Terrifying Performances

Black-Brown-Queer Borrowings in Loins of Punjab Presents

Bibliographic Data

ID12469804
AuthorsKareem Khubchandani (0000-0003-1841-2030, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume19
Issue3
Pages275-297
Publication date2016-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Asian American Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1096-8598 • E-ISSN: 1097-2129
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/jaas.2016.0028
OpenAlexW2534176025
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited8

Otto and B.D.G., a black and desi gay couple in the film Loins of Punjab Presents (Manish Acharya, 2007), are an exceptional representation of interracial desire in South Asian diasporic cultural production. Beyond the novelty of their representation, they use a variety of black and South Asian performance styles to critique normative and disciplinary systems that surround them. This essay explores the unconventional ways through which Otto and B.D.G.’s intimacies are depicted, and analyzes the performance styles they use to express critical perspectives on racism, homophobia, and Islamophobia. I argue that Otto and B.D.G.’s performances offer alternative ways to think through contemporary conversations around cultural appropriation and interracial desire in ways that decenter whiteness or a white desiring subject. However, I also observe how their critical deployments of hypermasculinity potentially skew public conversations about racialized violence

Aesthetics · Appropriation · Art · Epistemology · Normative · Political science · Politics · Queer · Racism · Representation (politics · Sociology · Subject (documents · White (mutation · Cinema and Media Studies · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society · South Asian Cinema and Culture

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