Vidya Balan's "Dirty Picture" was to be aired on TV one afternoon but was cancelled. The censor board said that it could possibly only be aired after 11 PM when children could be monitored. That movie hardly has anything dirty in it.
The same week I saw, in the afternoon, an episode from "Friends", an American serial that seems to be popular with English speaking youngsters in India. The episode featured a couple in which the woman was holding a box with mice (pets) and the man warns her that they would soon reproduce and they would have lots of mice to deal with. The woman says "Hey no they are brother and sister", and the man says "Mice don't follow the same rules as we do" (or some such thing). The woman then opens the box, looks inside shocked and exclaims "Hey get off your sister you dirty little thing". This passes for American humor I guess, but the details escape Indians who think this is humor because it is labelled as humor and think "Dirty Picture" is dirty because it is labelled as dirty. Indians who understand English are way waaaay beyond the "Dirty Picture" level of sleaze - to the extent that they are Americanized enough to enjoy "Brother mouse *** sister mouse" as a "joke". But the powers that be don't seem to realise this. It is OK and "safe" to have idiotic and vulgar American serials as "humor" but an Indian work of art is "vulgar" In fact I think the fundamental problem is the Indian education system but that is another story. shiv
