer Politics in Times of New Authoritarianisms","authors":"Somak Biswas, Rohit K. Dasgupta, Churnjeet Mahn","doi":"10.1080/14746689.2023.2232181","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14746689.2023.2232181","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Across South Asia and the world, new authoritarianisms in the last two decades have reignited old fault lines around sexuality. This introduction examines how different states, laws and communities have engaged with queer rights discourse with a range of outcomes. It argues that despite a spate of recent progressive legislations, there is no direct correlation between LGBTQI+ rights and liberal governance in South Asia. Framing contributions that take up different iterations of queer rights and authoritarianism in South Asia and its diaspora, the article outlines how LGBTQI+ actors’ negotiation of authoritarian regimes has produced fragile coalitions and new transnational formations.","PeriodicalId":35199,"journal":{"name":"South Asian Popular Culture","volume":"21 1","pages":"147 - 153"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49023397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Contesting the mainstream transwoman figurations: The question of caste and precarity in Udalaazham","authors":"Sruthi B Guptha, Sandhya V","doi":"10.1080/14746689.2023.2232179","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14746689.2023.2232179","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Udalaazham (Body Deep), the 2018 Malayalam film directed by Unnikrishnan Avala, intrigues into the precarious dimensions of gender liminality in unprecedented ways by being the first film to discuss the life of a gender-liminal belonging to a tribal (Paniya) community in Kerala. The paper engages in a close reading and analysis of the film-text Udalaazham by placing it in juxtaposition to figurations of transgender subjectivities in contemporary Malayalam films, with an aim to contest the acclaimed progressive disposition of these mainstream representations. It employs the framework of intersectionality to focus on the protagonist Gulikan’s lived experiences enmeshed within the structures of tribal caste, ethnicity and gender characterized by multiple interlocking dimensions of precarity. His body, identity and desires are open to threat, violence, mutilations and perpetual questioning due to lack of socio-cultural capital and support network. The relevance of this film is in opening up the discussions on caste and liminal gender identity and thereby urging the dire need to re-write the formula of identity politics in the region and its popular culture. Reading Udalaazham in this context provides a more liberating yet disturbing space to discuss the regressive operations of identity categories and their limitations in conceptualizing regional queer identities in India.","PeriodicalId":35199,"journal":{"name":"South Asian Popular Culture","volume":"21 1","pages":"189 - 204"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48537198","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“It’s illegal but it’s not, like, really illegal”: Sri Lanka’s ‘sodomy laws’, the politics of equivocation, and queer men’s sexual citizenship in The One Who Loves You So","authors":"Shermal Wijewardene","doi":"10.1080/14746689.2023.2212256","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14746689.2023.2212256","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper explores the representation of queer men’s unequal sexual citizenship in Sri Lanka in a Sri Lankan Anglophone play, focusing on its problematisation of an ambiguous ‘sodomy’ prohibition. I examine The One Who Loves You So (2019), a text in which the illegality of queer men’s offline and online intimacies is paradoxically depicted as both affirmed and open to interpretation. The textual analysis is contextualised by the Sri Lankan state’s consistent history of equivocating on who or what the country’s ‘sodomy laws’ criminalise, particularly when facing international human rights pressure. The state’s equivocation is surprisingly overlooked or dismissed as strategy in most current scholarship and activism: the trend is to think in terms of a hard state stance and a categorical criminalisation. The play lays the ground to grapple with the work done by equivocation, for instance in insidiously regulating same-sex intimacy and marking the conditional status of queer sexual citizenship in Sri Lanka. I plead for attention to the play’s intersectional approach, in particular how queer privilege/disprivilege mediates gradations of empowerment and disempowerment in an uncertain legal situation. The essay argues for moving beyond the idea of strategic evasiveness to recognising a state politics of equivocation on decriminalisation.","PeriodicalId":35199,"journal":{"name":"South Asian Popular Culture","volume":"21 1","pages":"171 - 188"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47145335","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Between the sheets: The queer sociality of Bombay zines","authors":"Brian A. Horton","doi":"10.1080/14746689.2023.2232180","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14746689.2023.2232180","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT With a particular focus on zines produced in Bombay from the 1990s to 2000s, this essay draws on and thinks with the masala that flavored the pages of three prominent Bombay queer zines: Bombay Dost, Scripts and Gaysi Zine. Through close readings of specific volumes, I demonstrate that zines constitute not only an overlooked archive of queer and trans cultures in India but have also been crucial to facilitating ‘queer sociality’ (Rodríguez 2011) between the sheets of the zine’s pages and in the worlds through which its copies might travel. I develop the concept of masala-with a queer accent (Khubchandani 2020)-to reflect its usage and meaning in queer spaces to reference sex, messiness, gossip and at times unruliness and nonresectable behavior. Extending its potential, I suggest that masala names not only a genre of content that is erotically charged or gossip-laden but is perhaps itself an analytic or technique by which queer subjects make political claims and forge community.","PeriodicalId":35199,"journal":{"name":"South Asian Popular Culture","volume":"21 1","pages":"205 - 221"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47155394","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“Attempting to commit offences”: Protectionism, surveillance and moral policing of queer women in Sri Lanka","authors":"S. Emmanuel, P. Arasu","doi":"10.1080/14746689.2023.2232172","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14746689.2023.2232172","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This working note is centred on snippets of the journey of two Sri Lankan queer couples as they negotiate the normative authoritarian regime of Sri Lankan state and society. Through the authors’ reflections, based on their involvement as activists in these couples’ lives, the paper points out to the distance between dominant discourses in state, society and even among elite queer spaces in the country and the needs of ordinary queer folks in dire situations. It suggests possible paths from which to imagine taking forward the struggle towards decriminalization, freedom, dignity and respect for the LGBTQIA+ community. It shows that these paths have a lot to learn from as well as contribute to, moments and the future impact of the mass mobilization for change in Sri Lanka in 2022 and the repression of the same that the people of Sri Lanka are currently living through.","PeriodicalId":35199,"journal":{"name":"South Asian Popular Culture","volume":"21 1","pages":"155 - 170"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45613383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The mediated life of (Ajit) Pai: Disciplining ‘model minorities’ in neoliberal times","authors":"Falu Bakrania","doi":"10.1080/14746689.2023.2173848","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14746689.2023.2173848","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The last several years has seen an incredible rise in the visibility of right wing South Asian American politicians. This essay examines the unprecedented media battle waged by and against one such figure, Ajit Pai, the Trump-appointed Chair of the Federal Communications Commission who led a charge to repeal net neutrality. This battle, which took place through promotional videos that Pai produced and a racist meme-driven backlash, is a rich archive for exploring the shifting racial constructions of the ‘model minority’ in neoliberal times. It reveals new ways in which the ‘model minority’ is performing race and in turn being racialized. It thereby extends our understanding of how model minority discourse works as a strategy of state governance and of disciplining people of color. Pai enacts what I call ‘model minority cool’, a subject position that insidiously deploys race: while it performs ‘cool’ to identify as a person of color who experiences racism, it perpetuates white supremacy. In turn, the backlash against Pai reveals that the model minority is now fungible with the intersecting, abject categories of terrorist, fag, and Black, extending the disciplining reach of model minority ideology.","PeriodicalId":35199,"journal":{"name":"South Asian Popular Culture","volume":"21 1","pages":"1 - 24"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43556962","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Outside the imagined community: Pashtun subjects in contemporary Pakistani cinema","authors":"R. Rizwan","doi":"10.1080/14746689.2023.2174289","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14746689.2023.2174289","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In Pakistani cinema or Lollywood, the Pashtun subject is pejoratively represented as either the noble savage, the violent Islamist, the vengeful patriarch, the paedophile, or the simple-minded buffoon. Such representations are grounded in colonial discourse and in post-9/11 national and transnational political discourse, which is then inflected by historical legacies of Punjabi majoritarianism. Cinematic renditions play a critical role in depicting Pashtun subjectivities as excluded from the imagined community of the nation and the national body politic and re-affirm the hegemony of certain identities at the expense of other minoritarian identities. In this paper, I will focus on three popular contemporary Pakistani films – Khuda kay Liye (2007), Jawani Phir Nahi Aani (2015), and Karachi Se Lahore (2015) – in order to argue for the co-option of the national cinematic apparatus to construct a Pashtun/Punjabi binary where Punjabi identity functions as a placeholder for Pakistani national identity and the Pashtun is strategically expunged from the national imaginary as a balm to the nation’s extant anxieties relating to the presence of local and global terrorism in the region, the centre’s inability to consolidate a collective cultural and national identity and the persistence of ethnic inequality in Pakistan.","PeriodicalId":35199,"journal":{"name":"South Asian Popular Culture","volume":"21 1","pages":"25 - 40"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48345918","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A superhero in Indian style and culture: Minnal Murali goes global","authors":"S. Shekhar","doi":"10.1080/14746689.2023.2172842","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14746689.2023.2172842","url":null,"abstract":"Indian cinema has always tried to emulate the stylish superheroes of the west like Spiderman, Batman, and various characters of marvel comics which take the audiences to space, time travel, glossy VFX, and unbelievable stunts. As a country, India has not tapped into the rich written content specific to India, which can translate into beautiful cinematic stories. While Indians look at the west to quench the superhero appetite, such as Spiderman, Ironman, Superman, Batman, etc., India still is at the infant stage to establish one’s superhero industry in the same genre. However, a film released on Netflix during the 2021 Christmas eve in Mollywood (Malayalam film industry based in the south Indian state of Kerala) was different and left the viewers spellbound globally. Minnal Murali directed by Joseph, made the charts of the most viewed films in four countries, India, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, two days after its debut. It was among the top ten greatest non-English movies on Netflix worldwide (TNM). The film revolves around two persons who are hit by lightning simultaneously and get superpowers. The duo can also run with Minnal (lightning) speed. One uses the superpower for good other for evil. Indian culture is one of the world’s oldest and dates back to civilizations as ancient as 4500 years ago. Indian women mostly wear Sarees (long rectangular cloth). The traditional attire of men, particularly in south India, is Dhoti or Mundu (cloth knotted around the waist) and a loose shirt stretching to the knee length.Indian cinema is rooted in Indian culture. The narratives of ancient epics such as Mahabharata and Ramayan have influenced Indian cinemas.The direction of such influences includes side stories, backstories, and stories within a story. There is a long cultural tradition of using music and dance to tell mythology, culture, and fairy tales in Indian cinemas. Genre and styles of Indian films fall into masala movies (which portrays action, drama, love, melodrama), parallel movies (art movies), multilingual movies, and pan India movies that are released simultaneously in many Indian languages. Many Indian films like Pazhassi Raja, Baahubali, Lagaan, PK, etc., have previously depicted Indian culture. Minnal Murali’s message to society and its relation to Indian culture is worth citing. While most superhero movies often lose their identities to mimic the west’s character, Minnal Murali stays deep-rooted in Indian culture and its original story. Based in rural Kerala in the 1990s, the film depicts the protagonist and adversary performing action scenes. The superhero chases the villain in Mundu, slippers, and masks made from cotton","PeriodicalId":35199,"journal":{"name":"South Asian Popular Culture","volume":"21 1","pages":"143 - 146"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44594933","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Negotiations within a cultural phenomenon: Sidhu Moose Wala and a changing Punjab","authors":"M. Gangahar, Pranav Kapil","doi":"10.1080/14746689.2023.2171312","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14746689.2023.2171312","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Punjab, when viewed through the lens of culture, presents a multifaceted and multi-dimensional cohesion. Within the frame of a cultural phenomenon, Punjab appears to be many Punjabs at once, a geographical, a political, an online, a feudal, and a diasporic Punjab. All of these many phizogs appear to be in continuous dialogue, negotiating for the supremacy of one structure. The paper aims to examine these kaleidoscopic patterns of a changing Punjab through the negotiations occurring within the cultural phenomenon of Sidhu Moose Wala as a singer, painting a picture of an evolving Punjab that persists along spatial, temporal, and cultural axes.","PeriodicalId":35199,"journal":{"name":"South Asian Popular Culture","volume":"21 1","pages":"41 - 55"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44417866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The biopolitics of transnational commercial gestational surrogacy in Mimi (2021)","authors":"Eva Sharma, Isha Malhotra","doi":"10.1080/14746689.2023.2172848","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14746689.2023.2172848","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The study examines the Bollywood movie, Mimi, to unravel the systemic and structural exploitation of surrogates in the transnational commercial gestational surrogacy (TCGS) markets in India. The movie unpacks TCGS as a site of neoliberal eugenics and state-led biopolitics where the privileged white intended bioconsumers commission bodies of less-privileged women of the Global South. The complex hierarchical power relationship between the wealthy intended parents and the surrogates is explored through a framework of biopolitics to indicate the monetisation of surrogate life within the capitalist governmentality that treats bodies as commodities.","PeriodicalId":35199,"journal":{"name":"South Asian Popular Culture","volume":"21 1","pages":"139 - 142"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43412819","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}