CHENNAI: Raj Kapoor’s blockbuster, Satyam Shivam Sundaram, ran into a raging controversy in the 70s because of a particular intimate scene between the actors, Shashi Kapoor and Zeenat Aman. The censor board, watching films through its morality lens, brandished its sharp scissors to temper the scene. In any case, Raj Kapoor did not really need the actors’ chemistry for the catalytic heat to set the screen scorching. He had enough of the Zeenat Aman element to balance that chemical equation.
It took time and a few more years of growing up for the censor board to slowly come of age and accept on-screen kisses in Indian cinema. Alas! The two large flowers bending towards each other, the funniest-ever visual metaphor for the kiss, lost their cameo roles in Indian cinema of the 60s and 70s. The camera did not lie any more, or hide anymore.
Not to be outdone, the censor board let its Victorian baggage keep its hawk-eyed glare intact. It had its moments of glory, where it sometimes looked through homophobic lens and sometimes mistook erotica for obscenity. We may give the board the benefit of doubt sometimes as there is a rather thin film separating the erotica from the obscene. Filmmakers, too, evolved. The explosion of choicest expletives on-screen threw the censor board off-guard. Well, almost! It gathered its nerves soon enough and began adding audio beeps to clip on-screen expletives.
What now? With the virus playing havoc and teaching us the virtues of social distancing, this new normal may become the new default moral. Hey, what about the censor board’s scissors getting blunt, or worse, lying idle, rusting away in the dusty corridors of this virus-infected prudity. The permission to begin film shootings have come with the two major commandments: no hugging and no kissing! Now, how will they express intimacy on the big screen? The world of cinema may have to reinvent itself on creative expressions of love and longing.
Will cinema be the same again? With the spiky virus poking a filmmaker’s creative freedom, among other things, how will they be able to portray emotions like love, or even lust? So will the flowers be back in the business of love? Perhaps, filmmakers can check out software/special effects to get the actors to come closer in the virtual paradise of love. They have been creating aliens, dinosaurs and invasive creatures that often threaten to destroy mankind. This time, let these IT wizards write a software language of love. Till then, or till a vaccine is found, my lip sympathy goes out to the film fraternity.
Subhashini Dinesh
The writer is Deputy Resident Editor with this newspaper