Sunday, November 30, 2003

Ultraviolence and the Bureau of Certification
I still don�t understand why people bring their kids to watch a film like Pithamagan. I got back home from the movie and there�s a family type sad movie playing on TV. Sarathkumar is slashing someone with a sword and the whole thing is shown in graphic detail with the appropriate blood spurts etc.; all on primetime television.
It is quite a coincidence that I should be reading Screening Violence when I have watched the most violent Tamil movie I have seen to date: Pithamagan. More about the movie later.
What I want to talk about here is the almost routine depiction of violence on our screens everyday. I don�t think we are too violent a people; neither do I have any empirical evidence to prove that violent images provoke violence in the viewer. It would be patronisingly insulting to call anybody impressionable and take on a superior air to censor; but as responsible people, we sure need to be able to make informed choices.
When our films have begun to aggressively exercise a certain freedom in their expression, it is time our archaic certification norms change. G-M-R-NC17 or G-PG-12-15-18-X fare no better than U-UA-A, unless this system of classification is properly marketed to the viewers. Our current system is very vague, so the first thing is to make a certification system that takes into consideration every type of film our current tastes demand. The next thing is to make the audience understand this.

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