On the surface, Savita Bhabhi, billed as India’s first toon porn star does not appear to have much cultural significance beyond the obvious. The attainment of the unattainable is a popular leitmotif in pornographic material. The teacher, the friend’s mother and (as in this case) the elder sister-in-law are frequent objects of adolescent lust and consequently are overrepresented in pornographic literature (I use literature as a catch-all term that includes motion pictures). In cartoon pornography, with the freedom of not having to use actors and greater narrative freedom, this tendency is only exaggerated. This being the case, Savita Bhabhi seems simply like the last in a long line of pretty typical sexual fantasies. The travelling salesman makes it with a lonely housewife. Adolescent boys seduce an attractive older woman. Infidelity takes place right under the cuckolded spouses’ noses. These are very common themes in pornography.
However, with the more recent episodes, it has become clear that there is a deeper cultural subtext to Savita Bhabhi. This starts becoming apparent in Episode 4, where it is revealed that Savita Bhabhi lost her virginity in what is implied to be a rural setting. A careful reader will however have noticed by now that Savita Bhabhi is an urban middle class housewife. She probably speaks fluent English, and is in every way a citizen of India, the land of exploding opportunity rather than the poor, backward, repressed land of Bharat. Savita Bhabhi is obviously someone who has made the transition from Bharat to India, and is secure and confident of her new status.
Over the course of the series, we see her coming into contact with denizens of Bharat. The bra salesman in the first episode is an example. Another is Gopal, the elderly domestic servant and his replacement Manoj. Manoj is in fact the object of her desire in episode 5, who she uses for her gratification despite the obvious power disparity in the relationship. I found this episode the most revealing, as this is where the subjugation motif is most apparent. The sexual act itself starts out as a massage given by the servant boy to his mistress, who makes her dominance known through several small cues, such as an admonition not to get any oil on her sari, or a warning to the servant that he must not let this dalliance divert him from his work. He is the giver, she the receiver. When the roles reverse for a brief period, she reminds him of the nature of their relationship, and makes him service her again. Manoj the servant cannot even commence the act of copulation without her permission, which he must ask multiple times before it is granted.
The subtext reeks of subjugation. The subjugation, no less of Bharat by India. Savita Bhabhi has power over Manoj even though she is the woman and he the man – an inversion of the traditional power structure. This represents the power disparity between Bharat and India being the reverse of what would be predicted simply by the populations, and therefore raw political power (in a representative democratic system) of the two entities. As Savita controls Manoj’s actions, so does India command the multitudes of Bharat. Savita directs the means of Manoj’s gratification; this parallels the dependence for their entertainment by millions of denizens of Bharat on entities controlled by English-speaking Indians. Manoj must seek Savita’s permission before starting on the means of obtaining release, just as Bharatiyas depend for their sustenance on an economic system controlled by Indians. In Manoj’s unfailing use of the honorific ji is addressing Savita, we may infer the use of honorifics and other entitlements by Indians to cement the seeming of their superiority over the lowly Bharatiyas. In a final, poignant moment in the episode, we see the at the conclusion of his labour, the unsated Savita gives Manoj another chore, holding out the promise of another unequal encounter. This clearly represents the eternal nature of the unequal system they enjoy in the minds of the Indians, and their confidence in their continued ascendancy over the Bharatiyas, whom they intend to exploit forever, a sort of Thousand-year-Reich that lasts forever in the mind of the oppressor.
Dr Tara Tatiana Pandey MA (Sophism) Lund University, PhD (Literary Deconstructionism of Popular Culture) St. Thomas-Freiburg Universität is the Alan Sokal Fellow of Egregious Deconstruction at the University of California, Sunnydale. Her book Tijuana Bibles in Modern Theology is now out in paperback. She can be contacted at tara.tatiana@pandey.ru .