Badnam Munni and Munna

Indian films are probably the worst offenders when it comes to obnoxiously cloying potrayals of children Except for some notable exceptions kids in Hindi films especially were various unbearable munnas and munnis such paragons of virtue and good feeling exuding such cloying sweetness crying with such manipulative intensity you felt a serial killing coming on Films made for children suffered from the same demented portrayals and were even worse because they were the cinematic equivalent of the koochie boochie boo that grownups subject babies to in the inexplicable conviction that there is such a thing as baby language It was a depressing cycle Children were portrayed as idiots in supposedly grownup movies Then those grownups made films for idiots and called them childrenrsquos films Will the proposal by the Central Board of Film Certification to make the very slow shift to a ratings system help break these kinds of deadlocks The proposal is that films will not have a blanket U or A certificate but rather be rated PG 12 PG 15mdashie suitable for children above that age if parents accompany themmdashor suitable for any viewer above 18 Illustration Amit Bandre Censorship of any kind is a tricky business In India it has been very overt but also representative of the more conservative side of society Bollywood has devised a number of subversive responses to this mdash the sensuality of songs the rebellion of love stories the championing of the underdog although alas no real sly humour mdash so that at their best films could at least resonate with real life to some extent instead of merely mouthing cultural propaganda and platitudes The flip side of these subversions has been that it has led a to a culture of extremely adolescent titillation in which sex is portrayed not as a range of interactions and experiences between people but rather as an oddity A selling point a scandal a shocker a rape at best a little gardenvariety exhibitionism and objectification while continuing to say itrsquos all about loving your family Violence too was uncritically present in most films under cover of being in defense of supposed goodness In theory a ratings system of the kind proposed by the Censor board at least complicates the discussion about adulthood and what people can handle mdash in contrast to the notion that everything can be universal viewing We might then assume that it would also lead to more interesting experiments with storytelling on the one hand instead of Legoblock films that are supposed to appeal to both kids and adults consequently treating adults as kids and kids as adults In an ideal world it might also mean that producers think seriously about childrenrsquos films in market terms because films for children are woefully few and generally woeful only In reality a ratings system is also not free of censorship of course It still depends on a Censor Board and committee to make decisions about suitability and objectionability based on their understanding prejudice and openmindedness mdash and we arenrsquot doing too well on those counts as a society generally But testing the limits of what complexities and realities a society is willing to deal with or what challenges to its selfimage it is able to handle is part of what the arts including popular cinema do Our films squashed between the economic censorship of having to generate corporate style revenues and the homogenous puritanism of the CBFC struggles to generate a vibrant diversity both in terms of revenue models and storytelling Anything to nudge that conversation to another place and a different kind of Housefull is probably Welcome Paromita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at wwwparodevicom The views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paperu00a0