Censorship in the world of Art?!!

(This is a follow up to this review )

I was talking to Alka Gurha on the issue of celebration of negative traits in today’s cinema. It was around that time I watched this movie. It set me into thinking. Should cinema be a mirror to the society or should it be a guide? We cannot restrict the freedom of an artiste because he might be having noble intentions. But again we are not matured enough to judge the long term impact on a piece of art or the intention of the artiste. We can crucify the artiste or simply say he is painting out the dirty face of society. But only a few will point out the nudity of the king.

A few days back I shared with you how we treat dirty jokes in our cinema. The adult jokes have shifted from B- grade to commercial cinema and they have become a staple diet today. I am not speaking about Hindi alone! Adam Sandler is supposed to be a children’s actor. But he ends with some kind of stupid jokes on Boobs in every film of his.

Sometime back I met Sangeeth Sivan’s daughter over FB. We shared a few mails on discussions about photography. Then I asked a really stupid question, ‘Don’t you think your dad does some real crap work nowadays’. She was either pissed off or suspected I was a creepy journalist. That was the end of our conversation. It’s a fact that we are celebrating bad pieces of art. Again it couldn’t be because our art world is bad. A better reason would be our society has started learning that dirt is normal and the clean stuff is abnormal.

Talking about popular perceptions. I will point out a few examples. MF Hussain is one of the most celebrated artist around the world. I hadn’t seen many paintings of his until a controversy broke up and he was forced to flee India. People said that he painted Hindu Goddesses in tasteless poses. Initially I sided with the liberals. Then I came across the controversial paintings and arguments. The Goddesses are shown in various forms of erotic stance. The question is why only Hindu Goddesses. As argued by the intelligentsia, the common man might be in need of some superior taste buds.

Same was with the case of controversial movie Kamasutra. I had to borrow the CD and see it when no one was at home. I would bet almost half of Indian youth and adults would have seen the movie. Although the movie is about Sex, it’s portrayed in a beautiful way. Watching KS would be safer than all the unrealistic western porn our kids see.