What does Myers believe are the implications of allowing the motion picture industry to continue uncensored? If movies were censored, what would be the consequences?
Answers
Explanation:
Cinema as an art form has always drawn a disproportionate interest from the Indian state and the judiciary. Their approach is best encapsulated in this excerpt from the last major constitutional challenge to censorship law, nearly 50 years ago, in the landmark S. Rangarajan v P. Jagjivan Ram case: “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.” (Paragraph 10)
The Supreme Court went on to cite an academic study according to which “continual exposure to films of a similar character” would significantly affect the attitude of an individual or a group. On this basis, the Supreme Court deemed pre-censorship necessary.
The Rangarajan judgment gave a final stamp of judicial approval to the notion of a nanny state, treating its audiences as infantile subjects, to be shepherded carefully through the treacherous universe of cinema.
Colonial hangover
The Cinematograph Act of 1952 was derived from colonial censorship laws. But the world has changed dramatically: audiences no longer run out of movie halls like they did watching The Arrival of a Train, fearful of the locomotive advancing towards them. Even if ‘the masses’ were somehow extra ‘gullible’ in the India of the 1960s, the average ‘visual literacy level’ has gone up dramatically in this age of 24x7 TV, YouTube and video-selfies.
The state considers every citizen rational enough to make serious, life-affecting decisions like who to vote for (at 18), who to marry (at 21), what career to choose, investments to make etc but, cross the threshold and enter a cinema theatre and the citizen turns into a bumbling idiot, unable to discern what to watch or not, to be lent a helping hand by the Pahlaj Nihalani-fied Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC).
Yes, India is a diverse society. Yes, there will always be grievances from some section of civil society. And yes, we need an arbitration mechanism to address a wide range of concerns. We need a multi-layered solution to the absurd censorship regime in India. The industry must set up the Film Council of India to deal with civil society grievances. The CBFC’s scope must be limited to certification, with no powers to maim, mutilate or ban any film. For any film it finds ‘objectionable’, the CBFC should refer it to the Film Certification Tribunal. The tribunal comprising retired judges, lawyers, filmmakers, writers and artists must become the sole forum for a considered dialogue with the filmmaker concerning any ‘censorship’ of their work.
Stop being a nanny
The final recommendations of the Shyam Benegal Committee are disappointing as they chose not to examine any of the “reasonable restrictions”, directly borrowed from Article 19(2) into the Cinematograph Act. Much of the political censorship that our cinema, particularly documentary films, are subjected to stem from these holy cow exceptions, especially as they allow politically partisan members of the CBFC to intervene and subvert free speech.
Censorship has no space in a mature democracy. The jury is out, though, on the kind of democracy we are with the government actually playing a bigger nanny, regulating not just cinema but our daily lives, rationing currency, petrol, even food portions, banning liquor, meat and criminalising love. In these times of beef-lynchings, couple-thrashings, legally-sanctioned goon squads and fatwas, intolerance will beget worse censorship in the coming years.
Rakesh Sharma is a filmmaker whose work includes‘Final Solution’, a documentary on the 2002 Gujarat riots.
Hope this helps you.