By Maya Palit
It was an eventful week, even for the illustrious folks at the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) — one in which they demanded the eradication of the phrase ‘Mann ki baat’ from the upcoming film Sameer because it corresponds to the title of a radio talk show by the prime minister. Don’t forget, the CBFC also asked for the removal of the Hanuman Chalisa from the film Phillauri, and wanted a profoundly ridiculous disclaimer at the beginning of the film, which would state that the makers of the film don’t, in fact, believe that ghosts really exist.
And now, the same people who refused to grant certification to Lipstick Under my Burkha because it was too ‘lady-oriented’ have now shown that they’re uncomfortable with portrayals of other genders, and gender fluidity, too. On March 26th, CBFC ordered the cancelling of a screening of The Danish Girl, a film about a man who undergoes a sex change. And it wasn’t for the reasons that some transgender people have previously cited in their dismissal of the film (that it was too regressive or poorly made), but because they found the ‘whole subject’ matter to be ‘objectionable’ and unsuitable for children, possibly even for ‘small villages’, even though it previously was passed with zero cuts for its theatrical release last year. Quoting a CBFC board member, the Indian Express sums up the CBFC’s main objections: ” It talks about a man who wants a sex change and has a genital operation to become a woman. The subject is sensitive and how do you edit a subject like that?”
Last night I was watching a — by now, pretty amusingly dated — documentary called Room 666 by Wim Wenders, about the unstable future of cinema now that television was on the rise in nations around the world. The film-makers interviewed on it hold forth about everything from the escalating budgets in Hollywood to the dwindling interests of people in the large screen, but I was haunted for most of it by the thought of the tyranny of CBFC. How they get to decide when a film is too interested in women, if we should be into ghosts or not, and finally, that a ‘multicultural’ nation like ours deserves this absurd judiciary on whether ‘small towns’ would be able to stomach a man who sees himself as a woman. It’s tough to say where this is headed, but it certainly doesn’t spell too much good for cinema.