Rated A

"An impressive contribution to the field." * The Frontline *
"With its thoughtful analysis and engaging prose, Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India stands as a testament to the power of critical scholarship in challenging societal norms and opening up new avenues of thought. Mini’s work is not just an academic achievement but also a cultural intervention, encouraging readers to look beyond stereotypes and appreciate the complexities of a genre that continues to shape the cultural landscape of India." * Porn Studies *
"The book makes a critical contribution to low rung cine industrial practices largely overlooked in histories of production in South Asian film and media studies. . . . By critically engaging with questions of agency and desire, she also challenges reductive narratives and resists the fetishization of her objects of inquiry. In so doing, she exemplifies a model for ethical ethnographic engagement with precarious subjects, prompting us to rethink what it means to attend to informal and low brow cultural economies." * South Asian Review *
"A wonderful book on an urgent historical and political media corpus. Mini uses the hottest new media studies concepts for her study, uncompromisingly, without ever talking down, but delivers a thundu-rich study that will be accessible for students, cinephiles, pornophiles, and South Asia-
philes alike. . . Grab it in paper while it’s hot." * Jumpcut *

"This book is not merely an extensive account of the darker, yet immensely popular, side of the Malayalam film industry; it is essential reading for anyone deeply interested in the Malayalam film industry."

* Journal of Development Studies *
"Darshana Sreedhar Mini’s Rated A is at the cutting edge of scholarship in feminist porn studies, media and communications studies and the new scholarship redefining the ubiquitous term ‘transnational’." * Communication, Culture & Critique *
"The images are a collector’s dream. Rated A succeeds brilliantly in making the 'obscene' gloriously seen." * Asian Journal of Women's Studies *
"While there have been significant books on the erotic and embodied dynamics of stigmatized performance forms in South Asia, Rated A opens up new terrains for investigation by focusing on the diffuse and non-linear trajectories of soft-porn cinema in the Malayalam-speaking state of Kerala." * Text and Performance Quarterly *

“Mini’s archival method, rooted in radical abundance, offers a vital intervention into debates on absence, authorship, and circulation in star studies and film historiography.”

* Journal of Cinema and Media Studies *

“Darshana Sreedhar Mini distinguishes her work through its intellectually innovative and ethically grounded theoretical framework.”
 

* Feminism in India *