My eleven-year-old daughter
is very uncomfortable these days. She used to enjoy surfing television,
but these days she is very wary of this very harmless pursuit. Once
while surfing she spotted the promotional of Kal Ho Na Ho and happily stopped there, but suddenly it was replaced by John Abraham spread all over Udita Goswami!
Another time, she thought she will
check out Star Movies, after all just the previous evening she had seen
a nice Arnold Shwarznegger movie about the Christmas spirit and what
should she encounter. No hunk, but a very personable father figure
pushing a cigar into the nose of a young girl in a polka dot dress.
Of course, children should be
exposed to the changing times. Of course, they know a lot more then we
did and they can teach us a thing or two, but should this be their mode
of education? Or should they be exposed to these at specific ages
through better media.
Many are the times, when I have found promotional
of Hindi films and advertisement clips or commercials of adult films
right in the middle of award ceremonies that are being watched by
children. As it is, in our society, the issue of imparting sex
education to children is ill timed, is scantily or not addressed at
all. Combine this with raging pre-adolescent and adolescent hormones,
the privacy of a home where both parents are away at work, a social
set-up where the difference between being progressive and being
permissive is hazy and what we have is anybody's guess.
How is it that the promotional
for adult films are screened in a forum where there is no censorship.
How is it that the Censor Board finds certain scenes violent or
explicit enough to grant the movie an adult certificate but those same
scenes find their way into our drawing rooms? Why is it that Hollywood
films that are certified as 'Adult' with clearly heavy adult themes are
screened at prime time and not at those times when children are likely
to be asleep. I had the good fortune of watching, "The Silence of The Lambs" at two thirty on Saturday afternoon.
I would love to know what other parents think of this: "Should not the cable television be subject to some kind of censorship?"