Taking Leave Of Our Censors

Censorship  | 25 November 2010  | print

Censorship is a dinosaur that should be made extinct

Last week, the Information & Broadcasting Ministry peremptorily ordered two TV channels (Colors and NDTV Imagine) to change the time-slots of their top-rated shows. While the channels got a reprieve from the High Court a day later, the government’s knee-jerk reaction to programming content shows just how out of step the government and our statutes are with media technology.

Whatever label it uses, the government’s action was a form of censorship. India continues to adhere to archaic notions of censorship and, in its codified law, uses terms that are, at best, woolly. For instance, when the Constitution allows ‘reasonable restrictions’ on free speech in the interests of ‘decency or morality’, nobody knows what this really means. The Cinematograph Act of 1952 uses the same language when it allows the Censor Board to refuse certification for a film’s public exhibition on these grounds. Public exhibition here does not mean allowing the film to be shown with a U rating. It means banning the film altogether. The Censor Board can also order the deletion or substitution of what it considers objectionable. A later law, the Cable TV Networks Regulation Act of 1995, uses the same language (“decency” and “morality”), only grafting them onto another medium. There are at least seven other laws in differing fields (dramatic performances, criminal law, postal services) that use much the same language.

All censorship operates on a single central presumption, namely that the vast majority of people are possible potential criminals and certainly entry-level life forms incapable of independent thought. At a political level, this is extended to the Orwellian nightmare of 1984, but even where dissent and harsh criticism are not actively prohibited, censorship assumes that a handful of hand-picked non-elected individuals can decide what is “moral”, “decent” or “suitable” for the rest of us; what books we read, what films we see, what is or is not art or literature; in short, that Indians have infantile, impressionable minds. Should we, therefore, be exposed to a certain film, we might be tempted to immediately go out and commit all manner of heinous crimes and perfidies.

In cinema and television particularly, this assumption was always entirely bogus and is emphatically more so today. Morality and decency are not absolutes; they are shape-shifting descriptions that vary widely through time and context. When our Constitution uses these words it is really echoing a standard set in an English case of 1868 and which is now called the Hicklin test: whether the subject matter will “deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences and into whose hands such a publication may fall.” In the early 1960’s, the Supreme Court found Lady Chatterley’s Lover to be “obscene”. It is doubtful if anyone would find that persuasive today. The Hicklin test is no longer used in England or America. A later view in America, which required the coalescing of prurience, an offense to contemporary community standards and a lack of all redeeming value, from Roth v United States¹, is equally controversial and also allows the imposition of the views of an unelected minority on the majority. It has since been superceded² in part, and the later judgement does not protect obscenity as being included in free speech. Nothing gives a censor the moral right to order a cut in a film; in effect, to decide what is ‘art’; the test, if it is to be applied, must be of the work as a whole and not an individual instance here or there. Despite a few notable attempts to break through, India remains at the Hicklin level, with Victorian sensibilities being forced on audiences. While Bollywood dances are outrageously suggestive (and even ‘vulgar’), they are permitted because they have no nudity. Yet our censors would have us believe that Indians don’t ever kiss or have sex. How we got to a population of over a billion people is a mystery.

The most egregious attempt to censor television was, incredibly, by a Mumbai college professor who sought to ban ‘adult’ programming from prime-time TV ostensibly to protect children. There were two obvious solutions to this: one, use the remote; two, don’t have children. The action was remarkable coming as it did from someone who one would have reasonably expected to have a great deal of familiarity with the political and social effects of promoting censorship. The petition claimed that films like Bandit Queen and Kamasutra had an ‘adverse effect’ on children. This is a very peculiar argument, and the jury is still out on it, with no real consensus or scientific data to support it. Tom and Jerry cartoons are incredibly violent: the cat suffers the most horrific physical abuse, and the mouse devises ever more diabolical devices to set against the cat. Yet this violence is supposedly benign merely because it is presented in cartoon format.

On the other hand, John Frankenheimer’s excellent 2002 HBO movie, Path to War would probably be classified as an adult film by our censors. It is a dramatized account—with outstanding performances from a stellar cast—about the Vietnam war during the Lyndon Johnson administration. The dramatic narrative is interspersed with documentary footage from the war, and that is truly horrific—bombings, napalm use, the carnage of war.

Other films like Rendition and The Hurt Locker contain profanity and violence (in The Hurt Locker it is largely bloodless) but both raise difficult moral and ethical questions of contemporary relevance regarding the war on terror, the confiscation of civil rights and the consequences of the American invasion of Iraq. Are students of, say, the 10th or 11th standards, all not yet ‘adults’ for movie theatre admission, likely to be ‘adversely’ affected by these films? How? Our students are neither imbeciles nor stupidly impressionable, as the slightest interaction with them shows. Also, the theory that a person at one day short of his or her 18th birthday is impressionable and liable to be adversely affected and will somehow magically be transformed into a more sentient creature in 24 hours is simply ludicrous. Moreover, the certifications seem entirely arbitrary. Rendition (directed by Gavin Hood) has extended torture sequences; the CBFC site says that the video release of this received a U/A certificate (unrestricted public exhibition with parental guidance). The Hurt Locker, which is almost entirely bloodless, got an A rating. The CBFC does not tell us why. Reasons, it seems, are too difficult a business for our censors.

While the wording of the statute left the court deciding the TV regulation case little choice, what the statute and the professor both seemed to confuse was the distinction between material that is ‘adult’ and material that is pornographic. Pornography, indecency, vulgarity and obscenity lie entirely in the minds (or more southerly regions) of the beholder; and adult material is not necessarily any of these things.

In 1989, the Supreme Court pronounced in favour of film censorship³. It said:

Movie doubtless enjoys the guaranty under Article 19(1)(a) but there is one significant difference between the movie and other modes of communication. The movie cannot function in a free market place like the newspaper, magazine or advertisement. Movie motivates thought and action and assures a high degree of attention and retention. It makes its impact simultaneously arousing the visual and aural senses. The focusing of an intense light on a screen with the dramatizing of facts and opinion makes the ideas more effective. The combination of act and speech, sight and sound in semi-darkness of the theatre with elimination of all distracting ideas will have an impact in the minds of spectators. In some cases, it will have a complete and immediate influence on, and appeal for every one who sees it. In view of the scientific improvements in photography and production the present movie is a powerful means of communication. It is said: “as an instrument of education it has unusual power to impart information, to influence specific attitudes towards objects of social value, to affect emotions either in gross or in microscopic proportions, to affect health in a minor degree through sleep disturbance, and to affect profoundly the patterns of conduct of children.” (See Reader in Public Opinion and Communication Second Edition by Bernard Betelson and Morris Janowitz p. 390). The authors of this book have demonstrated (at 391 to 401) by scientific tests the potential of the motion pictures in formation of opinion by spectators and also on their attitudes. These tests have also shown that the effect of motion pictures is cumulative. It is proved that even though one movie relating to a social issue may not significantly affect the attitude of an individual or group, continual exposure to films of a similar character will produce a change. It can, therefore, be said that the movie has unique capacity to disturb and arouse feelings. It has as much potential for evil as it has for good. It has an equal potential to instil or cultivate violent or good behaviour. With these qualities and since it caters for mass audience who are generally not selective about what they watch, the movie cannot be equated with other modes of communication. It cannot be allowed to function in a free market place just as does the newspapers or magazines. Censorship by prior restraint is, therefore, not only desirable but also necessary.

This is actually a very good argument for rating films and a very weak argument for censorship. First, the reference cited is a reader, i.e., a compilation of articles. Second, the argument proceeds on a Clockwork Orange presumption: a continual exposure to similar material has an effect. This is self-evident. Imagine the consequences of being forced to watch endlessly looping reruns of The Sound of Music. Anyone would go mad, even a child (try showing it to any child born after 1990). Third, the argument assumes that everyone under 18 has the mental development of a gnat and is easily influenced. Most importantly, the decision is dated—it was delivered before the early days of the publicly available Internet (at least in India). Much has changed since.

Technology and the Internet have made censorship obsolete. Material that is sought to be “banned” is freely available on the Internet and on DVD. For the Censor Board to blip out from The Social Network words that are commonly heard on the street is not just pointless; it is imbecilic. No one is likely to be corrupted by hearing these words, nor are they immoral. Perhaps impolite, but even that is arguable. New television panels are now Internet-enabled: you can access on them everything our censors ban.

With censorship reduced to mere posturing, the Censor Board is a dinosaur that should be extinct. What we need instead is a thoughtful rating system, with an explanation of what each rating means and why a film has received a particular rating. American films and trailers already have that, and it works reasonably well, flawed though it is. Theoretically, the argument for ratings breaks down at its extremity: how do you rate a ‘snuff’ film or one that glorifies paedophilia or animal abuse? The answer is we don’t have to. Again, technology and society provide answers, without reference to any censor. These ‘extreme’ films are not publicly exhibited: economics don’t permit it, and neither does society. Banished from the real world, they are, however, widely available on the Internet, which, despite all appearances to the contrary, does have its own rules. All adult or explicitly sexually material on the net carries mandatory warnings and severe penalties for violation. The most startling example of this is the Disneyfication of what were, once, the incredibly sleazy parts of New York with video sex parlours and viewing booths replaced by theatres showing The Lion King and shops selling high-end merchandise.

Governments and the law must both adapt to the realities forced by technology. Both must accept that India’s citizens are not mindless sheep but have the capacity to take informed decisions. A person who is entitled to vote is equally entitled to decide what movie to see.