Final proposal:shristi

Research question: Are there any exceptions or inconsistencies in the Bollywood censorship? What gets censored and what doesn’t?

Intrest/Importance: This topic intrests me for my personal reasons. I have been watching Bollywood movies since I was a little girl. Bollywood movies have taught me lots of things such as variety in Indian culture. Even more importantly, the Indian language which i solely learned from watching these movies. The lifestyles, characters, musicals, dances, clothings etc. that we can see in Bollywood movies fascinates me. Another important reason i chose this topic is because Bollywood is now one of the biggest film market. Bollywood movies are shown all around the world and watched by different people of different culture or nations. It is always fun to watch Bollywood movies so i want to explore more about it.

Plan: I am going to use 4 different movies and compare the censorship done in them.   Two of the movies are undercensored and the other movies are overcensored. For the sources, I have used different website reviews, some scholarly reviews. I have also used the movies themselves to give me the idea of how censorship has played inconsistencies among these movies. I have also referred to the Bollywood Censorship Guidelines ‘The Cinematograph Act’ which was produced in 1952 and was updated in 1983 to establish my argument. Another source that i found helpful and intresting is a radio interview of slate’s editor Andy Bower’s, posted in Slate website. Slate explains what get censored in Bollywood and also some information regarding self censorship.

Introduction:Bollywood is an international flim market. The movies produced in Bollywood travel from India to Nepal, Pakistan, London, USA and many other parts of world. These movies are made in different languages, with subtitles so that the people who do not understand Indian language can still enjoy the movie. A typical Bollywood movie would have love, romance, fights, a bad guy, a good guy, a beautiful actress, social conflicts, and many musicals. Bollywood. Bollywood movies not only have enocomnic importance in India and other parts of world but also have social influence. Bollywood movies aren’t just entairtainment methods but actually have moral, cultural values in them which is also one of the reason these movies are most of the time overly censored. The censorship board in India consists of the Indian Government and different actors and other membes of movie industry. (Bower, Slate). There are many guidelines to what can be presented in the movie and what gets cut off.  Bollywood has done some unjust censorship to the materials that are based on reality and need not be censored whereas the violence remains untouched. Censorship in Bollywood is inconsistent and does not always follow the censorship rules. Moreover, the censorship board has done unjust to some movies based on reality by censoring them and uncensoring the movies with unethical and violent content.

Johnson’s blog:shristi

personlly, since i have never really been fascinated by the video games, I did not enjoy Johnson as much as i enjoyed Minow’s reading.

Johnson’s main argument is that video games do not do any sort of harm to the children; they rather help and nurture the children’s mind. Johnson argued that video games are produced in a way that the game player can not only be entertained but also learn to use his brain more. The modern programs and games are structured in such a way that they make the audience or the players’ think and calculate which can help them to be more smarter. Johnson establishes the connection between the entertainment, fun part of the video games with the brain science to make his claim more strong. “”If you create a system where rewards are both clearly defined and achieved by exploring an environment, you’ll find human brains drawn to those systems, even if they’re made up of virtual characters and simulated sidewalks. It’s not the subject matter of these games that attracts – if that were the case, you’d never see twenty-somethings following absurd rescue-the-princess storylines like the best selling Zelda  series on the Nintendo  platform. It’s the reward system that draws those players in, and keeps their famously short attention spans locked on the screen. No other form of entertainment offers that cocktail of reward and exploration”. (Johnson, 2005). Video games’ maker make the video games in such a manner that they excite the neuro transmitters of the player, giving him more excitement and making him more sharp.  Overall, Johnson claims that video games are produced to entertain the children as well as utilise their brain capacity which makes them more smarter and technical. Even though Johnson makes a very strong claim and provides scientific evidences, I am still going to disagree with him because he does not consider the negatives aspects of the video games. In my opinion, video games will do no harm only if it is used in a proper manner depending on the time used as well as the content of the video games. Video Games that constitute of explicit and violent materials can play with the NT of the player’s brain and can alter his way of perceiving other things.  Also if the game player is playing the game too much, that can not only harm his brain transmitters but will also make him socially less valuable as he gets addicted to the games…

Prince:shristi

Prince ‘s Classical Flim Violence  seemed very intresting especially after watching Scarface and the silent movie ” Musketeers of Pig Alley”. Prince’s book is definitely very applicable to Scarface because it explains the use of violence in the movies and the process of censorship etc. But what was most intresting to me was his definition of violence and its effect on these movies.  “”violence palpable, gave it texture and rhythmicform, made it sensuous, and overcame the abstracting effects of the silent image.

t put the cries of victims and the bark of weapons inside of the image.”  When compared to the two movies we watched Scarface and Musketeer in pig alley, both the movie have  lots of violence, use of gun, sexual content as mentioned by Prince in his book. But just the fact that Scarface had sound and the other movie doesnt makes Scarface seem even more violent and unethical. This importance of sound implies in few scences such as in the Musketeers of Pig alley, when Spy kid and the rivals are shooting each other, there is no sound produced but the other visual effects are very strong. The smoke and the shootings etc gave us an idea of how visicious the fight was. Now when we watched the last scene of Scarface 1983 the idea was the same ; to create a bloodcurdiling scene to present the violence. But the response to both the scenes were very differnent. The musketer of pig alley scene, because it was silent didnt seem to have that much of horrific in compare to the Scarface 1983 ending scene. The common response to the 1983 scene was that it was terriying, riddiculous, too dramatic whereas the scene from Musketeer’s pig alley was it was artistic, and had violence in it. Also when we watched Scarface 1932, there were lots of scenes in the movie where Tony’s shadow was shown with a gun and the gun shots’ sounds were produced. The first scene where Tony kills Big Loius, we really dont get to see Tony killing him but we see a shadow with a gun and then we hear gun shots and Big Loius’ voice. Another scene where sound played a very important role in Scarface is where Tony shots Gaffeny and others, we dont see anyone shooting and the real blood but we see the shadows of guys getting lined up and shot And we hear the screams, and the gun shots. This sound effect is what made the scence more brutal than it would have been just with the visual.

I hope my examples are correct and make sense. Anyone who wants to give me suggestion; please do comment me.

Video games

I really hated games and i still do…i actually prefer sports or other physical games than the video games,,..,,,,Where i grew up, in Nepal, we didnt use to have to modern techologies etc available to everyone…so i never really knew much about video games…when i came here i knew more about it but i wasnt that intrsted to it…even now i dont have much knowledge on it or any intrest. so i think whether the video games is violent and does harm to kids would depend on the amount of violent materials in it. But it doesnt happen all the time so….

Rewriting Mutual: shristi

Flims that are moral, eduactional and with humor that possess no harm to the ethics of the society do not need to be censored; but any flim that uses education, science, and humor as tools to produce evil and corrupted story, should be censored becasue they affect women, children and even old people .

Mutual decision:shristi

It was definitely confusing and long and boring reading I had ever had to read. The first time i read i i got lost in regards to who won and who lost. But after the class discussion, it seems to me that the reading isnt really that boring actually. just have to really patient through it. The core point was that movies that could be educational,fun with moral values do not need to be censored but if any flim uses those aspects to produce harm to the viewers should definitely be filtered before presenting it to the audience.

Hays code:shristi

Hays office censored the original way of camonte’s Death. In the codes, it is mentioned crimes against the law should not be allowed. esp.”make criminals seem heroic and justified”. This is probably one of the best example as to why Hays office changed the Camonte’s death plot. The original verison of Scarface had Camonte getting shot while fighting withthe cops. It showed that Camonte was strong and brave and was willing to fight until he dies.  Hays office was afraid that this was a symbol to heroism and people would like Camonte even more. So the censored version was made to make Camonte look like a wuss, scared afraid of losing his life, a coward.

Amemndment:shristi

I think that the censorship definitely violated the 1st amendment. As it says “Congres shall make no law….”it should not have interfered with the original sript. It definiely restricted hawks original ideas but also limited the audience to see what Governement wanted them to see instead of what people might have wanted. Moreover, the adding of the secnes, deleting the scenes, made the movie look very unfinished and altered. Also trying to show that the governemnt always does the right thing was  fake.

Scarface ending:shristi

that was a pathetic, unorganized and unrealistic ending to this story. THe way Camonte acted at the end was contradictory to his previous character. At the end when he realised that he had Cesca in his side, he just acted like a happy but coward maniac. Camonte is a bold character, he is patient and calm and he has skills even in killing people. It doesnt suit him screaming and acting loud. The alternative ending was even worse. Censoring the lines between Cesca and Camonte “you r me and i m u” actually made the scence very chessy and un real. it was unorganized and seemed like they added different scenes but not togetherto work as a smooth whole movie. ALso, the end of Camonte was a unusual ending. It was such a sudden change in his character from calm leader to a coward; it just seemed that it was too dramatized. One thing is that actor really did a justice to the character” tony” but the censored script didnt. Well that was one way to look at it,,,But then again if u want the world to perceive a bad image of gangster then that was i believe very well done by showing his cowardness when he tried to run…

Production history:shristi

After reading the article, i felt amazed at how tough and dramatic production of a movie can be. Hawks had money, had power, talent. He was non stoppable. He knew what he wanted and he knew how he wanted it. With all the law suits and other issues that were created during the flim production; any other regular director could have easily lost it. But Hawks was different. He was strong and he knew he had to make his dream come true. He created a great  script along with others’ help and then he went for actor’s hunt. In his search, he found probably the best actor for the character Tony. With his determination and hard work, he was able to creat this legendary movie and always became known as a director who had guts and power and talent to produce what he wanted.