India’s Erotic Movie Posters
AUGUST 30, 2011, 10:30 AM IST By Margherita Stancati
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There was a time when “morning show” was a byword for erotic movie. These were screened in theaters across India a few hours before the regular Bollywood blockbusters. They had their golden age in the pre-digital 1980s, when VCRs were still uncommon and the Internet still unheard of. For adult films, men who were that way inclined had few options besides coyly heading to the cinema for the 10 a.m. or 12.30 p.m. shows – and risk bumping into relatives or colleagues.
Although morning shows – of the adult variety – have all but died out in India, many of their promotional posters are still around.
They take Bollywood kitsch to a whole new level. Wet shirts feature prominently, as do scantily-clad and Western-looking women. The posters’ naïve approach to eroticism reveals a society that related uneasily to sexuality, even among those who worked in the adult film industry.
A selection of them is on show at New Delhi’s W+K Exp until Sept. 17.
The show’s organizers, the Delhi branch of advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy, feel it’s time to recognize Indian adult movie posters as a genre in their own right.
While “absolutely tasteless” these posters are “a very definite art form,” said W+K Delhi’s executive creative director V. Sunil, who started collecting vintage erotic posters about a decade ago. He was surprised that while Bollywood posters were gaining cult status globally, no one seemed to notice the racier ones. “I don’t know how they escaped it,” he said. The posters on show are drawn from his private collection.
Posters often featured images that had little to do with the film’s content. Photos of lingerie ads likely pulled out of fashion magazines or of unwitting Hollywood actresses were common fixtures. Among these, no one beat Brooke Shields – a favorite of Indian adult film posters. She became an erotic icon following her role in the 1980 movie “The Blue Lagoon,” which in India has been screened as a “morning show. ”
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http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2011/08/30/india%E2%80%99s-erotic-movie-posters/
AUGUST 30, 2011, 10:30 AM IST By Margherita Stancati
================================================
There was a time when “morning show” was a byword for erotic movie. These were screened in theaters across India a few hours before the regular Bollywood blockbusters. They had their golden age in the pre-digital 1980s, when VCRs were still uncommon and the Internet still unheard of. For adult films, men who were that way inclined had few options besides coyly heading to the cinema for the 10 a.m. or 12.30 p.m. shows – and risk bumping into relatives or colleagues.
Although morning shows – of the adult variety – have all but died out in India, many of their promotional posters are still around.
They take Bollywood kitsch to a whole new level. Wet shirts feature prominently, as do scantily-clad and Western-looking women. The posters’ naïve approach to eroticism reveals a society that related uneasily to sexuality, even among those who worked in the adult film industry.
A selection of them is on show at New Delhi’s W+K Exp until Sept. 17.
The show’s organizers, the Delhi branch of advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy, feel it’s time to recognize Indian adult movie posters as a genre in their own right.
While “absolutely tasteless” these posters are “a very definite art form,” said W+K Delhi’s executive creative director V. Sunil, who started collecting vintage erotic posters about a decade ago. He was surprised that while Bollywood posters were gaining cult status globally, no one seemed to notice the racier ones. “I don’t know how they escaped it,” he said. The posters on show are drawn from his private collection.
Posters often featured images that had little to do with the film’s content. Photos of lingerie ads likely pulled out of fashion magazines or of unwitting Hollywood actresses were common fixtures. Among these, no one beat Brooke Shields – a favorite of Indian adult film posters. She became an erotic icon following her role in the 1980 movie “The Blue Lagoon,” which in India has been screened as a “morning show. ”
- Courtesy of W+K Delhi
- Wet shirts were a favorite of Indian adult movie posters.
One-liners that used wordplays and innuendo to hint at a woman’s loose sexual habits were another common trait. They were often more goofy than punchy: “The Good Parts, the Sexy Parts, the Body Parts,” one particular poster reads. Although these were usually in Hindi or English, most movies were actually in Malayalam, Kerala’s official language. This is because the southern Indian state was the hub of country’s erotic movie industry. As a result, when movies in Malayalam were screened in other parts of the country, many expected the adult kind.
But these weren’t regular erotic films. Most productions were so cheap that the erotic scenes were actually cut and pasted from other, often foreign, movies. “Suddenly there would be a woman having a shower or an awkward make-out scene,” recalled Mr. Sunil. Although these sequences would pop up out of context, this mattered little. It’s for those scenes only that an audience turned up for the shows at all. There were sex scenes, too, but these were rarely explicit: it would’ve been difficult for movies to be cleared by censors otherwise.
A popular subgenre was the erotic horror movie, which as Mr. Sunil put it, typically had “a little bit horror, then a little bit of sex.”
Although Indian erotic films fall in the “B movie” category, some big names came out of them, too. Actresses like Shakila and Silk Smitha, whose performances were often described as soft porn, made a name for themselves thanks to their roles in the genre’s higher-end productions. A movie starring Bollywood actress Vidya Balan as Silk Smitha, “The Dirty Picture,” is in the works and is set to be released in December.
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You can follow Ms. Stancati on Twitter @margheritamvs.======================================================
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2011/08/30/india%E2%80%99s-erotic-movie-posters/
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