Spoiler: Siddhant Gets Kicked Out of a Government Office
January 20, 2017 12:27 PM Subscribe
Siddhant Adlakha, writing at "Birth. Movies. Death", recounts an extremely perplexing interview with the Chairman of India's Central Board of Film Certification, nearly a year after first writing about that Board's erratic censorship practices here.
About the Udta Punjab fiasco, the short of it is that India is a nation of multiple ethnic groups cobbled together. And given the history of communal sensitivities in India, the censors are very wary to allow any piece of mass entertainment depicting a particular group or region as especially beset with a problem or toxic trait. And opportunistic regional political parties are likely to amplify any perceived slight to enflame their base, so this leads to a practice of ultra-cautiousness on the part of the censors which can border on the absurd.
posted by Gyan at 1:12 PM on January 20, 2017 [14 favorites]
posted by Gyan at 1:12 PM on January 20, 2017 [14 favorites]
During Pinochet's regime in Chile, state censors once banned a book on Cubism because 'Chile does not have diplomatic relations with that country', by which they meant, of course, Cuba.
posted by signal at 1:59 PM on January 20, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by signal at 1:59 PM on January 20, 2017 [7 favorites]
Anyone have any context on why this interview is so darn weird? The Chairman sounds barely coherent - was the interview not in English and this is a translation artifact? Or was it in English, and English is not the Chairman's first language? Or is he just off his rocker?
posted by Ndwright at 2:25 PM on January 20, 2017
posted by Ndwright at 2:25 PM on January 20, 2017
My read on it was that he was just super, super defensive and unwilling to accept any accountability for anything, nor any lack of accountability. It reminded me of nothing so much as this.
posted by Ipsifendus at 2:35 PM on January 20, 2017
posted by Ipsifendus at 2:35 PM on January 20, 2017
Two of the quotes from the censor — “That’s not our problem. Our problem is that according to the Act, according to the guidelines if anything is objectionable …” and “In my two years-- I’m going to complete two years. …” — indicate that he's a jobsworth bureaucrat par excellence. He follows rules to the letter, and it's not his job to question them.
posted by scruss at 3:42 PM on January 20, 2017
posted by scruss at 3:42 PM on January 20, 2017
Anyone have any context on why this interview is so darn weird?
Eh, a lot of conversation is like that. I've transcribed a lot of interviews, and plenty of people are perfectly coherent, entertaining conversationalists but if you put everything they say down verbatim, they come off terrible. Possibly because the more meaning you're conveying with emphasis, gesture, and eye contact, the less makes it to the page. This dude sounds like a ranter, and even clever, funny ranters tend to come off a bit like this. I suspect the reporter's not doing him any favors, either. Sometimes being scrupulously exact in writing down exactly what someone says is the most effective stiletto you can wield.
posted by Diablevert at 3:59 PM on January 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
Eh, a lot of conversation is like that. I've transcribed a lot of interviews, and plenty of people are perfectly coherent, entertaining conversationalists but if you put everything they say down verbatim, they come off terrible. Possibly because the more meaning you're conveying with emphasis, gesture, and eye contact, the less makes it to the page. This dude sounds like a ranter, and even clever, funny ranters tend to come off a bit like this. I suspect the reporter's not doing him any favors, either. Sometimes being scrupulously exact in writing down exactly what someone says is the most effective stiletto you can wield.
posted by Diablevert at 3:59 PM on January 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
Having RTFA (careful, could become a habit), I think the interviewer is either naive or being disingenuous. As scruss said, the CBFC chair sees the role of 'government', mostly via existing corpus of laws, as setting up the guidelines & rules and his org's role as enforcing those. Given that the CBFC members aren't elected by the public but parliament is*, I would say that's a reasonable interpretation.
The interviewer seems to want to place the moral weight of the censor board's decisions onto its members but the more apt & productive line of questioning would have been to ask for the laws or rules they commonly rely upon and how much discretion do they see themselves as having.
*the subtext here is that as the CBFC members are political appointees, their chief concern is not rocking the boat of their patrons. So, again, the moral ire by the interviewer is misplaced
posted by Gyan at 11:15 PM on January 20, 2017
The interviewer seems to want to place the moral weight of the censor board's decisions onto its members but the more apt & productive line of questioning would have been to ask for the laws or rules they commonly rely upon and how much discretion do they see themselves as having.
*the subtext here is that as the CBFC members are political appointees, their chief concern is not rocking the boat of their patrons. So, again, the moral ire by the interviewer is misplaced
posted by Gyan at 11:15 PM on January 20, 2017
If anyone seemed disingenuous to me it was the chair. He used the word transparency while demonstrating the opposite, and took the position that the CBFC doesn't force people because they're free to go to court. He also misrepresented the MPAA rating system as being equivalent to his government body.
Having said that, I think I get where he's coming from. I gathered that from their point of view the CBFC is approving movies. Like, in the past, objections could come from all kinds of groups or factions and get your movie banned. The CBFC certificate gets your movie past all that by certifying that it contains no objectionable material according to "the Act". He is helping movies through the system, so why are you people so ungrateful?
When you live and breathe in a bureaucracy, this kind of backwards logic is perfectly normal. It's also normal to cling to the rules and strongly claim that you have absolutely no room to choose how to interpret them, even though that has never been true for any bureaucrat that has ever existed in all of history.
posted by Horkus at 8:16 AM on January 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
Having said that, I think I get where he's coming from. I gathered that from their point of view the CBFC is approving movies. Like, in the past, objections could come from all kinds of groups or factions and get your movie banned. The CBFC certificate gets your movie past all that by certifying that it contains no objectionable material according to "the Act". He is helping movies through the system, so why are you people so ungrateful?
When you live and breathe in a bureaucracy, this kind of backwards logic is perfectly normal. It's also normal to cling to the rules and strongly claim that you have absolutely no room to choose how to interpret them, even though that has never been true for any bureaucrat that has ever existed in all of history.
posted by Horkus at 8:16 AM on January 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
He used the word transparency while demonstrating the opposite
He claimed the process is transparent to the producer at the time of certification and transparent to the public when the certification file is archived (3 years after the decision).
took the position that the CBFC doesn't force people because they're free to go to court
After CBFC, there's a different committee (FCAT) to appeal to. Failing that, there's the courts.
posted by Gyan at 8:40 AM on January 21, 2017
He claimed the process is transparent to the producer at the time of certification and transparent to the public when the certification file is archived (3 years after the decision).
took the position that the CBFC doesn't force people because they're free to go to court
After CBFC, there's a different committee (FCAT) to appeal to. Failing that, there's the courts.
posted by Gyan at 8:40 AM on January 21, 2017
He used the word transparency while demonstrating the oppositeA.) He said transparency more than that, don't cherry pick.
He claimed the process is transparent to the producer at the time of certification and transparent to the public when the certification file is archived (3 years after the decision).
B.) That doesn't sound very transparent.
took the position that the CBFC doesn't force people because they're free to go to courtMy point was that he was minimizing the authority of the CBFC, rhetorically deflecting the fact that the process is government mandated. There is no choice in the matter, whether there is one step of appeal or ten is not material. The objection is to the censorship not the structure of the organization.
After CBFC, there's a different committee (FCAT) to appeal to. Failing that, there's the courts.
posted by Horkus at 9:17 AM on January 21, 2017
He said transparency more than that
Where? I spot the following:
The objection is to the censorship not the structure of the organization.
That function is put in place by the government, and the temporary members of the panel are political appointees (not bureaucrats). More akin to a jury, given a set of rules within which to render judgement. Of course, there may be zealots as well as nullifiers in there, but that's personal idiosyncracy.
posted by Gyan at 10:31 AM on January 21, 2017
Where? I spot the following:
It’s a completely transparent process! I say to [the filmmakers], whatever you’re doing, I’m watching...Then he mentions the word again when presenting the Viacom certficate. Don't see other mentions.
...
No, it will go to the archives.
...
It goes to the archives. Anybody can see, it’s available in the archives. Anything you ask, they will give you.
The objection is to the censorship not the structure of the organization.
That function is put in place by the government, and the temporary members of the panel are political appointees (not bureaucrats). More akin to a jury, given a set of rules within which to render judgement. Of course, there may be zealots as well as nullifiers in there, but that's personal idiosyncracy.
posted by Gyan at 10:31 AM on January 21, 2017
Gyan, this feels weird to me. You're doing the same thing as the gentleman in the article. Arguing off to the side a little, presenting as if you don't quite get what the main concern is.
Also, your language implies that you're refuting me, but your citation confirms what I said. He did mention transparency more than just in regard to producers. This is leading us to argue in ever smaller circles.
I no longer have confidence that you are arguing in good faith.
posted by Horkus at 7:37 AM on January 22, 2017
Also, your language implies that you're refuting me, but your citation confirms what I said. He did mention transparency more than just in regard to producers. This is leading us to argue in ever smaller circles.
I no longer have confidence that you are arguing in good faith.
posted by Horkus at 7:37 AM on January 22, 2017
I no longer have confidence that you are arguing in good faith.
So, is there any point to the rest of my reply below?
He did mention transparency more than just in regard to producers.
Coming back to your original statement:
He used the word transparency while demonstrating the opposite
Which passage(s) (best) contains this demonstration?
What do you see as the 'the main concern'?
posted by Gyan at 9:04 PM on January 22, 2017
So, is there any point to the rest of my reply below?
He did mention transparency more than just in regard to producers.
Coming back to your original statement:
He used the word transparency while demonstrating the opposite
Which passage(s) (best) contains this demonstration?
What do you see as the 'the main concern'?
posted by Gyan at 9:04 PM on January 22, 2017
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Now, that is censors working really hard!
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:58 PM on January 20, 2017