The realistic highlights as presented in the web series these days have not just helped it take supreme charge of the audience attention but, are also making it prone to censorship. Very recently, a PIL was filed in the Bombay High Court, Nagpur bench by advocate Divya Gontia against the much talked web series, ‘GandiiBaat’. The series aired on ALTBalaji.
This is not the first time such a cause is coming up. In fact, along with Gandii Baat, several other popular web series such as- Sacred Games on Netflix had to face a PIL claiming that they are too many obscene scenes included in it and it is necessary to run such series under a pre- screening board under the lines of the censor board for web series. The PIL filed then mentioned, “The screening of pornographic contents, vulgar gestures and talks are overriding the Indian culture and morality”.
However, it is still a question of doubt whether such show must hold censorship or not as many claim that if such shows are drawn under the censorship X-ray, they may lose their original flavor or essence.
For example, Four More Shots Please!, aired on Amazon Prime, showed four young, bold and smart women trying live life on their own terms depicting the fact that women today are standing on their own. In fact, all of these shows are suitable for 18 and above, i.e. not meant for children. It is the audiences who need to decide what to watch and what not to watch.
Censorship or ban isn’t the right thing to do as this can be done for Indian shows but, what about the shows getting aired across the global medium, how are they going to be stopped?
This is definitely a bad idea to keep an eye on what is being made as it will directly curb the freedom of speech and expression of any director and will simply hamper the originality of the story.
In order to sustain the creativity, laying an explicit check on the same isn’t a good idea and to be frank censorship is not of help in this regard. Presently, the top OTT platforms like Netflix, sizzlingstar, Jio, Voot, Zee5, Arre, SonyLIV, ALT Balaji and Eros Now have signed a self-censorship code for prohibiting the over-the top (OTT) online video platforms from showing certain kinds of content, setting up a redressal mechanism for customer complaints. However, Amazon has declined to sign this code, as they find the current rules pretty adequate.
