The Central Board of Film Certification- A forum for illogical restrictions!

What’s the similarity between Indian politics and the Indian Censor Board? Both are a bunch of illogical buffoons doing a job which a person half their age should be doing. At least I get it when a politician keeps his/her own interests over the country’s, it will benefit them financially, but what is up with the stupid decisions taken by the Indian censor board. I fail to find any sort of reasoning or logic behind the decisions they take up.

Subtitle Bans: Most of the English television channels have the subtitles feature which is totally useless because most of the words that are used in the English movies or television series are not allowed to be shown in India. Yes, that is how stupid our censor board is. Words like ‘ass’, ‘boobs’, ‘fuck’ etc are considered obscene and hence all you see is ‘***’ when such words are used. If this was not all, words like ‘beef’, ‘pork’, ‘weed’ etc are banned too, because they hurt religious sentiments. Of course vote bank politics is widely used by politicians because religious sentiments are hurt only when you see foreigners using words like ‘beef’, irrespective of what context it is being used in. The funniest part is that they do not even consider that a word like SEX has more than one meaning. Even if the dialogue refers to it in terms of gender, it is mostly asterisked off. Each time the character says a line like, “We had sex”, the subtitles show, “We made love”. It’s as if the ‘dumb kids’ in India will not understand that.

Smoking Warnings: It is not allowed to show a burning cigarette on Indian television. Yes, you read it right. It is allowed in movie theatres but it should be accompanied by the message “Cigarette smoking is injurious to health” every time. So basically, even if a kid had not noticed the character smoking a cigarette or a cigar or a pipe, the message which is flashed every now and then makes sure that the attention of every viewer is shifted from the plot to the burning cigarette. How thoughtful indeed!

In today’s time, where psychologists in every advanced country have proved that the graphical content on cigarette boxes and warning messages attract more young people to smoke, Indian censor board introduces such archaic methods of educating people about its ill effects.

Violence and Adult Content: The Board has very clearly categorised the certificates which is issued to films: U standing for Universal is for unrestricted public exhibition. UA standing for Parental Guidance is for unrestricted public exhibition but under parental guidance for children under the age of 12. A standing for Adults-Only is restricted for the age group of 18 and above. S standing for Restricted is restricted for a certain specialised audience, such as doctors. And still many films are asked to edit or cut scenes which are violent or have high sexual content. If you are so adamant about what should be shown to the audience, why are such categorisations included in the machinery? What I think is, when a film is being played in a theatre, it should be clearly mentioned if it contains heavy violence or sexual content, and then the decision to watch the film or not rests with the viewer. The rights of the board should not extend beyond the certification of the film. Needless to mention, playing an A rated film on the television is like ruining the movie experience for the viewer. All obscene, violent, drug abuse or horror scenes should be cut and removed, even if it is being played late at night.

What option is the viewer left with, than downloading films from torrent sites over the internet, when such restrictions are imposed on the media? Jaago graahak jaago.