Mira Nair at the Bazaar: Selling the Exotic Erotic in Kama Sutra

Abstract

Since the release of the film Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love in 1996, critics have almost unanimously accused diasporic Indian filmmaker Mira Nair of marketing India for western audiences. The general tone of the heavy criticism the film has received is put forth by Roger Ebert when he bluntly states that “[n]othing in [Nair’s] previous work […] prepared [him] for this exercise in exotic eroticism.” This essay is divided between two closely related arguments. In the first half I argue that Kama Sutra capitalises on the crossover appeal of the exotic and the focus rests on the increasing visibility of the exotic within globalised cultural industries (of which a fascination with South Asian culture is part and parcel of), most often through the circulation of highly marketable commodities such as Nair’s film. In the second half of the essay I suggest that the film illuminates how contemporary postcolonial cultural discourses articulate gendered forms of social regulation and normalisation; in fact, the orientalising frame within which Kama Sutra is received is built on the stereotypical association of India with the feminised erotic tale. In sum, while addressing aspects of re-orientalist representations in Nair’s film, this essay traces the connection between the exotic and the feminised that runs through the film, in particular through well-demarcated lines of orientalised desire.