Agents of Ishq and Contemporary Discourses on Sex and Sex-Education in India

Abstract

This paper examines Agents of Ishq, an online site/project seeking to create a space for the public discourse of sex and sexuality in India, with particular attention to a single music video that is part of the project. The content produced by the project is informed by idioms of Bollywood films and film-music. The paper draws on the notion of popular culture to see how meanings are encoded within the video productions and explores the politics of representation of these audio-visual and textual resources. It also briefly examines the effect that being hosted on a digital platform, freely accessible at any time and from any location, (rather than as part of traditional and broadcast media) has on the content produced by Agents of Ishq. It examines the need for the proliferation of pedagogical resources of this kind and, at the same time, draws attention to the ways in which they need to be critically problematized in terms of the cultural hegemonies they may run the risk of reinforcing.