Penblunt & Hogwash

Vulgarity of the Beholder

PENBLUNT

In a previous edition of my column, I had supported the Information & Broadcasting Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi for his bold step in getting DD the signals for a major cricket event from a private channel.

I had supported his contention that this was an issue of patriotism.

But I guess that between me as a freedom-loving citizen firmly settled on accountability, this uneasy support system can best be said to be what in political horse trading is called “issue-based.”

Priyada’s Congress has not been able to do much to the ‘rule by might’ of bete noire CPI-M in West Bengal, so he has perhaps, in a rather Freudian manner, decided to run his ministry as his private stable, … sacking jockeys, jockeying for lackeys, and so forth.

In February he suddenly hacked AXN channel. It was banned till March 31.

Why? One does not know, because one has never been told, and now it has become unimportant, because AXN has been freed from the shackles and is on air once again… why? Once again, one doesn’t know the why of that either.

But hey, all the channels cannot go on showing all the time can they? So wham! Another channel, FTV, has been shut down.

But why? One does not know, because one has never been told, again.

This April, may has become a big word, although the month is a full 28 days away.

The government may ban other channels as well, and three more victims have been short listed but not named. One doesn’t know why they have been made targets, though, but it may be because of salacious / anti-women / vulgar / pornographic / obscene / national security threatening / unpatriotic content.

Any of these may apply, because the I&B ministry does not think that it should I people about B issues. In long form: the ministry should I-nform people about b-roadcasting issues and decisions on them.

This is a fundamental responsibility of the ministries, especially a ministry whose job it is to inform.

But why FTV? In the absence of any information on the basis of the ministry’s decision, one may speculate that it is all those curvaceous women romping on the ramps with more open than under clothes.

But this is not fair.

A bit of boobs and bums and a little more than just outlines is expected in a fashion TV channel. But what about the crass vulgarity of some of the ads showed on news channels?

I remember an ad, in which there is a male brief hanging on a clothes line, and suddenly out of the blue, a costly panty flies in and not only lands on the same clothesline, but with curious but muted lovemaking noises on the background, it glides to touch the male counterpart.

Wasn’t that crass? Wasn’t that vulgar?

The ministry under OD is considering a watershed system of allowing adult content on TV, that is, allow such contents after 11 pm and till 5 am.

They have argued that this is meant for the poorer sections of the populace who cannot afford to buy a ticket for watching a movie and yet, should have access to that kind of stuff.

I have supported that, a sort of democratisation of adult content access in a welfare-state country. But that is not the point.

Who decides what is adult content? Our puerile politicians? God bless!

The margin between adult and obscene or vulgar is very thin. And to top it all, what is vulgar in Bengal is just good meat in another state and vice versa. So why not set up a national commission on vulgarity to decide on exactly what is that content that goes beyond being adult.

Not a bad idea, but the government may not like it…

It is another thing to apply rules of pornography, for they are fairly well laid out. Nudity is not and shall never be pornography in itself unless there is what we call an element of ‘penetration’ in it.

A standalone nude image of a male or a female could be an object of art or a pornography, provided the artist does not want to portray sexual intercourse, either mutually between two people or masturbatory.

That is on the static images, but what about moving images? There are scores of films that show a man and woman (or any two humans) in sexual communion, which are intrinsically related to the issue in the film.

They do not show the individual organs out of context merely to titillate, but titillation is a state of the mind. Some of the avant garde films have fantastic artistic value despite a lot of sex in them. So ban them now in India, or at least, on Indian TV channels?

And yet, let panties sneak up to men’s briefs on clotheslines?

So, anything that does not violate that code of pornography can be treated adult content. The government cannot be a moral police

For that has always been the job of society and its intrinsic consensual system.