education and other aspects of well-being.

As the chapters in this

volume show, there are many entry points for addressing sexuality
and gender issues.

References
KATZ, J. 1990. The Invention of Heterosexuality', Socialist Review 20(1): 7
1
34.
MILLER, A.M. 2001. Uneasy Pronises: Sexuality, Health, and Human Rights',
American Journal of Public Health, 91(6): 861-64.
Looking in Horror and Fascination: Sex,
RUBIN, G. 1984. Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of
Sexuality', in Carole s. Vance (ed.). Pleasure and Darnger: Exploring Female
Violence and Spectatorship in India
Sexualiry, pp. 267-319. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Shohini Ghosh
SAIZ, I. 2004. 'Bracketing Sexuality: Human Rights and Sexual Orientation
A
Decade of Development and Denial at the UN", Health and Human Rights,
7(2): 49-80.
UNITED NATIONS. 1994. Report of the International Conference on Population AIlimages and words impact on readers and viewers in somne way
and Development, Cairo, Egypt. UN Doc. No. A/CONE171/13 (18 Oc
tober). or the other. While we know this to be true,we do not precisely know
-. 1996. The Bejing Declaration and the Platform for Action. New York: how and why some people engage with images in certain ways while
United Nations. others do so in different ways. The hardest question that media
UNITED NATIONS EcONOMIC AND SOCIAL CoUNCIL. 2000. Committee on Eco scholars and students have to confront appears to be a deceptively
nomic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment 14, The right to the
highest attainable standard of health. UN Doc. No. E/C.12/2000/4 (11 simple one. How does the media impact on people? For those at
August). Para 18. Available at: http://www.unhchr.ch/ tbs/ doc.nsf/ tempting to make interventions in the media, it is important to
Se9c603f456caf8 3802566f8003 870e7/40d00990 1358b0e2c12569150050 understand the complexities of spectatorial engagement with media
90be?OpenDocument#7.%20 texts. The engagement with this issue comprises some of the most
2004. Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health. Doc.
No. E/CN.4/2004/49. exciting academic work in media, film and cultural studies.
VANCE, C.S. 1999. 'Anthropology Rediscovers Sexuality: A Theoretical Com However, the difficulties involved in addressing this concern often
ment', in Richard Parker and Peter Aggleton (eds), Culture, Society and escape the general public. This becomes particularly evident when
Sexuality: A Reader, pp. 39-54. London: UCL Press. demands for censorship are made. Censorship demands are made on
Raclhieo horann eds). the assumption that the concerned speech or representation will
Misra, Getarj impact on people in particular ways. More dangerously, it assumes
Lyhb: Splonry that there is a single and unified interpretation of the text. Both
assumptions fail to comprehend the complexities of texts and read
Cndl ings. In this paper, I will reflect on how demands for the restriction
hey rd roche of speech are tied closely to notions of media impact and harm. By

T am indebted to Radhika, Geeta and Sushma for all manner of cooperation in

finer
writing this essay. My deep graiude to Roopa Dhawan for teaching me the
(FFF) for creating
points of editing. I dedicate this essav to Films for Freedom
in the essay.
a public space to discuss the issues that have been raised

28 Geetanjali Misra and Radhika Chandiramani

 ic
electronic form, any material which
or causes to be published in interest or (is likely]to denrave
interrogating the intersections of these two concerns,
Iwill discuss lascivious or appeals to the prurient imprisonment and hefy
shape our relation bepunished with
or and corrupt' is liable to allows
the many overlapping factors that influence and
police officers and other central
ship with texts and images. My attempt here is
not to provide a fines. Worse, Clause 79 search 'any public place'
and 'arrest
definitive answer to how media impacts on people but to retleCt on government officers to enter and 'reasonably suspected of having
the impossibility of attempting an easy answer. without warrant' anyone who is about to commit any offence
committed, or of committing or being were imposed by the amendment
under thisAct.' Similar restrictions
THE NNETIES
in the Cable Television
Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995.
censorious Programme and Ad
In addition to imposing a highly introduced pre-exhibition scru
Deep anxieties and affirmative engagement simultaneously marked vertising Code, the BJP government
programmes by bringing them under
the Indian mediascape of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The tiny and censorship for all TV ensure confomity to
liberalization of the economy and the 'opening ofthe skies' catalyzed the Cinematograph Act of 1952. In order togovernment revived the
wards its various censorship diktats, the BJP
wide-ranging cultural transformations. Optimism around India par being
taking of the global community co-existed with anxieties around defunct CentralMonitoring Cell in Delhi where TV shows were
monitored for'anti-India propaganda' and other violations
collapsing certitudes. Frequent reminders that Indian culture and constantly
tradition were under threat by various marauding forces accompanied (Raman 2000). Originally an army installation, the Central Monitor
the rise of the Hindu Right during this time. Both fear and optimism ing Cell became a state panopticon and surveillance machine.
greeted the new cultural transformations. Subsequently, waves of Censorship has been centralto the Hindu Right'scampaigns and
moral panic found articulation around representationsthat were per to this end it has used both legal and extra-legal measures. But it is
ceived to be threats to 'Indian Cultural Values'.!But more often than also important to remember that the demand for bans did not come
not, those very cultural products were resoundingly popular. from the Hindu Right alone but also from different women's groups
In an earlier essay, The Troubled Existence of Sex and Sexuality' and political parties ideologically opposed to the Hindu Right. In
(Ghosh 1999), Ihad argued that the nineties debate on censorship November 2003, the Left Front government of West Bengal banned
reflected primarily a dilemma around sex and sexuality. By studying Dwikhandita (Split in Two, 2003) by Bangladeshi writer Taslima
the images and representations targeted by both the Hindu Right and Nasrin on the grounds that 'it could ignite communal tension' (States
the women's groups, albeit for different reasons, the essay sought to man News Service 2003). The Calcutta police seized all
interrogate the moralism underlying both positions. There I argued
that in failing to distinguish between discrimination and desire, co tary evidence from the bookstores and publishers, documen
ercion and consent, all representations that denote or connote sex microfilms, floppies and all hard copies of the manuscript.including
Taslima
came to be damned as degrading, thereby erasing the crucial separ responded by uploading the entire
ation between sexual explicitness and sexism. interested readers could downloadmanuscript
the book,
on the internet so that
The nineties also witnessed the sinister rise of the Hindu Right., led censorship in the age of internet is largely futilethereby showing that
because it serves to
by their political front the BJP or Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian make access difficult but not
Nationalist Party). The cultural interventions of the Hindu Right. impossible.
riding on public anxieties around the loss of Indian Cultural values
included the enactment of laws restricting speech and expression
The Information Technology Act, 2000, for example, makes the SEXUAL SPEECH, HARMS AND LEGAL
'publishing of information which 1S obscene in electronic form' a REGULATIONS
punishable offence. Under this clause 'whoever publishes or transrmits The right to freedom of
Article 19 of the speech and expression protected u
is
30 Shohini Ghosh Indian Constitution. But according to the provst
31 Sex,
Violence and Spectatorship in India
 The nineties debate on 'harmful images' invites us to interrogate
of Article 19(2), this Fundamental Right is subject to 'reasonable
what precisely constitutes harm. Two positions are implied, even
restrictions', In particular, speech can be restricted in the interests
when not explicitly stated-first, that the image causes the harm by
of security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states,public influencing people to act and behave in certain ways and that the
order, decency or morality, contempt of court, defamation, or incite image is the harm in that the image itself could be seen to be 'degrad
ment to an offence. Considering the broad scope of 'reasonable
ing', 'objectifying' and/or 'commodifying' women. The inevitable
restrictions', the twin provisions of Article 19 would appear to be question that follows then is what constitutes a harmful image?
Who
framed within a paradox. The restrictions in Article 19(2) constitute is harmed and when?
the basis for other statutorylimitations on speech like that contained The notion that the imagecauses harm emnerged from theories of
in the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860, the Indecent Representation that
'direct impact' (the hypodermic needle model or bullet theory) with
of Women Act, 1986 and the Cinematograph Act, 1952. became popular in the 1940s and were concerned primarily
The legal regulation of sexual speech primarily through the crimi
restriction'. Section 'negative effects' and the idea that the media could lead people to
nal law has been held to be such a 'reasonable 'harmful' and 'anti-social behaviour'. The Media Effects' tradition
any
292 of the IPC, 1860, prohibits obscenity, which it defines as saw a preoccupation with empirical studiesused that sought to study
visual or written material that is lascivious or appeals to prurient socialphenomena in the laboratory and then similar scientific'
interests' or which has the effect of depraving or corrupting persons methods to study the same phenomena outside the laboratory. The
decision
exposed to it. Section 292 is based on an 1868 English 'Effects' studies spoke with and contributed to moral panics
around
called the Hicklin case. This decision has been approved and repeat cultural anxieties, and amplified public concern around 'harmful
obscenity
edly applied by the Supreme Court of India. The test for identified a
images' and their 'negative impact'. These studies alsowomen, chil
in the Hicklin case was to determine certain group of people as being most vulnerable, like
India in the 1990s
to dren, the poor and uneducated. Public anxieties in
.whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscene is seemed to hark back to direct impact theories. To this,
Iwill return
and corrupt those whose minds are open to such im
deprave later.
this sort
moral instances and into whose hands a publication of Paradoxically, it was the empirical studies of the 1960s that
brought
minds communica
might fall...it is quite certain thatit would suggest to the about a reversal in thinking. Subsequent cultural and
persons of more advanced years, contentions of clinical stud
of the young of either sex or tion studies challenged the methods and
thoughts of a most impure and libidinous nature. school in particular. They foregrounded
ies in general and the 'Effects'
complexity of the relationship between the image and the spec
'impure and the
Since terms like 'obscene', 'deprave', 'corrupt', and interpret the tator and emphasized the larger social reality that helped shape a
libidinous nature' have been left undefined, the scope to person's responses to the media.
to the liberal. The Hicklin harmful images
same can range from the conservative The feminist debates around the banning of
have adopted this reasoning pornography
test' is very important, as Indian courts of freedom of speech emerged from the radical feminist interventions on the
cases relating to obscenity and restriction The anti-porn lobbies, broadly referred to as the
in all The Indecent debate in the West.
decency and morality. the writings of
and expression on grounds of
prohibits indecency', which 'radical feminist position, took inspiration froma straight line be
Representation of Women Act, 1986, Morgan and Susan Brownmiller. Drawing
woman as to have the Robin
it defines as 'the depiction of the figure of the this position insisted that
public tween pornography and male violence, women and
effect of being indecent or is likely to deprave or corrupt is closely
against
pornography is material which depicts violenceand 1990s this posi
morality.' Clearly, the objective of regulating sexual speech
automatically 1S 1tselfviolence against women, In the 1980s
Catherine
tied to the regulation of morality, which in turn is Predictably, uon round its strongest
support from the works of
assumed to be predefined and commnonly agreed upon. Dworkin. Insisting that 'pornography 1s the
MacKinnon andAndrea
the moral battlefield is the 'figure of the woman'.
in India
33 Sex, Violence and Spectatorship
32 Shohini Ghosh
 theory and rape is the practice', MacKinnon and Dworkin advocate are gazing erotically at women, sOme Women are
the use of courts to seek financial redress against producers and at women, some women who are gazed upon look
like
gazing erotically
distributors of sexually explicit material if they can show that it has men gazed upon by men look like women." women, some
'caused harm'.
The anti-censorship feminist position, including my
This feminist position implicitly gives credence tothe idea that lenges the universalist notions of the gaze and own, chal.
the 'gaze' is determined by the biological separation of the 'sexes'. argues against a uni.
Theories of the 'male gaze' first fom the influential works of Marx form reading of sexually explicit material. We argue that all sexually
ist cultural theorist John Berger and feminist theorist Laura Mulvey. explicit material may not be sexist or misogynist. Similarly, we
In his pioneering analysis of the nude in oil painting, Berger (1972) remind that sexism and misogyny may reside in images that are
argued that looking is not a neutral activity but deeply gendered and neither sexual in content nor sexually explicit. Feminists against
classed and actually carries with it relations of power, access and censorship have frequently pointed out how the anti-porn position
control.' Laura Mulvey's (1975) work uses psychoanalysis to show often diverts attention from sexism and misogyny at work in
're
how the 'unconscious of patriarchal society' has 'structured film spectable' institutions like family, religion and the judiciary. This
form' and is thereby cut to the measure of male desire'.
Mulvey
position also rejects 'image-blaming' by drawing attention to the data
contends that the woman is the object of male desire and therefore, that fails to draw causal links between
in order to derive pleasure from the film, she would have to (Linz et al. 1987: 130-47),3 pornography and violence
adopt
either a passive, masochistic position or an active, Drawing support from image
masculinized
In short, the female spectator could only derive pleasure from
one. and Dworkin, in the bill known blaming' positions, MacKinnon
as the Minneapolis
a text if she underwent a certain sadistic such Ordinance,
demanded that victims whobelieve that they have been harmed by
masculinization.
Following Berger and Mulvey, several feminists identified the sexually explicit material could recover financial damages from the
look' or the 'male gaze' as the cornerstone of
patriarchy'. Repre producers, distributors and retailers of the
senting the dominant thinking of the first phase of feminist engage image argument effectively led to several material. In India, the
ment with 'the look', Susan Kappeler wrote: cases of mitigation of
sentences. A judgement delivered by the renowned
Iyer reads: Justice Krishna
The fundamental pattern at the root of men's behaviour in the
world, including sexual assault, rape, wife battery, sexual ha A philanderer of 22,
rassment, keeping women in the home and in unequal opportu hoisted himself into hisoverpowered by sex stress in
cousin's house next door and ineXcess,
nities and conditions, treating them as objects for conquest and daylight overpowered this temptingly lovely broad
protectionthe root problem of men's relations with women, 24, Pushpa, raped her in hurried heat and made prosecutrix of
an urgent exit
is the way men seewomen, is seeing. (1986: 61) having fulfilled his erotic sortie.
1980 SC 249) (Phul Singh vs State, AIR,
Subsequent feminist scholarship strongly challenged Mulvey's posi
tion on spectatorship by addressing issues central to power and The judgement reduced the
resistance. Representations were seen to 'mobilize' viewing posi that 'modern Indian conditions'sentence of a rapist partly on
are drifting into societal grounds
tions and identifications through a variety of means, butthe diversity ness 'what with proness [sic] to permissive
of socio-historical contexts and multiply constituted identities along and bookstalls, etc.' pornos. ..sex explosion in celluloid
with collective and personal histories of the viewer allowed for a Andhra Pradesh (1991 Similarly, in Reepik Ravinder vs the State of
Cr. J595), the
multitude of interpretive possibilities. Mulvey's notionof agendered. girl's rapist was mitigated on sentence of a five year old
bifurcated gaze was further challenged by queer studies on films'. Other cases leading togrounds that he had 'seen too many blue
Spectatorship. In thewords of Sue Ellen Case (1995), Not all men Shankar vs State of Tamil Nadu mitigation of
(JT 1994,sentences include Gauri
as the Auto
Shankar case. Here, the defence3 SC 54), better known
34 Shohini Ghosh counsel argued for a
35 Sex, Violence and Spectatorship in India
mitigation of sentence on grounds that he watched too many films
depicting sex and violence and illicit business and got misguided
and ended up as a criminal and therefore, makers of such films are
vicariously responsible. In practice therefore, image-blaming argu
ments have only served to turn the perpetrator of crime into a hapless
victim who is ultimately absolved of responsibilities for his/her
actions.
TV VIOLENCE AND PUBLIC ANXIETIES
Urban India of the late 20th century and early 21st century also
witnessed intermittent public outbursts around the impact of TV
violence on audiences, particularly children. This debate however
lacked the outrage and moral intensity attached to the debates on
sexuality. Much like the debates on obscenity and vulgarity, uncom
plicated responses to 'television violence' failed to take cognizance
of the media's diverse and increasingly complex engagement with
violence. Through the 1990s, the popular press was replete with
articles, opinions and views that unproblematically linked media
violence to real violence. Writing about the rise of what he calls the
'cult of violence, a noted educationist stated:
Cinema and television have made a substantial contribution to
the creation of an unkind, volatile ethos. Bombay films have
glamorized certain kinds of violence; certain other kinds of
violence have been trivialized..Television has enabled cinema
toreach our living spaces, making horror and brutality a homely
affair. Watching scenes of cold blooded murder and rape since an
early age allow children to develop a kind of derangement which
lets them cope with the deep anxieties they carry. (Kumar 2000)
Commonly expressed opinions such as these failed to address the
intricacies of spectatorial positioning and issues of affect, desires, and
apprehensions. Instead they concentrated almost entirely on 'negative
effects', repeatedly recalling 'direct impact' and 'copycat theories.
Two highly publicized documents, the Media Advocacy Group
(MAG) report titled People's Perceptions: Obscenity and Violence
on the SmallScreen (1994); and the UNICEF-Delhi report Killing
Screen: Violence on Television and its Impact on Children (1999)
36 Shohini Ghosh
carry the fallacies of effects studies that have now been substantively
challenged by serious research. Methodologically elusive, both stud
ies indict a wide range of screen activities as 'acts of violence' and
assume that exposure must necessarily result in violent or aggressive
behaviour:5 Similar arguments are made in The Centre for Advocacy
and Research (CFAR) 'findings' of a 'Five City Study' titled Media
Violence and its Impact on Children. All three reports dispense
with any literature review or description of the methodologies used.
Instead, the report lists a series of observations that are not backed
by any evidence. For instance, the CFAR study states that 'Recent
tragic events in the USA have only further emphasized the nexus
between reel and real violence' and that without providing any
details about the veracity of such a claim.' Similarly, the report goes
onto state that 'there is enough scientific evidence based on scientific
research in the West to indicate a linkage between media violence
and impact on chÉldren' or that 'since 1998, there is a growing body
of data in India, which has, to some extent quantified the concerns
and raised qualitative concerns'.3
Reading between the lines, one could conclude that the 'growing
body of data since 1998' refers to the Delhi-UNESCO report on
media violence (1999) and its highly publicized dubious parent the
UNESCO Global Study on Media Violence (1998).° Inspired by
direct impact and social learning theories, the supposedly 'unique'
methodology of the UNESCOstudy had 5,000, twelve year olds in
23 countries respond to 'exactly the same standardized 60-items
questionnaire' translated into languages as diverse as Japanese,
English, Russian, French, Arabian [sic], etc.0 The report declares
that the questions were not 'culture bound, as otherwise a direct
comparison of the data would have been impossible' but related to
the respondents 'media behaviour, their habits, preferences and so
cial environmentll It is indeed curious that UN agencies with their
cross-cultural mandate should believe that media habits, behaviour,
preferences and social environment should be free from mediation
by 'culture'. The study proceeds to elicit responses from countries
as culturally diverse as Angola, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Costa
Rica, Croatia, Egypt, Fiji, Germany, India, Japan, Mauritius, The
Netherlands, Peru, Philippines, Qatar, South Africa, Spain, Tajikistan,
Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, and Ukraine. !? Predictably, the conclu
Slon pronounces that 'Media violence is universal" 13
Two underlying propositions in the methodologically-suspect
UNESCOstudy are worth considering. First, by evacuating culture
37 Sex, Violence and Spectatorship in India