This article describes some scenes in “Superman” and “F1: The Movie.”
In the United States, Lois Lane kisses Superman for a steamy 33 seconds. For those watching the new Superman blockbuster in India, however, when the hero leans in to kiss his paramour, the movie jumps forward abruptly.
That’s because Indian censors have deemed the midair kiss as being “overly sensual.” They have also objected to other parts of the James Gunn blockbuster, shaving 8 seconds off here and there to achieve a 13+ rating, according to local reports and filmgoers.
“There was an abrupt cut, and it just felt very out of place,” said Kautuk Kundan, 27, who runs an artificial intelligence startup in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru and watched the film over the weekend. “There were two or three similar cuts in the movie wherein the movie is progressing, and suddenly there’s an abrupt cut, and then it’s the next scene.”
Intervention by authorities has Indian moviegoers fuming, who accuse the censors of making moralistic changes while adopting a double standard for Bollywood films, which are often laced with innuendos, misogyny and sensual scenes.
Indian filmmakers and distributors have long had a strained relationship with India’s censor authority, the Central Board of Film Certification. It’s well expected that if a movie contains any explicit scenes, kisses or profanity, those scenes will be cut. Showing affection is limited to long hugs, with the justification given that India’s population is still mostly conservative and religious, and the scenes could be uncomfortable.
The new Superman film isn’t alone in being hit by censors.
Authorities censored parts of “F1: The Movie,” including a scene where a fist emoji appears instead of the original middle-finger emoji.
“Sonny sends a middle finger to the dude, and the finger is, like, half cut,” Kundan, who watched the film the weekend before, said, referring to Brad Pitt’s character, Sonny Hayes.
“What was that about? That was just weird,” he said. “Why do you need to force your morality on me?”
The censorship harkens to India’s colonial era, when the ruling British prevented the free flow of Hollywood films to stop Indians from viewing British women as sexually promiscuous, said Nikhila S., a film studies professor at the English and Foreign Languages University in Hyderabad.
The censor board “thinks that cinema can inflame people’s passions, sexual and otherwise,” she said, adding the censors, therefore, still see themselves playing the role of “having to shield the people from various kinds of threats that cinema can potentially pose.”
“In effect, it is not simply trying to protect people’s morality, as much as trying to decide who sees what and with whom,” she said in an email.
In the 2023 blockbuster “Oppenheimer,” Florence Pugh appears in a scene wearing a black CGI dress, while in the original film she appears topless.
Some pointed out the irony, given the way women are sexualized and subject to misogynistic portrayals in Bollywood movies.
“The hypocrisy that people have noted with regard to the latest Superman film is that while all Indian women are up for exhibition and sexual display on the screen in Indian films, a seemingly innocuous kiss has got a cut,” the professor said.
While restrictions have relaxed in the past years, nudity, profanity or kissing is usually banned for the most part, especially if the film is not rated for ages 18 and above.
India’s censor board also faces accusations of being political in its assessment, green-lighting films that depict violence against certain populations while banning others.
“Censorship seems to be an epidemic at the moment. We need a VACCINE!” Ali Abbasi, director of the Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice,” said in a post on X last year after censors demanded certain scenes be cut.
The film was ultimately never released in India.
“I ran away from Iranian censorship only to meet corporate censorship of US. Now India! Really?” he said.
