Respectability, Reform and the Data Trap: Gender, Labour and Political Economy in the Malayalam Film Industry

Political economy as an approach to media industries has long relied on data as raw material for knowledge production. However, the positivist pursuit of data can sometimes take away from the contextual nuances and lived realities of human labour in the industry. My aim, in this short piece, is to explore how localised power formations and cultural values must be accounted for, in order to interrogate the very process by which we claim knowledge of an industry. Reading ‘data’ – the prized raw material of media industry studies – against the grain is essential if we are to go beyond the presentness of the moment. Based on my fieldwork on labour utilisation in Malayalam soft-porn cinema, as well as the larger public discussions around the release of a judicial committee report – the Hema Commission Report – that was commissioned by the Kerala state government to study ‘options for improving women’ safety, security, a better salary, service conditions and creation of a conducive working environment’, I look at why political economy approaches to media studies must grapple with the contradictions and messiness of data, and how they are gathered to make claims.