James Bond Censorship Sparks Outrage
James Bond has always been a bit risqué for the tastes of some, but he really wouldn’t be Bond if he didn’t pick up a new love interest in every port. In fact, the lack of it in the previous movie kind of had viewers wondering what had happened to the Bond that we all know and love. Apparently he’s back to his old self for the duration of the new movie, ‘Spectre,’ and it has caught the interest of India’s censorship board as Dainik Bhaskar, World News Hindi is keen to report. The board apparently made the decision to censor his ‘kissing scenes’ ahead of the Thursday release date.
Let’s Revisit that for a Moment
Yes, according to the censorship board, the current James Bond practices public displays of affection far too often for the Indian people. It is assumed that the majority of them have never seen a man kiss a woman, period, which is why the scenes have been significantly shortened, so that the extremely impressionable Indian audience will not need to be exposed to something of this magnitude.
Upon speaking to a member of the censor board, Pahlaj Nihalani, it was learned that the scenes had been cut, and that he had made the decision himself (in his words, his ‘personal capacity’) to remove the scenes: “Yes, this decision was taken by Pahlaj Nihalani. He does these kind of things. Other shots have also been cut along with the kissing scene. This seems like a joke. If you do this to a James Bond film, then it’s shameful.”
Nihalani, on the other hand, was not quite as open about the decision—he outright refused to make any comment regarding it.
The Inside Scoop
In all honesty, India, even according to IPleaders.in, has an affinity for censorship, and it’s not going to stop anytime soon. This isn’t the first time it’s happened, as anyone who lives in country already knows. Public displays of affection are considered to be unacceptable for social consumption, and this censorship is practiced often with both films and television soap operas. Because of this practice, fans will not need to wait a full three weeks extra to see the new bond movie and, of course, they were a bit angry. From outrage, however, came something amusing: #SanskariJamesBond.
Sanskari James Bond
In Hindi, the worst ‘sanskari’ translates to ‘virtuous,’ and so India took to social media to make him appear more ‘virtuous.’ This meant going so far as to Photoshop the bond girls out of the promotional pictures and dressing Bond in traditional Indian garb. Despite all of this, the film is still being released in its cut format, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The neighboring countries on the other hand did not remove the kissing scenes, or even shorten them. One removed a bedroom scene, while in Sri Lanka, the film was released in its entirety. Bond may be the world’s greatest super spy, but he’s definitely got a battle to fight on the censorship front.
Image Credits: newscrunch.in