OTT: Obscenity Thy Trademark
- In Current Affairs
- 12:18 PM, Jun 03, 2023
- Venkataraman Ganesan
Speaking at a public event, Bollywood star Salman Khan made an impassioned plea for censoring obscene content on Over The Top (OTT) platforms. Beleaguered by a disturbingly increasing vulgarity content that was being aired with impunity, Khan urged the censor board to act with haste since viewers as young as 15–16-years were avid patrons of such platforms. In a topical piece published in the Swarajya Magazine and bearing the title Two Major Points Missing From Debate On OTT Content[1], Sanjeev Newar and Swati Goel Sharma bring to the fore two urgent issues that need to be tackled head-on with reference to the OTT fare currently on display, and that is missing from informed public discourse. In an era where letting loose a fusillade of expletives every alternative dialogue and goading on nudity that masquerades as aesthetics is but grist for the mill of ‘entertainment’, Newar and Sharma highlight in a stark manner ails that plague the OTT Industry.
A Plethora of options that makes Certification Redundant
The first impediment that the duo highlight is a process that is analogous to ‘self-regulation’ that enables players and platforms to air content both appropriate and inappropriate (with no blurring lines even to differentiate the two) with gay abandon. A classic case in point is the Anurag Kashyap offering, Jamtara – Sabka Number Aayega. While it is common for a few expletives to be part of a series, this one is an explosion of expletives that has some content (albeit engaging) in between. No wonder this documentary dealing with money scams comfortably makes both the list of series that parents ought not to watch with kids and those that youth ought not to view with their parents!
A classic lacuna identified by Sharma and Newar pertains to age-appropriate ratings. Currently, The OTT platforms currently give a self-devised age-appropriate rating for each show. If an underage viewer was to somehow gain access to adult content either inadvertently or accidentally, there is no mechanism to curb such access. There is no intermediary ‘gatekeeper’ regulating and/or monitoring access between the presenter and the audience.
In an age characterised by multiple viewership choices spread across devices such as mobile phones, laptops etc, simultaneous access encompassing multiple media poses a real regulatory conundrum. For as the duo rightly argue, unlike a movie that is released in a theatre with an A rating that restricts entry to underage entrants, there are no corresponding provisions in the digital universe. Currently, the only guardians of sanity and discretion are the parents of children. Considering the fact that these days kids outwit parents in terms of being tech-savvy by a country mile and more, the conventional gatekeepers face a real and present threat of circumvention.
Untrammeled ‘Entertainment’
One of the greatest social critics of the 21st century and a veritable clairvoyant of advances in media, Neil Postman, in his seminal work “Amusing Ourselves to Death” predicted some seismic shifts in Western culture birthed by modern technologies of communication. Extending Marshall McLuhan’s prophetic and now revered message of the medium being the message, Postman argues that such a medium is also the metaphor. The metaphor for a changing, convulsive narrative that would bring along with its tumultuous outcomes. This is also where the second and more pernicious peril of the OTT manifests itself.
Postman’s primary concentration was reserved for the medium of television. It would be apposite for the readers, at this juncture, to grasp the fact that Postman’s arguably greatest work was written in 1985 when the dazzling array of free as well as Pay Per View options that are available now, was not even a fiction of frenzied and riotous imagination! Just to provide some perspective, when Postman wrote his book, the world’s most popular search engine was a decade and two years into the future, OTTs were almost a decade and a half away and electronic book readers…. No wonder the subtitle of Postman’s book is “Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.”
The advent of television, according to Postman had the pernicious impact of redefining entertainment and providing connotation to it that went beyond mere ‘dilettantish’ intentions. “Postman informs his readers that it “is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment the natural format for the representation of all experience.” Thus, in order for such an entertainment to be ‘complete’, the sole criterion is the fact that the content ought to hold the attention of the audience. It HAS to ENTERTAIN!
Postman may well be forgiven for either predicting the playbook of modern-day OTT platforms or be accused of providing them an indelible manifesto for perpetual staying power. For in today’s world under the garb of entertainment OTTs are outsmarting each other in obscenity and obnoxiousness. If one platform focuses on frontal nudity, another one goes the whole hog! Where one platform prides itself on producing a series laden with expletives, yet another broadcast a continued string of expletives that charades as a series.
Making a mockery of religion, glorifying Don Juan like sexual escapades, celebrating misogyny and appropriating violence and rape are some of the indispensable USPs that an OTT Platform needs to pride itself on if it needs to secure the approbation and subscription of its patrons. Unless and until the protagonist and antagonist face off against one another using a whole bouquet of profanities, there is no ‘flavour’ or ‘flair’ to the programme.
On the 18th of April 2023, the Delhi High Court in a welcome move, instructed the Government of India to elaborate and articulate the steps it had initiated to enact appropriate guidelines/formulate laws to regulate and monitor OTT content. As things currently and unfortunately stand, there are no laws or rules regulating OTT platforms in India. After much persuasion, pleading and protests, the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), a representative body of the OTT platforms such as Netflix, Hotstar, Amazon Prime Video, Ullu, ALT Balaji etc proposed a self-regulatory model. However, as alluded to in the aforesaid paragraphs and demonstrated in a comprehensive manner by Sharma and Newar in their arresting article, this model is more about paying lip service than achieving any meaningful purpose.
There is a crying need in India for a comprehensive set of regulations to come into force sooner than later with respect to controlling, regulating and monitoring OTT content. Else it would only be a matter of time before Emojis start popping up as alternatives for “BC” and “MC” the two most ubiquitous and by now omnipresent twin-expletives that have almost seamlessly wedged themselves into many an urban dictionary!
Image source: PaisaWapas
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