The sound of ‘squeamish’

You can say what you want, but India is still not ready for sex and nudity on screen. It is still limited to the domain of desibaba and DVDs for those too scared to download. I recently went for ‘ No Strings Attached’ with a few friends. For those of you who’ve not seen the movie, it has a bit of ‘ushooooo’ factor. I sort of expected that after the guy behind the booking counter told us that people under the age of 18 not allowed. I do look 17 don’t I??? Must be the Justin Bieber haircut. ( How much is the bounty on that twerp’s head????)

So, the movie is going on and Natalie Portman and the other guy start doing it….much heavy breathing, and a little more than what most Indian audiences would consider appropriate. And I’ve never heard a crowd at a cinema go so silent. No rustling of popcorn, no cellphone ringing, no couples talking. I look around and everyone is staring straight at the screen as though hypnotized or not to say anything inappropriate. Heck, I did not even hear someone slurping up the last few drops of coke from their cup. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the sound of an audience uncomfortably shifting in their seats. Even the guys behind us, one of whom I figure had broken up with his girlfriend recently (thanks to the ‘humphs’ and ‘yeah right’ comments he kept making whenever something moderately couple-ish came on screen) had fallen dead silent.

India is not ready for this much skin show on screen. But then I guess the movie would have been slightly stupid if they kept cutting out all the ‘ahem’ scenes. They did that in ‘The American’, which was already a sad excuse for a movie, (Clooney machaan….I want my money back). Maybe ‘the scene’ could have saved the movie. I remember ‘Watchmen’ being the first movie where they actually showed stuff on screen…. And no one in that theater was prepared. The ‘owl dude’ and ‘spandex woman’ start doing it aboard the ‘owl plane’ and the audience went dead silent. You know, the worst part is that you really can’t say anything to ease the mood. You’ve just got to look straight, or down….almost like in the men’s loo. It will be interesting if they ever manage to get ‘Love & other drugs’ past the censor boards. I’ve already seen the movie, so I doubt if I’ll go to the theater to listen to the silence of the audience while Hathaway and Gyllenhaal are doing it.