Varun Grover expresses confusion over CBFC's actions: 'Why blur a bra, but...'
Lyricist, stand-up comedian and screenwriter Varun Grover’s first short film KISS landed up on MUBI recently. The film, starring Adarsh Gourav, Swanand Kirkire and Shubrajyoti Barat, is about a director’s tussle with the members of a censor board who want to half the duration of a kissing sequence in the film. That’s not the whole problem. The issue is that each viewer’s watch bears a different time stamp for the scene’s duration.
KISS is a satire on censorship with a touch of sci-fi. It delves into what emotions and memories does the big screen image evoke in the viewer. We talk to writer and director Varun Grover and actor, lyricist Swanand Kirkire about the ideas behind the film, their bizarre experiences with the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) and if there is even a need for censorship in art.
Excerpts:
First films are special and important. What prompted the idea for KISS?
Varun Grover: There was a news article I read where the duration of a kissing scene in a film was asked to be halved by the censor board. It was originally for 22 seconds, they asked it to be cut down to 11. I wondered what made them get at this number. Did they have some equipment in their bodies which concluded that at the 12th second, they started having unspoken feelings? I used this as a material for a stand-up show but I felt that there was scope to go deeper into this. I wanted to understand these people who measure the duration of an intimate scene in a film, what makes them do it?
Swanand, in the short you play a samosa-stuffing censor board member who doesn’t really care about the film and wants to just wrap up. Your performance seems like it comes from observing a person like this…
Swanand Kirkire: I have seen a lot of people in the CBFC who have this attitude of just getting done with it while certifying a film. I sometimes feel like our political leaders in Parliament might also be having a similar attitude. My character in the film starts from this casual demeanour of just getting done with work but as the film proceeds he delves deeper into the feelings that made him take the decision of censoring the scene in the film.
What are the most bizarre experiences you guys have had with the CBFC? It can be personal or something you have heard…
VG: In Queen (2013) there was a scene where Kangana Ranaut’s character’s bra was showing, so the censor board asked to blur it out. But there is another sequence where Kangana is in a sex toys shop and a dildo is seen but that was not cut (laughs). This is the perfect example of how randomly the CBFC functions.
SK: I was part of a Marathi film called Chumbak (2017). In it some kids are trying to do an online scam. There was a scene in it where this kid calls up a person and tries to con him. When the person asks for his name, the kid looks at an Indian rupee note in his hand and reads out “Raghuram Rajan”. That was all. The censor board stalled the film over this. They didn’t even tell us to make the cut, it was just halted without any explanation.
What is your take on censorship? Should art only be certified and not censored?
VG: I will go by the Constitution of India. It states that free speech should be there but with limitations. Unless it is not provoking violence against a group of people, I don’t understand why the CBFC should be halting films. They can upgrade their certifications. For example, they can have a film that is for adults only and then you can put advisories for viewers like 'this film contains political commentary or graphic sex', something like that. Censorship should not exist in any civilized, educated society or in any country that aspires to be a world power.
SK: My problem is that the censor board has become a tool to set a particular narrative. I feel like the CBFC members are also just people trying to save their jobs. They might not pass a film thinking that it might attract ill-will from people sitting above them and they won’t be taken under the CBFC next time. It’s a chain of fear. This also makes the artist self-censor their work, thinking that in order to pass the film with the CBFC, they need to avoid talking about certain things.
It's sometimes tough to understand what the CBFC is looking to censor. Films with misogynistic content or those which perpetuate hate against minorities are passed scot-free but those which show evils of the society, for example the caste-system and its implications depicted in Phule, go through a tough scrutiny…
VG: I agree with you. The things that are censored are those which don’t fall into a particular political agenda. Every other day we read news reports of Dalits being killed for having a moustache or mounting a horse or people being lynched. There is no effort to clean up the society of these evils, rather there is an effort to not show them on screen.