Blaming movies is just plain silly: Rajeshwari Sachdev

The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) has for long, riled up controversies for its indiscriminate use of scissors. The latest furore being over their reluctance to certify Lipstick Under My Burkha. For once, its regional counterpart, the censor board in Chennai has got a rap on the knuckles. Not by an angry mob of filmmakers, but a division bench that has issued a notice to the board for not censoring films enough. The move came about after a minor girl who had eloped with her boyfriend and later got pregnant, blamed the influence of local cinema for her actions. The bench has now summoned the censor boards seeking explanations.

Former CBFC member Nandini Sardesai observes a trend here. She says, “This is a very old argument. If someone murders somebody and then blames films for it, who is at fault? Everybody needs a reason to blame films, but the society and films share a symbiotic relationship. Filmmakers do not concoct things out of thin air but show what is happening in the society at large.” She argues that films down south have much more bolder content as compared to Hindi films, she argues. “Their scenes are bold and they don’t shy away from showing flesh; they are liberal. Summoning is fine but they cannot be held responsible for this,” she asserts.

Another member of the CBFC, S. Ve. Shekher observes that the onus of being influenced by a film lies completely on the person and not the filmmaker.  He continues, “This is a sad state of affairs. You can’t bluntly blame the certification board for this. It’s not right. The duty of the Board is to do film certification, not educate people. Cinema is a medium of entertainment, it doesn’t teach or preach anything. If it does, then it is called a documentary, not a feature film!”

Interestingly, another such instance had made headlines when an Indian man charged of stalking a woman in Australia had offered the influence of Bollywood films as an explanation. The court in Hobart in the state of Tasmania said it would not record a conviction against the man, citing his cultural background and hence, understandable influence of films. Film director Onir finds this rather hare-brained.

He says, “It’s idiotic that something of this sort is being considered. Honestly I don’t understand how watching a film can get someone pregnant. I agree that films are a powerful medium and they should be censored when they propagate regressive trends and violence. In this case the person who should’ve been held responsible is the one who impregnated the girl. We no longer will continue to be a democracy if people continue to misinterpret films and summoning members of the certification board.”

By that logic then, all of our literature should be banned, believes Karu Palaniyappan the director of critically-acclaimed films including Pirivom Sandhipom. The idea seems particularly inline given how much we’ve delved into the topic of couples eloping. “In our literature, there are documentations about eloping. People have been eloping for ages, even before cinema was invented. So what was the influence on those people? All these atrocities like murder and robbery have been happening through ages. But cinema has been here only for the past 100 years.”

— Inputs by Merin James and Kirubhakar