A film you can relate to can make you forget your wretched life for a while, provide a vicarious outlet to your pent-up emotions, as your emotional life is played out in front of your own eyes. Much like a silly comedy relieves stress at the end of a long day.[break]
I like my movies light. The last thing I want to do at the end of a tiring day is go visit the theatre for an overdose of the heady stuff, more or less the same things I’ve been grappling with all day long. Comedies are where my brain finds its repose. To me, the actual content of a movie has never been as important as its entertainment value.
It was around a decade ago that I first discovered Rowan Atkinson’s television serious, “Mr. Bean.” I was instantly hooked. The 14 episodes of the TV series and their two screen adaptations, I would watch over and over again, the fun undiminished even after multiple reruns. Mr. Bean’s distinct Citron-green car – a British Leyland Mini – Teddy, his best friend; his distinct costume – a brown jacket with holes in the back, black lace-up leather shoes – his bumbling ways of handling life’s little challenges. If my memory serves me right, Mr. Bean – “a child in a grown man’s body,” in Atkinson’s words – was the first onscreen character who had me clutching my tummy with laughter.
Illustration: Sworup Nhasiju
Interestingly, one of my best friends in school was a huge fan of the Bollywood actor Govinda, many of whose comedy films featured scenes lifted straight off the Mr. Bean TV series. At first, whenever I accompanied him to a theater, I found Govinda’s antics rather silly. But in time, I would come to love Govinda as much as I loved Atkinson. Ever since, when it comes to movies, comedy has been my favorite genre. This helps; most English and Hindi movies screened in Kathmandu are lighthearted comedies.
But some people in our society seem to take light entertainment all too seriously. Last week, announcing the Party’s decision to ban the screening of all Hindi movies in Nepal, the CPN-Maoist issued a press release, which proclaimed: “Our Party has... decided to ban Indian films that defame and disrespect Nepal and Nepalis, promote obscenity and spread cultural pollution.”
I have no clue what makes our Comrades believe Hindi movies are produced with the sole intent of “defaming” and “disrespecting” Nepalis—if the fire and brimstone speeches of Maoist leaders justifying the ban is anything to go by.
Their claim – that feature films “promote obscenity” – is harder still to fathom. If Baidya & Co. are unaware of the fact that Nepal ranks among the countries with the highest per capita Google hits for the words “Porn” and “Sex,” the country right up there with the likes of India, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.
The “cultural pollution” bit comes straight off Mao’s Red Book. The Chairman of the Communist Party of China started the Cultural Revolution in 1966 with the goal of establishing Maoist orthodoxy in Chinese society. But he couldn’t do so without first uprooting the “bourgeois capitalists,” the chief “polluters” of Chinese culture. In this misguided attempt to ring-fence “native” culture, 30 million Chinese had to be “purged.” Atkinson and Govinda would surely have made the Chairman’s cut—and apparently Mohan Baidya’s, too.
There’s little doubt that the CPN-Maoist’s “banning” of Hindi movies—which, incidentally, has also deprived Nepali moviegoers from enjoying homemade and English films on the big screen—will boomerang, not the least because the southern neighbor tends to take such slights seriously. Nepal’s history shows that the louder the Communists speak up against the excesses of the “Big Brother,” the keener they are to cozy up to the same southern masters.
There have been similar attempts to curtail the “corrosive effects” of foreign movies in other countries in the region as well. The censors in Bangladesh and Pakistan like to keep themselves busy chopping out “troubling” scenes from Hollywood and Bollywood flicks. If a movie is deemed “blasphemous” from the higher ups, it’s summarily binned.
Neither are questions over the morality of movies new. Government and religious authorities have been worrying themselves sick since the dawn of modern movie industry. The New York Board of Motion Picture Censorship, the first of its kind in the world, was set up as early as 1909 to screen out, among other things, “profanity,” “licentiousness or suggestive nudity” and now the CPN-Maoists’ favorite whipping boy: “Willful offense to any nation, race or creed.”
The history of social censorship of the freedom of expression is long and illustrious. Attempts at dictating public tastes are old. But throughout the ages, people have always found novel ways to indulge their baser instincts, as the artful etchings on the walls of our public toilets amply illustrate.
The writer is the op-ed editor at Republica.
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