***, shame and Indian cinema

[contender]

***, shame and Indian cinema

Why the continent is the most sexually contradictory place on earth. By Nirpal Dhaliwal 22 July 2010

India is the most sexually contradictory place on earth, the most prudish and permissive. There, holy men proudly exhibit elongated penises they've painfully stretched over years by tying them to boulders, and parents take their children to temples full of sculpted figures locked in graphic and gymnastic copulation. Nonetheless, furious protests take place each year against the "western festival" of Valentine's Day, and making a gentle pass at a woman can easily start a riot.

All of these contradictions are manifested in Indian cinema, for which ****, infidelity and romance have been staple storylines since its inception, though showing the merest onscreen kiss has been a taboo. Last week saw the first London screening of Love, *** Aur Dhoka (Love, *** and Pain), Bollywood's belated attempt at addressing India's increasing sexual openness. The film caused a kerfuffle in India with its voyeuristic storyline and CCTV footage of a couple writhing on the floor. But that scene, excitedly described on Wikipedia as a "seven-minute long bareback love-making scene" was cut by the censors to a short sequence showing only a woman's blurry, naked back as she wriggles on top of a man.

The primness of Indian cinema is at odds with wider society. Throughout the country, the government routinely puts up huge posters extolling condom use, and ordinary Indians often live with a degree of tolerance that is rare in Britain. Itinerant workers celebrate in their slum when the wife they haven't seen in years writes telling him she's just borne him a son, and many Indian men fondly remember the "aunty" he skipped school to lose his virginity with while her husband was at work.

Why, unlike almost everywhere else, are Indian films much more conservative than reality? Farrukh Dhondy, who wrote the script for Bandit Queen, suggests it is because the cinema has taken the temple's role in society. "India is so disparate that cinema became the national lingua franca and its national religion. People go to the cinema to worship the idols on screen. The characters are icons telling morality tales. There are ravaanas (demons), but they are always defeated.

"Indian cinema isn't novelistic. It does not draw from real life, it only creates myths. Hollywood creates myths, too, but there's a lot of observational stuff there also. In India, films are treated like religion and that's why the stars are so idealised. Like gods in a temple, characters on the screen are treated with reverence."

Dhondy tried breaking the mould when he wrote the movie Split Wide Open in 1999. "It was all about the seamy side of Mumbai life – paedophilia, conniving wives and homosexuality among the upper classes, and whatnot. But the censor cut it awfully, and when the producer complained, saying it ruined the integrity of the film, this sari-wearing Indian woman replied, 'Why are you making a fuss? We have given you three "fucks", what more do you want?' And that was all we were given."

The director Deepa Mehta also tentatively tested boundaries but caused outrage. Her 1996 film Fire caused much harrumphing at its anodyne depiction of middle-class lesbianism, while its sequel, Water (2005), led to rioting. That film only stated the common knowledge that widows dumped at temple refuges are often forced into prostitution. Reactionaries objected to that fact being displayed onscreen far more than the actual practice itself.

"Indians go to the cinema to goggle and worship," says Dhondy. "They don't want the truth." In Britain, no one would screen pornography in a church, but in India, it's the reverse. Explicit *** is on show in the temples, while the movies don't even get to first base.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jul/22/***-shame-and-indian-cinema

 

[TextMiner]

Lust lost in (Beijing's) translation


Lust lost in (Beijing's) translation
By Kent Ewing

HONG KONG - It is ironic that Beijing's latest campaign to turn the world's most populous country into a sexless nation coincides with the release across Asia of Ang Lee's award-winning film, Lust, Caution, which takes eroticism to new heights in Chinese-language cinema.

While Lee's co-stars - veteran Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai and film ingenue Tang Wei from the mainland - engage in sexual calisthenics for packed audiences in cinema houses throughout the region, China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) is busy banning advertisements for women's underwear. The problem, it seems, is the targeted lingerie's provocative selling point: propping up sagging tops and reining in expanding middles.
The ban also includes products that claim to improve sexual performance, sexual toys and "inelegant images" - whatever that might mean - in ads for "adult products". "Illegal 'sexual medication' advertisements and other harmful ads pose a grave threat to society," warned the SARFT notice.

This latest salvo from the broadcast watchdog is the continuation of a campaign against *** and violence on the airwaves that started this past summer and has since gathered steam. Last month, SARFT ordered 11 radio shows off the air in southern and central China for broadcasting content that, at its worst, the agency described as of an "extreme pornographic nature". In addition, the watchdog censured two radio stations in Sichuan province for airing programs of "indescribably squalid, erotic, and indecent content".

Television shows about cosmetic surgery have also been axed, as have American-Idol-style talent shows, apparently because regulators are rattled by the mass voting, via mobile phones and the Internet that they encourage,

In the minds of the Chinese leadership, all this censorship is an admirable effort to clean up the country's airwaves ahead of the all-important 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, to be held October 15 in Beijing. After all, when President Hu Jintau and Premier Wen Jiabao are re-anointed by the congress for another five years as the country's dynamic duo, they want the nation's collective mind focused on patriotism and purity, not lingerie and lust.

And then along comes Lee's movie, which won the Gold Lion award for best picture at the Venice Film Festival last month, to remind us that Chinese people have ***, too. In fact, they can be spectacularly good at it - although in Lee's dark and perverse tale the lovers' cries of ecstasy and union are snarled in a complex web of war-time suspicion and sadomasochism whose violence can be shocking.

The film's brutal honesty stands in sharp contrast to SARFT's see-no-***, hear-no-*** approach. So it is no surprise to learn that, on the mainland, Lust, Caution will be shown without the steamy, sometimes violent *** - which, in another irony, will render the film virtually meaningless.

But don't get the wrong idea. Lust, Caution is a long film - some critics complain, at 158 minutes, too long - but only about 10 minutes of it takes place in the bedroom. That 10 minutes, however, is key to understanding the kinky underside of what is otherwise a routine spy story.

Set mostly in Japanese-occupied Shanghai in the early 1940s, the film tells the story of how an innocent student named Wong Chia Chi (Tang) comes to be the seductive part of an assassination plot targeting a Mr Yee (Leung), an apostate who is collaborating with the Japanese as an intelligence chief.

Like Lee's last film - Brokeback Mountain, an ultimately tragic tale of gay love between two American cowboys for which he was awarded best director at the 2005 Academy Awards - Lust, Caution is born of a short story that gripped his imagination and took him into new and equally daring sexual terrain. In making Brokeback Mountain, Lee's camera lingered over the poetry of the Wyoming landscape described in Annie Proulx's story but presented the *** with restraint and discretion.

Lust, Caution also soaks in the styles and atmosphere of Hong Kong and Shanghai in the late 1930s and early 1940s, but where Eileen Chang, famed author of the story on which the film is based, only hints at the darkly erotic, Lee decides to depict it in excruciating detail.

The first *** scene between Leung and Tang does not come until the movie is more than 100 minutes old. That the scene borders on **** is disturbing enough, but this is a **** in which the victim - Tang as spy - appears to have triumphed. Other scenes that follow, featuring contortions beyond the Kama Sutra, make it impossible to distinguish between pain and pleasure or love and loathing in a relationship that has taken on all the complexity of the occupation and war that serve as its context.

Lee, 52, a native of Taiwan who has lived, studied and worked in the US for nearly 30 years, shot the scenes over 11 days on a closed set before he was satisfied. He has admitted, however, that he had qualms about using them.

"I first thought there was no way to make this short story into a film because there are many things in the story that Chinese would consider as immoral, such as sexual suggestions," he said. "It depicted the dark side of the heroic deeds, things we would feel uncomfortable with." But, in the end, he felt that making the film was "my destiny ... I decided to face it".

That said, Lee's destiny will be somewhat compromised when Lust, Caution is shown on the mainland. To please Chinese censors, he has agreed to cut out the *** and violence. The Category III rating for the film in Hong Kong allows admission to no one under the age of 18, but the mainland does not have a ratings system, so any film shown there must be considered acceptable for all ages.

Audiences are flocking to see Lust, Caution in Hong Kong - where the film earned an unprecedented US$474,000 in its first three days - and in Taiwan, where it took in a record-breaking $1.07 million in the same time frame. Not as much interest is expected in the US because the film has been given the country's most restrictive NC-17 (no one under 17) rating, which is usually associated with pornography. Also, critics say the film's length and the fact that it is mostly in Mandarin with English subtitles will discourage American audiences.

On the mainland, however, you can count on mountains of interest, and it is too bad mature audiences there will not be allowed to view the film as it was intended to be seen by one of the world's most gifted directors, who happens to be Chinese. With the pulsing passion of the story lying on the censor's floor, those audiences are likely to be left scratching their heads at the film's end.

They are also no doubt scratching their heads over ludicrous bans on advertisements for push-up bras and other forms of figure-enhancing underwear. Indeed, Chinese officialdom seems to be the last bastion of moral prudishness in a country whose people have never been more liberal in their attitudes toward ***. These looser sexual mores come as a predictable consequence of China's great economic boom and rising incomes, especially in the cities.

Now it is time for the government to also loosen up. Yes, this will lead to ads for scanty lingerie, *** toys, *** aids and more. That is the inevitable downside of sexual openness. On the upside, however, such a campaign can dispel deep-seated ignorance and lead to more responsible attitudes about ***.

How can you properly address sexually related problems without dialogue? For example, prostitution is illegal, yet commonplace, in China. Let's talk about it. And, certainly, let's talk about great films and great literature - *** and all.

Kent Ewing is a teacher and writer at Hong Kong International School. He can be reached at kewing@hkis.edu.hk.
Asia Times Online :: China News - Lust lost in (Beijing's) translation

 

[Hafizzz]

Lust lost in (Beijing's) translation


Lust lost in (Beijing's) translation
By Kent Ewing

HONG KONG - It is ironic that Beijing's latest campaign to turn the world's most populous country into a sexless nation coincides with the release across Asia of Ang Lee's award-winning film, Lust, Caution, which takes eroticism to new heights in Chinese-language cinema.

While Lee's co-stars - veteran Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai and film ingenue Tang Wei from the mainland - engage in sexual calisthenics for packed audiences in cinema houses throughout the region, China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) is busy banning advertisements for women's underwear. The problem, it seems, is the targeted lingerie's provocative selling point: propping up sagging tops and reining in expanding middles.
The ban also includes products that claim to improve sexual performance, sexual toys and "inelegant images" - whatever that might mean - in ads for "adult products". "Illegal 'sexual medication' advertisements and other harmful ads pose a grave threat to society," warned the SARFT notice.

This latest salvo from the broadcast watchdog is the continuation of a campaign against *** and violence on the airwaves that started this past summer and has since gathered steam. Last month, SARFT ordered 11 radio shows off the air in southern and central China for broadcasting content that, at its worst, the agency described as of an "extreme pornographic nature". In addition, the watchdog censured two radio stations in Sichuan province for airing programs of "indescribably squalid, erotic, and indecent content".

Television shows about cosmetic surgery have also been axed, as have American-Idol-style talent shows, apparently because regulators are rattled by the mass voting, via mobile phones and the Internet that they encourage,

In the minds of the Chinese leadership, all this censorship is an admirable effort to clean up the country's airwaves ahead of the all-important 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, to be held October 15 in Beijing. After all, when President Hu Jintau and Premier Wen Jiabao are re-anointed by the congress for another five years as the country's dynamic duo, they want the nation's collective mind focused on patriotism and purity, not lingerie and lust.

And then along comes Lee's movie, which won the Gold Lion award for best picture at the Venice Film Festival last month, to remind us that Chinese people have ***, too. In fact, they can be spectacularly good at it - although in Lee's dark and perverse tale the lovers' cries of ecstasy and union are snarled in a complex web of war-time suspicion and sadomasochism whose violence can be shocking.

The film's brutal honesty stands in sharp contrast to SARFT's see-no-***, hear-no-*** approach. So it is no surprise to learn that, on the mainland, Lust, Caution will be shown without the steamy, sometimes violent *** - which, in another irony, will render the film virtually meaningless.

But don't get the wrong idea. Lust, Caution is a long film - some critics complain, at 158 minutes, too long - but only about 10 minutes of it takes place in the bedroom. That 10 minutes, however, is key to understanding the kinky underside of what is otherwise a routine spy story.

Set mostly in Japanese-occupied Shanghai in the early 1940s, the film tells the story of how an innocent student named Wong Chia Chi (Tang) comes to be the seductive part of an assassination plot targeting a Mr Yee (Leung), an apostate who is collaborating with the Japanese as an intelligence chief.

Like Lee's last film - Brokeback Mountain, an ultimately tragic tale of gay love between two American cowboys for which he was awarded best director at the 2005 Academy Awards - Lust, Caution is born of a short story that gripped his imagination and took him into new and equally daring sexual terrain. In making Brokeback Mountain, Lee's camera lingered over the poetry of the Wyoming landscape described in Annie Proulx's story but presented the *** with restraint and discretion.

Lust, Caution also soaks in the styles and atmosphere of Hong Kong and Shanghai in the late 1930s and early 1940s, but where Eileen Chang, famed author of the story on which the film is based, only hints at the darkly erotic, Lee decides to depict it in excruciating detail.

The first *** scene between Leung and Tang does not come until the movie is more than 100 minutes old. That the scene borders on **** is disturbing enough, but this is a **** in which the victim - Tang as spy - appears to have triumphed. Other scenes that follow, featuring contortions beyond the Kama Sutra, make it impossible to distinguish between pain and pleasure or love and loathing in a relationship that has taken on all the complexity of the occupation and war that serve as its context.

Lee, 52, a native of Taiwan who has lived, studied and worked in the US for nearly 30 years, shot the scenes over 11 days on a closed set before he was satisfied. He has admitted, however, that he had qualms about using them.

"I first thought there was no way to make this short story into a film because there are many things in the story that Chinese would consider as immoral, such as sexual suggestions," he said. "It depicted the dark side of the heroic deeds, things we would feel uncomfortable with." But, in the end, he felt that making the film was "my destiny ... I decided to face it".

That said, Lee's destiny will be somewhat compromised when Lust, Caution is shown on the mainland. To please Chinese censors, he has agreed to cut out the *** and violence. The Category III rating for the film in Hong Kong allows admission to no one under the age of 18, but the mainland does not have a ratings system, so any film shown there must be considered acceptable for all ages.

Audiences are flocking to see Lust, Caution in Hong Kong - where the film earned an unprecedented US$474,000 in its first three days - and in Taiwan, where it took in a record-breaking $1.07 million in the same time frame. Not as much interest is expected in the US because the film has been given the country's most restrictive NC-17 (no one under 17) rating, which is usually associated with pornography. Also, critics say the film's length and the fact that it is mostly in Mandarin with English subtitles will discourage American audiences.

On the mainland, however, you can count on mountains of interest, and it is too bad mature audiences there will not be allowed to view the film as it was intended to be seen by one of the world's most gifted directors, who happens to be Chinese. With the pulsing passion of the story lying on the censor's floor, those audiences are likely to be left scratching their heads at the film's end.

They are also no doubt scratching their heads over ludicrous bans on advertisements for push-up bras and other forms of figure-enhancing underwear. Indeed, Chinese officialdom seems to be the last bastion of moral prudishness in a country whose people have never been more liberal in their attitudes toward ***. These looser sexual mores come as a predictable consequence of China's great economic boom and rising incomes, especially in the cities.

Now it is time for the government to also loosen up. Yes, this will lead to ads for scanty lingerie, *** toys, *** aids and more. That is the inevitable downside of sexual openness. On the upside, however, such a campaign can dispel deep-seated ignorance and lead to more responsible attitudes about ***.

How can you properly address sexually related problems without dialogue? For example, prostitution is illegal, yet commonplace, in China. Let's talk about it. And, certainly, let's talk about great films and great literature - *** and all.

Kent Ewing is a teacher and writer at Hong Kong International School. He can be reached at kewing@hkis.edu.hk.
Asia Times Online :: China News - Lust lost in (Beijing's) translation

What's your purpose of posting an article that is not related to the thread ? It seems like you want to divert attention away from the topic " ***, shame and Indian cinema".

 

[Abhishek_]

both articles carry little (if any) significance on a defense forum. Pointless thread

 

[TextMiner]

What's your purpose of posting an article that is not related to the thread ? It seems like you want to divert attention away from the topic " ***, shame and Indian cinema".

If you have any comprehension and deduction skills, both the articles have a common point of contradictions in the open society and the censorship undertaken by the Government to suppress such a Freedom. The only point is in India, it is the unobserved part of the society that has less prudishness ( e.g. temples) and more prudishness is observed in the Cinemas we have whereas for the Chinese society the roles are slightly reversed specifically to this particular Movie.

 

[DESERT FIGHTER]

The article : ***,shame and indian cinema is so true!

[BIndians go to the cinema to goggle and worship," says Dhondy. "They don't want the truth." In Britain, no one would screen pornography in a church, but in India, it's the reverse. Explicit *** is on show in the temples, while the movies don't even get to first base.[/B]

Thumbs Up!

 

[Coltsfan]

Last month, SARFT ordered 11 radio shows off the air in southern and central China for broadcasting content that, at its worst, the agency described as of an "extreme pornographic nature". In addition, the watchdog censured two radio stations in Sichuan province for airing programs of "indescribably squalid, erotic, and indecent content".

Radio ****? **** for the blind?

"Indian cinema isn't novelistic. It does not draw from real life, it only creates myths. Hollywood creates myths, too, but there's a lot of observational stuff there also. In India, films are treated like religion and that's why the stars are so idealised. Like gods in a temple, characters on the screen are treated with reverence."

Majority of Indian viewers go to the movies to escape from reality of the usual mundane line for 3 hours or so.

It makes financial sense for the movie industry to create what the market demands, Heros leaping over building, fighting 10 guys bare hand, successfully wooing and marrying the college heartthrob etc.

Having said that he is incorrect to say that Indian movies do not draw from real life...... even back in 80s we had a very powerful parallel cinema movement..... ardh satya, saransh, arth etc..

Even today we have movies that are not your typical run of the mill ..... A wednesday, Amir etc...

 

[syntax_error]

India never says dont have *** ....

It says have *** only with your partner....

If you go First base in a movie ur going First base not with your partner .... simple ....

i dont why logic goes out of the window whenever there is an opportunity to bash India .....

 

[NoBullshit]

Yes Indian cinema is cheap

Yes Indian cinema is sleazy

Yes Indian cinema is a lie

Yes Indian cinema is evil

Yes Indian cinema is foolish...

...


And so is everyone who watches it, be it in India or the US or a certain few '...stan''s of the world where cable operators raise a hue and cry everytime the govt. bans it simply because their audience loves it.



If you don't like it, don't watch it. Common sense, hey?

 

[DESERT FIGHTER]

Thread related to india derailed by text miner and his crew!

Shame.