In this light, for example, the Gujarati cultural orientation of Kyunki… and other Balaji Telefilms’ early productions derived from the fact that the Gujaratis had high television viewership (Singh, 2010). The series’ massive success then set a precedent for using regions as in a way that would be vital to twenty-first century television. The productions had cultural consistency entirely unlike an older precedent—Hindi serials. There, cultural markers were abstracted in such a way as to invite attention from across the spectrum of cultures addressable in the Hindi language. Serials now became a hotspot of regional “flavoring,” even as the central idea across the televisual palette remained the same. That is, in the series, homebound female protagonists were still iconic by implying that it was the domestic arena where real power struggles took place. Indeed, such a declaration was entirely at odds with contemporary Hindi films, where key conflicts were usually resolved in full public view - this was especially the case beginning with the rise of film action melodramas in the 1970s up until the late 1990s.
However, it was in the 1990s that a few “family films” established a lucrative trend of what has been termed the cinema of “panoramic interiors,” marked by “the coming together of art directors, the advertising world, fashion designers, and the film industry” (Mazumdar 2007: 120). For Mazumdar, the panoramic interiors in 1990s blockbuster films, such as Hum Aapke Hain Kaun (1994), are “lavish and ornate, spectacular and garish” (ibid.: 122). The panoramic interior, among other things, is an “architectural spectacle of light space” marked by the absence of dark spaces; it expresses “a crisis of belonging, fear of the street, and the desire for the good life—all at once” (ibid.: 148). While much of Hindi cinema was still ruled by fear of the street, as in gangster films of the period, it was this slice of opulent family melodramas that contemporary television was modeled on. The paradigmatic long-running soap had a distinct resemblance to the rising appetite for a consumerist lifestyle in these films; in both the television and film industries, the panoramic desires were anchored within a rather jarring moral rhetoric of Hindu traditionalism (Fernandes 2007; Uberoi 2006).
Indeed, Balaji Telefilms’ aggressive monetizing of the prime-time slot (8pm-11pm) was not without competition. India’s first 24x7 Hindi news channel, Aaj Tak, was launched roughly six months after Kyunki… Regardless of the soaps’ foregrounding of the joint family, the actual family audience was being increasingly segmented across television genres, including news, soaps, reality television and sports. The fact that most families owned a singular television set intensified that attendant tug of war. The paradigmatic soap, however, intensified its bid for the family audience via housewives. On the ideological front, by addressing the women of the household as key decision makers and the vital force stabilizing conservative value, soaps tried to take the biggest audience slice possible. On the tactical front, the paradigmatic soap after Kyunki… not only uses its leading female protagonists for elaborate promotional campaigns, but also narrates an entire series as the story of her desires and struggles.
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| Images from Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (2000), showcasing the joint family dynamic and central female protagonists who were positioned as key decision-makers. The series strategically targeted housewives, reinforcing traditional values and family norms while becoming a defining force in Indian television during the early 2000s | |
While critics occasionally discuss television’s conservative triumph over the domestic arena,[8] [open endnoes in new window] they rarely anchor this triumph within censorship. The paradigmatic assertion of television soaps at the dawn of the neoliberal period was to make facets of cultural “traditions” commensurate with modernity, especially with respect to the integrity of the Hindu family. For during this time, both cinema and more importantly the web were seen as potent threats to the social order, of which the joint family became a protected prototype. Balaji Telefilms was at the forefront of devising a series of scripts in which de-facto matriarchs would defend their “territory” in prime-time via a moral rhetoric steeped in melodramatic valences. In doing so, the TV producers acted as proxies for the Indian state, which barricaded middle-class domesticity within stricter censorship norms than any other media platform, at a time when the integrity of the family was threatened by neoliberal economic reforms and their attendant liberal worldview. Regulation, the polite pseudonym for censorship, provided a minimum guarantee to a conservative worldview, which has only expanded its televisual territory via the reign of long-running soaps.
Medium, censorship, content
The adoption and impact of streaming platforms are heavily shaped by shifts in media policy and a history of control exercised over media by respective territories of regional and national media markets. Unsurprisingly, regulatory dynamics have been at the forefront of the messaging that comes from different media platforms. That is, censorship policies vary according to the different media platforms, including television, films, and OTT platforms. Traditional television is distributed via over-the-air transmission, cable, satellite, or IPTV to reach a wide audience. Given its extensive reach and accessibility, television is subject to a more stringent regulatory framework compared to other media, with an aim of maintaining a programming environment devoid of offensive, vulgar, or disruptive elements that may disrupt public order. As Kumar (2018) has noted elsewhere,
“[O]wing partially to their distinct histories within the media economy, media are not only constituted by their formal and aesthetic constraints, but also continue to uphold an ideological function. [Since television was developed in India as a broadcast medium, its] intersection with middle-class domesticity further ensured that the state was built into the imaginary it offered to law-abiding citizens. This imaginary was not substantially overwritten by the emergence of cable and satellite television in the 1990s.”
In India, the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act of 1995, along with subsequent amendments, governs television channels and imposes significant restrictions on content (TRAI, 1995). Notably, two channels, AXN and Fashion TV, faced a temporary ban in 2007 for broadcasting explicit adult content during daytime hours. More important, the television cut of theatrical films gets re-certified or re-censored and is so extensive that it is often too disheartening for directors to watch. Producers tolerate such tampering only because satellite television screening rights provide an important revenue stream, especially for low-budget independent films.
Poduction houses like Balaji Telefilms have championed the cause of television’s serving conservative values. They not only align with strict state censorship but go overboard in trying to set standards for the protection of televisual publics within a changing media landscape. The greatest challenge for films, since 1951 force-edited and certified by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) (India Today, 2019), is to pass through the regulatory hoops enforced by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) as well as other restrictions enforced by respective channels. While many filmmakers ensure that their films remain on the favorable side of the censorship norms of both CBFC and TV channels, others like Anurag Kashyap would test the limits of CBFC and risk relinquishing satellite rights altogether or accept a television cut only for the financial support. A-rated movies (for adults), for example, can only be televised with further restrictions, since the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has issued guidelines specifying designated time slots after 11 PM to prevent access by minors. However, the channels still may not buy the rights for an A-rated film; the only safe option for filmmakers is to go for re-certification. After re-applying, the films seek either a “U” (unrestricted public exhibition) or “U/A” (unrestricted public exhibition subject to parental guidance for children below the age of 12) certificate for television viewing. Even so, the state-owned broadcaster Doordarshan only accepts films with a “U” certificate. This re-certification provision is still not officially part of the Cinematograph Act, but production companies such as Balaji Telefilms and Viacom18 have far stricter oversight by their content regulation teams (Jha, 2016). Also, certain unsuitable scenes or content may yet be subject to a company’s editing or censorship over and above all the above-mentioned letter of the law, in the spirit of protecting middle-class domesticity from “unsuitable” content. Examples of such content include depictions of explicit sexual content, partial nudity, graphic violence, or substance abuse.
With the entry of streaming platforms, however, this arrangement between films and television has been destabilized. OTT content in India is regulated by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and follows a self-regulatory mechanism. The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (IT rules, 2021) require OTT platforms to adhere to a code of ethics, including provisions related to content classification, age restrictions, and self-regulation (MEITY, 2021). Because these guidelines merely facilitate self-regulation and only demand self-identification by the viewers themselves, they effectively endorse the disruptive prowess of streaming platforms in at least two ways. First, in order to bypass television’s position within the revenue stream, OTT platforms began to offer a higher revenue support to films at a time when satellite-rights value was already on a steady decline towards a market correction across revenue-sharing streams (ibid.). Second, OTTs have become a more “natural” ecosystem for films since they offer far more modest self-regulation for the so-called adult content (nudity, abusive language, and violence). This regulatory environment has reinforced filmmakers’ preference for digital platforms, which do not hold any brief for censorship or content regulation. This is true even for those film production platforms which have a shockingly contrary approach on their television channels (e.g., Colors versus Voot; Balaji Telefilms vs ALT Balaji). Censorship has therefore been critical to the emergent solidarity between the film industry and OTT platforms, neither of which, however, have the reach of television.
The above illustrates how content has circulated on apparently distinct media platforms; it is not necessarily determined by the volition or character of media production outfits. Instead, content prospers on a platform according to the maneuverability offered within the letter and spirit of regulations. The case of Balaji Motion Pictures (BMP) is illustrative here. While an arm of Balaji Telefilms, it started producing films only a year after Kyunki… Yet, unlike its television soaps, BMP’s ethos would be best described as the media industry equivalent to investing in “penny stocks.” On one hand, TV soap producer Ekta Kapoor’s approach is to never stray away from the key tenets of the television soap system. On the other hand, BMP’s catalogue showcases a considerable appetite for experimentation, as long as it does not come with a big price tag. Commentators who launched many a diatribe against Kapoor’s soaps often failed to consider that the regressive ideology of television soaps reflected not her ideological bearings as much as the systemic stability of a culture machine that she built on the platform of regulation.
As I shall argue hereafter, ALTBalaji’s inclinations could be traced back to ALT Entertainment, which began its career in 2010 as a re-branding effort towards a production outlook oriented to erotica (DNA, 2010). This was required for protecting BMP and Balaji Telefilms from the possibility of a compounded loss of the brand image and the financial uncertainties of a stronger risk profile (Tanvir 2015). But this freedom from a legacy outfit and its legacy investment in the apparatus of production “standards” also created a space for “Low-Res Horrors,” often marked by digital capture’s characteristic grainy images (Sen, 2014). Notable films showcasing ALT’s relation with digital capture were Love, Sex Aur Dhokha (LSD) (2010) and its successor, Ragini MMS (2011). As a critical voyeuristic assembly of what may be termed alternative visuality—CCTV cameras, cellphone cameras, spy cameras, webcams etc.—LSD showcased the slippery multiplication of digital capture, which was fundamentally invigorated by the idea of a scandal. This alternative visuality relied on the specter of an always lurking camera-eye. Precisely because the Ragini franchise directly bridges ALT Entertainment and ALTBalaji, its OTT successor—but also helps establish the film industry-based ancestry of OTT platforms—we must investigate it more.
Ragini, leaked online
Both LSD and Ragini MMS [9] have scripts dealing with leaking a digital recording into the public domain. This digital record may be kept for a range of intentions—security, housekeeping, “sting” videos, casual camera fetish or betrayal of trust for personal profit or redemption. But in all these scenarios, the audience is implicated in voyeurism since viewers’ access to the narration itself comprises a collaged alternative visuality. The attendant dark pleasure is what distinguishes the grainy low-res images from the legacy of well-lit images grabbed by a film camera, and these then go through rigorous cosmetic treatment at the editorial desk. The idea of an MMS scandal refers to the discreet peer-to-peer circulation of a “sextape”—an amateurish recording of sexual intimacy, situated on the opposite end of the visual spectrum from professionally mounted productions.
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| Ragini MMS (2011) and its web series adaptation (Ragini MMS: Returns), which continued the franchise's blend of horror and sensuality. The films and web series, combining voyeuristic and supernatural elements, pushed the boundaries of genre and censorship, marking a notable shift in Indian entertainment by exploring taboo subjects with a mix of suspense, sexuality, and digital aesthetics | |
However, Ragini MMS also successfully rehashed a well-established recipe of amateurish productions of 1970s-80s Hindi cinema—a horror-cum-sleaze blend that reigned supreme in the B-circuit (Singh 2008). Public attention around the first major MMS scandal in 2004 offered the possibility of multiplying amateurish horror with the often-inadvertent circulation of digital sleaze. This recipe went on to pile on what became the formidable Ragini franchise. The film sequel, Ragini MMS 2 (2014) was followed up with a web series—two seasons of Ragini MMS: Returns (2017-2019)—which premiered on ALT Balaji. Even the sex comedy film Great Grand Masti (2016), produced by ALT Entertainment makes a clear reference to the Ragini franchise via the female ghost-protagonist, who is named Ragini.
The franchise’s primary narrative premise revolves around a group of characters who find themselves entangled in paranormal experiences while residing in a haunted location. The franchise adopts a found-footage-style, utilizing a blend of handheld cameras and surveillance footage to enhance its reality effect. In the first season of Ragini MMS: Returns (2017) the first episode titled Sex Shaadi MMS opens with an aerial shot of a village, gradually zooming into an out-of-use, eerie mansion. This is where the viewers are treated to several erotic encounters. The first track develops a romantic plotline—private sexual intimacy followed by public display of erotic dance as an item song [the item song/number is a dance routine with its own visual grammar designed to amplify the erotic value of the dancing body; see Kumar (2017) for more]. The second track aborts the first plotline with an orthogonal incision, when the characters stumble upon a pornographic CD that contains a secretly filmed intimate scene captured by a CCTV camera. The interruption adds perspective by navigating us away from direct consumption of erotic pleasure towards its “accidental” digital capture.
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| Episode 1 of Ragini MMS: Returns (2017), titled Sex Shaadi MMS, combines horror and eroticism in a haunted mansion. The episode opens with an intimate scene between a couple, set against the backdrop of a wedding in the eerie mansion. As the narrative unfolds, a voyeuristic discovery of a secret sex tape captured by CCTV adds suspense and intrigue. The series blends suspense, sensuality, and digital voyeurism, with a slower pace that allows for deeper character development and a more layered exploration of erotic themes compared to its film counterparts. | |
Indeed, ALTBalaji’s desperate bid against leaking money while experimenting with plot devices and visual schemes prioritizes faster gratification. In addition, the shift to digital capture has also facilitated a shift in cultural acceptability towards amateurism. Such amateurish may even enhance the value of media-texts, since it amplifies its truth-claim by bypassing media industry’s trademark professional sophistication. This broad appeal of digital amateurism eventually gave ALT Balaji a recipe for their low-budget productions. Amateur media production, however, is not confined here to flat, grainy digital images and low resolutions. It also incorporates a production ethos which is fundamentally opposed to mainstream film and television production studios’ editorial overreach. Carrying forward the legacy of B-movies, here we witness a deliberate offering which uses amateurism as a sign of pirate predation. Such production techniques extract value in the way fast-fashion knockoffs do—via faster production lines and supply chains that invest much less time and resources on design, material quality, and production. The story and screenplay, therefore, only prepare a broad arena in which the audience gathers for erotic compensation. Therefore, I identify this subgenre as fast-fashion erotica.
What we witness in the Ragini franchise is the wedding of cultural anxiety about leaky sexual intimacy with an apparatus of voyeuristic, alternative visuality. The visual style facilitates a quick and amateurish process of value extraction from the storyline. The smooth transition of a found footage erotic horror film into a web-series with stable generic credentials illustrates how OTT platforms’ succession are not merely an Internet-based extension of television. Cinema in the twenty-first century went through certain key transformations—including the incorporation of digital capture—which have been central to the stylistic as well as ideological blends available on streaming platforms. While streaming cultures have been rather boastful about “revolutionizing” television, by and large they have mainly adapted cinematic screenwriting and genres towards long-form episodic storytelling. But ALTBalaji has used cinematic practices that delivered substantial returns at the low-budget production end. Unwilling to burn its hands with lavishly mounted productions, ALTBalaji shrewdly deploys a “demographic intelligence” for efficiency. In the following section, we will address the most vital demographic cluster for ALTBalaji—provincial north India.
