"A PIL(Public Interest Litigation) was filed on Monday in the Allahabad High Court seeking a ban on
the showcasing of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film ‘Ram Leela’ on grounds
that it “deliberately and maliciously insults and outrages the religious
sentiments of Hindus."-The Hindu
A line so straight out of a news article shouldn't have been blatantly used, but the emotions it evoked, were hard to keep aside.
By the way, this whole concept of banning really sucks. Are we all contestants of Big Brother/Boss? "Why does it suck?", we ask. What are we? Sheep? A bunch of fellows go and decide for themselves that something is not good for a community, specially by evoking ones dearness to religion. What an old trick! The lines of the article, which sounded rather fanatic in their outlook, specially this one, "The film's posters show half-nude characters in a rather offensive and
compromising situations and use the tag ‘Goliyon ki Raas Leela’ to
define itself. The official trailer of the film shows abusive language
and intimate scenes which are far away from the religious connotations
of this word, which insults and offends the religious sentiments of
Hindus.” It almost sounds like the person has never seen anyone nude in life, or feels the necessity to purge him/herself each time he/she does.
Yeah! "Intimate scenes", "Compromising situations", What??? The fellow who bothered to file the PIL would have thought that blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the
weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother's
keeper and the finder of lost children. Surely! All Hindus will have a problem watching this movie. Again, let's repeat! ALL HINDUS!! Hilarious! And delirious too. So, what do we go ahead and do? Everything in our might to prevent everyone from seeing what is there on offer, as it offends someone's sense of self righteousness, mistaken or not. Everyone wants to be the thunderous voice in the house! Just that no one wants to say things aloud. Instead of saying 'Sexually evocative poses', they say " Compromising situations", because? Because anything remotely sounding like 'SEX' is to be muted in public. Pretty surely, folks with such mentality would blush a bit too often, even in their Mathematics class, to the extent that they have troubles reading every equation containing the word Sec2β!
How
conveniently, banning something, be it a work of art, or be it
anything, in the apparent public interest, can really fiddle with the
concept of free will. But, no! One has to ensure that he strikes upon 'we' with great vengeance and furious anger, those who have obviously
hatched a plot to poison his brethren.
It
is sad to see so many works go unappreciated for the sole reason that
they put us a bit outside the comfort zone of our mental confines.
Even sadder is the fact that the list of such works isn't short by
any means.
Where are the worshipers of free-will? We've already lost a lot of good work to the 'banners'. How much more?
Where are the worshipers of free-will? We've already lost a lot of good work to the 'banners'. How much more?
To give an idea of what the status quo has been so far, here's a list of things that were lost to us, thankfully not anymore....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_films
And then there are books, of course
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_governments
Good piece and you certainly have a commendable way with words.It frightens me.(jk)
ReplyDeleteBut i guess it's better to admit that a lot of those banned movies were either senselessly stupid in their screening content or too gore(why do people want to watch gore man! its just pathetic; even more is the answer i get to that -you become mentally strong when you watch people killing themselves or indulge in violence, know it like a man-O!-meter) ,but there are some brave and politically charged movies that were too sensitive in keeping with people's emotions that the government ,knowingly ,decided to curtail which in some cases, were for the good,to keep in check the societal stability , avoid tensions, etc. Something that could be said of a lot of these movies is that they were also biased in their representation of specific community of people and involve an inaccurate depiction of their culture and state of affairs.I very well remember Argo, when it released first , was criticized by the iraqi government for their incorrect or rather extreme depiction of the tensions that prevailed in iraq at the time, its true; it seemed from the movie that the people in iraq were mean and completely hostile in their relations with foreigners. Britain and France were portrayed as mild and weak. Even that recent Jobs movie man is so depressingly off tune with the exact roll of events. Racist movies form another theme and result in banning. Long story short, while I completely accept that banning movies on account of intimate scenes( they should censor or use proper age classification for that) or a da vinci movie which could hurt the sentiments of certain religious communties can be prevented or even checked to an extent, a lesser known reason behind their banning might at times also provide the major source of the truth that resides in it. after all, no community would ever remain mum if their sentiments are trampled over.Period.