Cut‐Pieces as Stag Film: Bangladeshi Pornography in Action Cinema

This article discusses the ‘cut‐piece’, short strips of celluloid containing sexually explicit imagery that are spliced in and out of Bangladeshi feature films, even during screening. Such cut‐pieces came into existence in Bangladesh in the mid‐1990s and are made in Bangladesh with Bangladeshi actors and crew. The article outlines the generic conventions of such Bangladeshi hard‐core cinematic pornography found in Bangladeshi action movies and focuses on four generic characteristics: production values and the representations of female nudity, rape and class difference. To analyse this imagery, the author relies on the discussions of the American stag film by Thomas Waugh and Linda Williams. This article aims to open up discussions of pornographic cinema in South Asia, especially its Muslim majority societies.