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Alien
logic
By Anna M.M.Vetticad
They've
done it again. Never mind that Boys Don't Cry is a pathbreaking film on
sexual identities. Or that it got Hilary Swank this year's Best Actress
Oscar. When Indian viewers get to see it in mid-June, thanks to the Censor
Board, it will be two-and-a-half minutes shorter than the original.
Twentieth Century Fox (TCF) is actually relieved that they got away with
just this much: the deletion of the words "motherf***er" and
"****sucker" (a total of 10 times), some full-frontal nudity
during a love-making scene between Swank and Chloe Sevigny, and certain
rape scenes. "If I want my picture released in India, I have to make
a compromise," shrugs Paresh Manjrekar, tcf's sales and marketing
manager. He's not as fatalistic though about Alien Resurrection. Out in
the US in 1997, even a revised version of this Sigourney Weaver-starrer --
shorter by four-and-a-half minutes -- has been banned by the screening
committee for its "avoidable and petrifying gruesomeness" and
"sustained and gory violence". Says Manjrekar, who plans to take
the new version to the tribunal, "I wish the I&B Ministry and
other relevant bodies would revise guidelines so that the board is more
consistent. If they could allow Deep Rising (just out in India), or the
earlier three films in the Aliens series, why not Alien
Resurrection?"
It's getting better though. Says N. Muthuram, all-India marketing manager,
Columbia TriStar, "Earlier, every instance of the four-letter word
would be deleted, and the film would end up being screened as a trailer.
Now the cutting is restricted to where the word is actually used with a
sexual connotation." The last time Columbia ran into trouble was last
year with the Nicholas Cage-starrer 8 MM that deals with child pornography
and sex. It was rejected by the screening committee and the tribunal. But
then, Columbia's just-released Erin Brockovich, peppered as it is with The
Word, has got away with no cuts and an A-certificate. Curious, in a
country where spies don't s*** you, Queen Elizabeth's "quinny"
can't be mentioned, and even though "mother" is an intrinsic
part of the vocabulary of abuse, sorry buddy, you can't say it on screen.
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