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Indian censor board is sexually frustrated

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Sreemoyee Piu Kundu
Sreemoyee Piu KunduNov 20, 2015 | 14:31

Indian censor board is sexually frustrated

Dear censor board of India, Get a life. Get laid. Let us be with the long kisses!

The new James Bond film, Spectre, which has already released internationally will be showcased in India from Friday (November 20). Reportedly, the long kisses between lead actors Daniel Craig and Monica Bellucci have been snipped short for the supposedly sanskari Bharatiya janta - maybe the kinds we love idolising - the Hum Saath Saath Hain types, who chant Prem Ratan Dhan Payo and treat their better halves as devis, worshipping them in bed and in the kitchen.

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A source, as quoted in a news report in a leading daily, says, "Both of Daniel Craig's kisses with his co-stars have been reduced by 50 per cent. The censor board had nothing against James Bond kissing. But the length of the kisses were found to be unnecessarily excessive. We heard that Ranbir Kapoor's kissing scenes in Tamasha have also been reduced by half. We wonder how the censor board decides how much (of) kissing is enough."

Here's what baffles me endlessly and is the highest proof of the censor board's idiocy: This is a country where a woman is raped every 20 minutes and there is a dowry-related death every hour, where acid is thrown on the faces of women who dare say "no" to a man's advances - sexual or otherwise, where sleazy item numbers with the most obscene, double-meaning lyrics, having top heroines gyrating in low-waisted lehengas and cleavage-revealing cholis in front of a lustful villain are considered seductive, with the songs being chartbusters and played literally in every shaadi sangeet and popular urban discotheque; where women are not spared even in loud jagratas, and TV commercials which routinely stereotype women as sexually incomplete creatures - clingy, nagging, desperate to have slim, stretch mark-free waists and spotless, wrinkle-free skin, be noticed by her spouse, always compromising for the family/children.

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In a society where husbands rape wives in the privacy of their bedrooms and call them "moti bhains" in public, as a joke, what morality are we really pretending to safeguard by this juvenile squeamishness about something as simple and biological as a kiss? Are we in denial how Bollywood, from the 1950s to the 1980s, operated almost on a standard rape "formula". Mehboob Khan's Amar, BR Chopra's Insaaf ka Tarazu, NN Sippy's Ghar and Rajkumar Santoshi's Damini are just some examples.

Everyone from Pran and Prem Chopra, to Shakti Kapoor and Ranjeet, the "deadliest" villains played rapists almost serially, sometimes the act being symbolic of revenge, sometimes employed as a weapon to represent male superiority and mostly to mark the swashbuckling entry of the hero who would save the damsel in distress as she covered her heaving bosom screaming "bachao..." and before he beat the bad guy and his motley gang to a pulp. In an age of no internet and no access to pornography or internet cartoons like Savita Bhabhi, and conservative joint families, where intimacy was largely restricted, rape was used as a form of titillation, unlike the new age movie-going janta who download Sunny Leone on their smartphones and swing to Honey Singh numbers that are openly misogynistic, with crass lyrics, voyeuristic camera angles, deliberate images of heaving breasts, twirling navels, throbbing hips, robbing women of their rightful sexual autonomy.

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Why isn't the censor board in cognisance of the high rate of sexual violence we represent as a country and as a culture? Why not ban item songs? Camera angles? How about treating sexual intimacy as normative behaviour for a change and focus on sexual assault and aggression that is responsible for the objectification of women in popular culture? Or sleazy sex comedies that poke fun at transgenders and homosexuals, reducing them to caricatures and highly rated shows like Comedy Nights With Kapil where Kapil Sharma, now a film hero, routinely used to poke fun at his wife's pout?

How the land of Khajuraho and Kamasutra can be threatened by a simple smooch is truly beyond me. Probably it just goes to prove how "horny", and sexually frustrated we remain despite all the social media exposure and claim of Bollywood coming of age, frankly.

Closeted desires, perverse fetishes, internet pornography, open marriages, escalating infidelity and a propensity to subjugate a woman through violent and means. Sex like cheap entertainment, only!

Last updated: November 20, 2015 | 14:31
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