Varma's core question was blunt, if someone's old enough to vote for the country's leaders or run a business, why can't they decide for themselves what to watch. He pointed to the film Obsession, where censors ordered cuts before handing it an A certificate. Thirty eight seconds of footage came out, including scenes of extreme violence, graphic sexual content and nudity, before the board signed off.That head banging scene, once trimmed, ended up getting watched by ten times more people on Instagram reels than actually saw it in theatres, he saidA, and that's kind of the whole point he was making, cutting something doesn't erase it anymore, it just moves the audience somewhere else. Uncut versions hit torrents, Telegram and international platforms within hours anyway, he said, so what's the cut even protecting.He called censoring films an insult to the audiences, and said in a world of smartphones and global streaming, gatekeeping has turned into a joke.
Producers and directors need to stop bowing down too, he added, calling out what he sees as a non thinking, agenda driven bureaucracy that understands neither art nor audiences.That's barely half a minute of footage from Obsession, and somehow it's become the whole argument for why he thinks the board doesn't work anymore. And he's now pushing for the industry to come together and challenge the censor board's existence altogether, in courts and in public.Varma made his case in a single post on X on Wednesday, the same day it started making the rounds across the industry.
Comments