In India, film posters have been increasingly afflicted by the spectre of censorship. Most recently, the film PK starring Aamir Khan courted trouble for its poster featuring the actor posing nude with a strategically-placed boom-box. Civil suits were filed in Kanpur and Mumbai and a Public Interest Litigation was submitted to the Supreme Court for a ban on the film.
In the history of Indian cinema, this is a fairly recent development. Up until the 1980s, film posters, despite irking censor authorities could get away with far more. For instance, the poster of Chetna (1970) — framed by two naked legs and a peeping Rehana Sultan — shocked conservative sensibilities, yet could not be effectively screened by authorities. Similarly the politically potent posters of Aandhi featuring Suchitra Sen with a disquieting resemblance to Indira Gandhi enjoyed wide circulation despite the film being banned with the Emergency. Though the Indian Cinematograph Act ensured that every film was subject to exacting scrutiny before being exhibited, its legislative scope did not extend to film publicity materials like posters.
The Hindu ’s archives between the 1920s and 1980s lays bare the torment that film posters posed State authorities. With inadequate policing in place, the movie poster — the public’s primary invitation to partake in the pleasures of the cinema — became a site of rupture. Unlicensed content was routinely accessed, consumed and disseminated in defiance of the censors. The censor’s relentless pursuit of domesticating the film poster forms a rather amusing narrative replete with repeated escapes and near captures.
Concern over film posters first surfaced as early as 1927 in the Report of the Indian Cinematograph Committee, which noted that posters were often more lurid than the ‘goods they were advertising’. It was discovered that scenes excised by the censor or exhibitor frequently found its way into posters. In Madras, for example, the Report stated that while an enlarged poster, which screamed ‘Kiss me Again’, was too suggestive for public viewing, the film itself was harmless.
The Indian Cinematographers Act drafted in 1918 did not empower censor authorities to deal with film advertising material. Posters, handbills and hoardings became an infuriating adversary of the State, insolently lurking in the margins just out of reach. The Report recommended that the Police or Magistracy be given power to remove objectionable posters and punish offenders with a fine.
Film posters, however, consistently dodged all attempts at being reined in. Through the 1950s and 1960s, despite successive efforts at the State and Union level, to formulate legislation to empower censor authorities, the film poster remained audaciously subversive. In Madras, M. Bhaktavatsalam raised the issue raised in the Assembly in August 1956 underlining the need for a law to prohibit the exhibition of objectionable posters in public spaces. Posters were deemed lascivious and depraved. By 1961, even the Centre in New Delhi was compelled to address the peculiar predicament. B.V. Kesakar, the Minister for Information and Broadcasting, assured that the Union Government would draft a punitive bill to check the unscrupulous display of cinema and other posters soon.
When the Law Ministry was requested to re-examine the bill, an interesting debate ensued. Was the film poster a commercial advertisement advancing a business or was it something that propagated an idea? This formed the crux of determining whether a reasonable restriction on the individual’s right to practice any profession could be imposed for the larger common good.
The obsessive scrutiny was not well received by members of the film industry. S.S. Vasan, president of the Film Federation of India in the late 1950s, minced no words in his response to the government’s criticism: “It would seem as if there is no limit to the cinema man’s fault… Why should the film business be subjected to such unmerited odium in the houses of parliament especially when there was not a single representative of the government to protest?”
Meanwhile, a series of Letters to the Editor in The Hindu articulates the escalating anxiety at the administration’s inability to govern the display of posters at public places. S. Mohan Kumaramangalam from Madras complains, “One poster reads ‘Its Night Club, dances, scenes and strip tease… in sexy-rama and colour.’ How will you induce responsibility in the young if you bring them up on trash like this?”
P. Sudhir from Kurnool laments, “...Posters feature indecorously clad women whose virtues, or lack of them are extolled by the copy based on variation of the word sex. Unless a censor board for cinema posters is set up, these eye soars [sic] will proliferate.”
The emergence of vigilante organisations like Saiva Siddhanta Maha Samajanam and Sarvodaya Mandal, whose prime mandate included combating ungainly posters, accented the State’s failure at effective surveillance. With its credibility at stake, the government could not lose any more time in taking decisive action. Since the Cinematograph Act did not cover obscene posters, which fell under the purview of the common law of the land, State Governments and Union Territory Administrations had to take up the responsibility of enforcement. In 1974, West Bengal passed the Compulsory Censorship of Film Publicity Materials Act. Tamil Nadu soon followed in 1984, becoming the only other state to have a similar law. Film Publicity Screening Committees were formed with its headquarters at Bombay and regional chapters in other cities. Under the watch of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the committee began work in 1990, screening posters for obscenity and the derogatory depiction of women.
While the State may have had some success in policing exhibition spaces within the confines of a theatre, extending surveillance to a city or state has proven much harder to enforce, as the case of the film poster demonstrates. In a pre-Internet and television era, control over the streets was critical, now the anxiety centres on regulating the virtual world. The film poster embodied only one of the many chinks in the armour of censorship.
