In the last decade or so, we have seen a strange new genre of Hindi film emerge. Kicked off by 2012’s Vicky Donor, a film about the stigma around sperm donation set in a middle-class milieu, it quickly expanded to comment on fat-shaming, erectile dysfunction, late-age pregnancy, gay love, menstruation, open-air defecation, lesbian love, trans-love, surrogacy, male pattern baldness, more fat-shaming, more homosexuality, sex education, asexuality and masturbation. I call these movies ‘bodily function films’, because this is what they seem to focus on. The bodily function/malfunction itself is the source of all the ‘jokes’ and all the ‘conflict’. Throughout the film, the protagonist’s family is shamed, lectured at, educated, and, finally, converted. We do not know if the audience is similarly converted, but a good laugh is had by all, and people go home more-or-less entertained. I wonder about the brainstorming sessions that go into the creation of these ideas (‘Okay, so semen has been done, menstrual blood has been done, ‘susu-potty’ has been done. Is there any bodily secretion we have not yet made a film on yet? Snot! What about snot? Can we make a social issue film about snot?’) Along with the hagiographical/hatchet job biopic and the Hindu-pride historical, these bodily function films form the three pillars of cinema-as-it-is-allowed-to-flourish-today. They claim to advocate social reform, they also claim to be ‘bold’ and ‘risky’.
In today’s highly intolerent and polarised India, with everybody anxious not to rock the boat, and majoritarian groups just waiting to be outraged, what could be safer than to dive deep into the chaddis of a Sharmaji/Mishraji/Joshiji ka ladka and make a film about the stirrings therein and how they impact the whole family? As long as these stirrings do not include a hankering for a partner from another faith/caste/problematic worldview, the status quo will remain more-or-less unshaken.
Look at this week’s OMG 2, for instance. The original OMG (2012) was a take-down of organised religion narrated through events in the life of a full-on athiest. It concluded that God (if He exists) is the ultimate creator and has no desire to live in an edifice built by inept human hands, but prefers to live in our hearts. Obviously, with Ram Mandir on the way, Kashi and Mathura slated to happen next, and donations being solicited all around, this is a conclusion OMG 2 cannot afford to come to. So, instead, it performs a pragmatic segue and zooms into an ‘issue’ nobody can really argue with: The fact that all teenagers masturbate and that teenage masturbation is normal. And so quacks are roundly condemned in the film, schools are urged to include sex education into their syllabus and all ends well. (Perhaps, these sex education classes can be accommodated easily into the school syllabus now that the entire Mughal empire has been done away with?)
By the way, OMG 2 does not question the existence of God at all, a theme that was at the core of the original OMG. The protagonist is a believer from the word go, with Shiva as his chosen God. A nice popular carry-everybody-along choice.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t talk to children frankly about masturbation. We should. We should also talk to them about a much more troubling topic—pornography—which goes hand-in-hand with masturbation, but remains an elephant in the room the film barely acknowledges. Perhaps, because it is too rampant, too dark, and too financially important, and doesn’t really fit into the cosy middle-class bodily function genre. Far easier to take a few bashes at the sellers of lizard oil, I guess.
editor@theweek.in