Films aren't billboards for anti-smoking campaigns

IN Censorship | 14/10/2013

Sense and Censorship in India hardly go together, someone had quipped.  A perfect illustration is the latest imbroglio between Hollywood filmmaker Woody Allen and the ‘Censor Board’ – India’s Central Board of Film Certification) over the release of the former’s latest offering ‘Blue Jasmine’ in India.

Allen, well known for being staunchly purist about his art (one is reminded of his 1987 Senate testimony against colourisation of movies without the director’s consent) had refused to release the film in India unless he was not coerced into bearing with anti-smoking advertisements and the scrolling text warnings.

Clause 2 (vi) of the “principles of guidance” for film certification and the Cigarettes and other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade, Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Rules, 2004, deals with scenes “tending to encourage, justify or glamourise consumption of tobacco or smoking”. In September 2012, the Health Ministry issued a directive mandating “health spots” be shown in all films and television programmes as a clip of 30 seconds duration proclaiming the harms of smoking, to be played at the beginning and middle of each film. Moreover, an anti-tobacco health warning must be displayed as a prominent static message every time tobacco products or their use are shown on screen. Violation of this directive invites punitive measures.

There are, it is reported, only two scenes in Blue Jasmine in which a character lights up, and even there, he barely brings the cigarette to his lips. And this character is not portrayed in the most flattering of manners, so the question of justifying or glamourising smoking does not arise at all. 

Our censors are too enamoured of the magic bullet theory of communication and resolutely fail to acknowledge that the audience is not a homogeneous group on which any idea can be foisted. Moreover, the same image can trigger off entirely different reactions in the minds of different individuals and groups.

In so far as the anti-smoking PSAs (Public Service Announcements) are concerned, no one is ignorant of the harms option, or denying the social utility of the message, but to assume that every time someone lights up, viewers (the youth, especially) shall be encouraged or instigated to take to smoking –is far-fetched. This kind of thinking presumes that the mere advertisement of a tobacco product would goad a person to indulge in that product.

By the way, this directive maintains a deafening silence on product placements and surrogate advertisements.  The censors also need to answer why there have been no independent studies to testify to the deterrence effect of these anti-smoking advertisements and disclaimers.

If a character is shown to be smoking, it is supposed to convey something, not act as a default advertisement for cigarette companies. What is galling is how these advertisements distract viewers, and sully the director’s art, turning it into an unedifying spectacle, as seen here.

Justice Kaul of the Delhi HC, while quashing the complete ban on smoking on screen, said as much: "What is often represented is not what must exist in an ideal world but the ground realities which are far removed from an ideal position" noted the Court, and thus "the undesirability of the act of smoking has nothing to do with the right of the Director as an artist to express what he so desires". 

The judge‘s conclusion –an outright ban on any smoking scene is an unreasonable restriction on the director’s  freedom of speech, but banning “glamourised” smoking scenes is perfectly legal- is an unconvincing argument.  The bench hearing the government’s appeal against the above decision went further, suggesting “abstinence” from depicting alcohol and tobacco consumption on screen, indirectly advising film-makers how to avoid attracting the Censor’s perennially snippy scissors!

One is indeed compelled to ponder- when will the censors and the judiciary realise the folly of mistaking films as proxy advertisement billboards for the anti-smoking campaign?  When will they stop assailing artistic freedom and free speech with these half-baked ideas?