Loving with irony: young Bombay viewers discuss clothing, sex and their encounters with media

Banaji, Shakuntala

doi:10.1080/14681810600982044

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 4 publications

(3 reference statements)

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“…This fantasy and play in the item song is maintained through carefully controlled attributes such as clothing, direction, lyrics and narrative. For instance, regarding the half-clothed yet provocative bodies of performers in item songs, Stella Bruzzi argues that "superficially restrictive clothes function as equivocal signifiers, acting both as barriers to sexual expression and as the very means of reaching sexual fulfilment" 16 . For instance, the carefully worded lyrics and dance sequences of the item songs "Sheila" and "Munni" elucidate how and why the male viewers derive pleasure as this play of fantasy is maintained by a game of absence and presence: the performer is both nude and clothed, and the dancer moves very close to the audience and then goes back again in a teasing way.…”

Section: Need a Man Who Can Give Me All That Broke?! No No I Don'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reclaiming Subjectivities: A Psychoanalytic-Feminist Perspective on Item Songs in Contemporary Indian Cinema

Shah

Cory

2019

cinej

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Item Songs have recently become established as new genre of songs in the mainstream Indian Cinema, although they have remained a part of Bollywood movies since at least the 1970s. Such songs, despite their widespread appeal to masses, have often been panned by Film critics (particularly from the Radical Feminist School) for their erotic dances, and an overly glamorized and sexualized depiction of half-nude female bodies. Based upon the textual analysis of two popular item songs in recent Indian cinema, Sheila ki Jawani from Tees Maar Khan (2010) and Munni Badnam Hui from Dabangg (2010), this paper seeks to problematize such readings which focus exclusively on the issue of the objectification of women through the concept of the male gaze. Drawing upon more recent studies in Psychoanalytic Feminist Scholarship, the paper departs from this conventional understanding. It argues that such item songs can also be interpreted as a means of liberation for women, and as devices for reclaiming the narrative on female sexuality, and a woman’s right to her body. More broadly, using Judith Butler’s concept of Gender Performativity in the Feminist Phenomenological tradition, the paper argues that items songs can be construed as performative acts that subvert the male gaze and viewed as constitutive of new feminine subjectivities in the contemporary Indian society.

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Section: Need a Man Who Can Give Me All That Broke?! No No I Don'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reclaiming Subjectivities: A Psychoanalytic-Feminist Perspective on Item Songs in Contemporary Indian Cinema

Shah

Cory

2019

cinej

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“…In most debates around globalization and its relationship to regional and communalization in Indian politics, the megacity of Mumbai tends to emerge as particularly implicated in tense contradictions. On the one hand, it is considered to be most cosmopolitan and “sexually liberated city” in India (Abraham, ; Banaji ); and on the other hand, it is also the cradle of communalist and religious fundamentalist politics which have tended to be culturally conservative (Hansen, ; Lele, ). The “provincialization” of this global city (Varma, ) which is also home to India's largest film industry – Bollywood – has particular implications for the normative conditions that make public life possible (Appadurai and Breckenridge, ).…”

Section: The Case: Public Kissing In Mumbai Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%

“Where do all the lovers go?” – The Cultural Politics of Public Kissing in Mumbai, India (1950–2005)

Annavarapu¹

2018

J Historical Sociology

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Public expressions of sexual intimacy have often been subject to moral censure and legal regulation in modern India. While there is literature that analyzes the cultural‐political logics of censorship and sexual illiberalism in India, the discourses of sympathy towards public displays of intimacy has not received as much critical attention. In this paper, I take the case of one representative discursive space offered by a popular English newspaper and show how the figure of the ‘kissing couple’ became an important entity in larger discussions about the state of urban development, the role of pleasure in the city, and the imagination of a “modern” Mumbai.

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“…In recent years, many Asian countries have achieved remarkable economic development, and the introduction of information technology (IT) has been rapidly progressing. One such development is the increased accessibility of information, including sexual information-to which adolescents are indiscriminately exposed [1]. Vietnam is among these progressing Asian countries whose IT is evolving rapidly, and the manner in which adolescents acquire sexual knowledge is simultaneously changing [2]- [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sources of Sexual Knowledge among Vietnamese High School Students

Watanabe¹,

Saruta²,

Kato³

2014

ARSci

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This study determined the sources from which Vietnamese high school students currently acquire sexual knowledge as well as the sources from which they believe they should acquire it. Participants were eleventh-grade students at three public high schools in Hanoi, Vietnam. We conducted a questionnaire-based survey from September to October 2012, with 1672 students participating. Responses were received from all 1672 students, a response rate of 100%. Complete data were received from 1653 respondents (98.9%), including 896 males (54.2%) and 757 females (45.8%). The survey was a self-administrated questionnaire. Although many participants believed that they were knowledgeable about sex, only a small number of them actually possessed accurate sexual knowledge. Few participants in this study, targeted to a specific age (eleventh grade), had used the Internet as a major source for obtaining sexual knowledge, in contrast to results from previous studies which covered a wider age demographic. Future research should include comparative studies between eleventh and twelfth graders as well as between those of the same age who are and who are not enrolled in high school. Additionally, it might be beneficial to consider the relationship between adolescent age and Internet use to study the influence of the Internet on sexual knowledge. Our results suggest that parents and schoolteachers should shoulder more responsibility in providing sexual education, particularly by improving their own knowledge and ability to provide such education, because many participants indicated that sexual knowledge should be acquired from parents and schools.

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Loving with irony: young Bombay viewers discuss clothing, sex and their encounters with media

Abstract: The media landscape in urban India has changed so rapidly in the last ten years that it is not easy even to document the changes let alone to consider the ways in which these

Cited by 8 publications

References 4 publications

Reclaiming Subjectivities: A Psychoanalytic-Feminist Perspective on Item Songs in Contemporary Indian Cinema

Reclaiming Subjectivities: A Psychoanalytic-Feminist Perspective on Item Songs in Contemporary Indian Cinema

“Where do all the lovers go?” – The Cultural Politics of Public Kissing in Mumbai, India (1950–2005)

Sources of Sexual Knowledge among Vietnamese High School Students

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