Freedom of Expression: Interview with Bharath Murthy (video porn in India)
Director: Namita A. Malhotra, Subasri Krishnan
Duration: 00:48:17; Aspect Ratio: 1.366:1; Hue: 34.673; Saturation: 0.258; Lightness: 0.427; Volume: 0.076; Cuts per Minute: 1.698; Words per Minute: 93.650
Summary: This interview is about Bharath Murthy's film titled 'Mysore Mallige'. The film itself is about the circulation and reception of an amateur pornographic video 'Mysore Mallige', that was a private video that inadvertently got leaked onto pirate CD markets and the internet in 2000. Murthy's film follows the leak of the porn film, urban legends around the porn film itself and how pornography is discussed in the urban Indian context.
This exceptional film records honest perceptions about pornography and tentatively explores what it means to be exposed via and through the camera. In this interview, Murthy describes the various films he made, his perceptions on what pornography is, what film is and what a real image is. Ranging from discussions on the philosophy around the image to seeking sensations and thrills, this interview is an interesting insight into how pornography figures in the visual landscape of modern India.
This interview is shot in the house of Bharath Murthy in Coimbatore. Sounds of cooking can be heard occasionally as lunch is being prepared. The shelf in background reveals the other obsession of Murthy in comics from around the world, but especially Japan.
Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu
pornography, amateur, video, law, privacy, sexuality, sex, cinema,
I'm Bharath Murthy and I'm a filmmaker– I make non fiction video. I'm also a comic books writer and my recent work is a book length comic. These are my twin careers
Namita (interviewer): What is the comic book about?
Its called Travels amongst Mangakars in Japan
To jump to the film that you did, exactly how and why did that idea come about? Why was Mysore Mallige so fascinating for you?
This interview is about Bharath Murthy's film titled 'Mysore Mallige'. The film itself is about the circulation and reception of an amateur pornographic video 'Mysore Mallige', that was a private video that inadvertently got leaked onto pirate CD markets and the internet in 2000. Murthy's film follows the leak of the porn film, urban legends around the porn film itself and how pornography is discussed in the urban Indian context.
This exceptional film records honest perceptions about pornography and tentatively explores what it means to be exposed via and through the camera. In this interview, Murthy describes the various films he made, his perceptions on what pornography is, what film is and what a real image is. Ranging from discussions on the philosophy around the image to seeking sensations and thrills, this interview is an interesting insight into how pornography figures in the visual landscape of modern India.
It actually came about because I saw the film when I was in film school in Calcutta, and that was during the first year in 19... in 2001. But by then – the event of mysore mallige, the film itself – happened around the same time.
Quickly it spread amongst the student communities all over the country. There were video copies proliferating. Someone one day got this new cd - lets watch porn for a change. Infact in the auditourium where we watched all the art films.
So we watched this one night and I was immediately struck by the directness of the images. For the first time I had seen an Indian couple having sex in that kind of detail and in that kind of reality.
A new image appeared, which had not been there till then. I had not seen it. Ofcourse we had seen the commercial Kerela pornography, which is fiction, and they don't really show the hard core sex. This was something different. This was actually a couple that was in love with each other. And that was apparent in the way the film was made.
Another thing as well, which might be a luck thing – the film was edited very well. It had a sort-of build up and climax to it. And it made me want to investigate - know who the person is. That was the first reaction – I found that was the first reaction of every other person who watched the film.
And later I realised that the film had built an urban legend around itself – because of the way it was made, and because of the kind of people involved in it. Suddenly you want to know the names of the people. Generally if you watch pornography, you don't want to know about the person having sex. In porn, its a character - its just the sex you are interested in.
But here you wanted to know who these people are.. that was very intriguing. And so I tried to find out a little bit. And this would be a good idea to make it in the form of a documentary – because I wanted to talk to people about their reactions and what they felt about the thing.
And then later it became also a kinky search for the room itself where that thing happened. Eventually we ended up there.
So you found the room?
Yeah we did. The funny thing about my experience of this film was that it eventually ended up in different versions. What happened was - the first film I made was a half-an-hour film about it, was for PSBT, which is Public Service Broadcasting Trust. And I just sent a eproposal and I was surprised that they accepted it. It was about pornography and all these things. And then when I made the film they were shocked and they rejected the film completely. Because I had done very strange things. I had included a shot of me and my girlfriend kissing in the film. And it was an extreme close up of the mouth. On that there was text. I did a lot of weird things in it, alongwith footage of that original couple, placing myself in their position. I was interviewing my girlfriend, she was interviewing me. So we made it almost like a home video. Ofcourse without the porn, without the sex but its like suggesting so many things.
So that version was rejected. Then I cleaned it up and made a version that could be shown on Doordarshan (national television)– that was the second version.
Then the Japan Broadcasting Corporation... There was a documentary forum in our film school in Calcutta – I wanted to investigate this thing further. The first film was about people's reactions and things like that .. I wanted to know more about people- the couple involved in the film. So I suggested and pitched a project - the Japan Broadcasting Corporation was interested in it. Another film emerged. And that was the film where we actually went and found the room. In this film there was another girl who had seen Mysore Mallige. We followed her a little bit in Bangalore – She's not a Kannadiga, a Punjabi girl working in Bangalore. She becomes a proxy for the character in the original Mysore Mallige.
It was like the characters of that original film were kind of replicating – sort of mutating into these other people. That was very interesting- what happened. Towards the end of the film, we go to the hotel where it happened. Everything is exposed. The urban legend is basically killed. We get to know exactly what happened with the couple. They were forced to get married in the police station by the you-know moral police, the journalists and everybody came. After the marriage the guy went abroad to study, the girl remained in Mysore .. I think, in Bangalore .. She started working somewhere here. Eventually they separated, but I don't know if they are divorced but they are separated.
So I asked the journalist in Bangalore who had actually covered this thing in the beginning. He had the contact of the girl. So I asked him - Can we meet the girl? Or should I meet the girl? So he said that – his reply – was that, its already like a rape for her. Doing it again or again if you are filming her, it would be like that. So its better not to. So he said that on camera - we kept that. And we didn't meet the girl, we didn't meet any original character. That made sense in a way because those characters in the original film had mutated into the real world. It even proliferated into other exhibitionist videos and these MMS clips of couples having sex – after Mysore Mallige there was a Calcutta thing, then there was a Delhi porn. Each place had its own scene, it started becoming like that. After this version .. the Japan Broadcasting Corporation version, there was yet another version, which included the original footage. We were asked to keep the original footage of the film. It became a work-in-progress kind of thing.
I've seen the first version, not the third version.
In your film, you encounter different reactions that people have. And you have incorporated a lot of that. Can you describe the kind of stuff? Its a problem that even I have faced, trying to do the film that we are doing. But just to hear from you. Whats the reaction that you get?
Most of the people I spoke to were students, and it is to be expected that students are little more open about it. And what I was looking for, really, was the kind of fantasy that the viewers build around this thing. What is the fascination with this particular video? Because it had created a lot of fantasies around, about who these girls (sic) are. Infact on the internet there were even people saying – this girl is a Lahori, the guy is form Karachi. They made it into a Pakistani thing. People saying they are from different places. Each one put their own story into it. They put themselves in that situation.
I intended to use the word pornography all the time– we're watching a porn film. I wanted that on camera. So when I played the film for them and filmed that - initially they were not so comfortable. They didn't want to exactly expose their interest in watching porn. But it becomes a sort of power game – it becomes who is cooler. As a filmmaker I'm pushing them into a position, you're pushing them into a corner. So I did that in a way, to get people to respond. So even with the girl in Bangalore, there were quite a few people who didn't want to talk. We kept looking for somebody who would speak about it on camera. A lot of people didn't want to be on camera about this. Eventually the girl we met - she was interesting because she was acting it out. She was becoming another person in front of the camera. She created a whole new persona for herself to speak. About her watching porn, her friends, herself and all this stuff. That was interesting because it was not what she actually is, but what she perceives herself to be. If that is on camera, then there is something.
There's now this fascination with what might be real. This MMS is real. Mysore Mallige is about real people. And as you said, there was a spawning like the DPS MMS clip and various other videos that came out around that time. How do you react to that?
What I felt was -- I can also say from my personal viewing of clips and images. What was attracting me to those kind-of pornographic clips. I still watch them infact. There's a website called _______ and everyday you have new clips of amateur sex. All kinds of Indians engaging in amateur sex. And posting pictures or videos. Mostly taken from mobile cameras. What I felt watching them – was that I suddenly realized – that we didn't really have a reality, till now. In terms of images. there was no image – that could be said to be real. There were images that were from movies – Bollywood, Hindi film industry, which is of a certain type. Its another world - absolutely a different world. Its nothing to do with the real world that we live in. There were images on television – news, and that was it – news! A reporter going and interviewing someone - that was the only bit of reality that we got to see. Infact that was the case until now. Until these pornographic videos came up. And that was like a strange revelation for me. So far I havent' seen reality in images, - so us doing things. The pornographic image gave a sense of... an understanding of what we really are, in sort-of an obtuse way. I wanted to see those bodies, in all its ugliness, you know, that we didn't want to see. Thats another thing - we have a big problem with beauty, with what is beautiful. And this was an ugly image- it was just-there-ugliness. Men, women, sweaty and everything. That was fascinating for me. That ugliness because I had never seen that ever, growing up.
Namita: Its like the bucket scene in Mysore Mallige. I don't think I had seen that, unless maybe in an arthouse film. You don't see anyone bathing with a bucket. Thats not a porn film scene, that would be a shower with fancy knobs.
The thing that Ashish (Rajyadhyaksha) says in the film. And maybe there is a difference between realist and realism, and what I'm referring to now is "real". But in just a descriptive sense, do all these other films as well show as much other details about people's lives. Mysore Mallige has a lot of non-pornographic images as well.
There are quite a films that do. There's one film where she's eating kurkure while sex is on. There's a kurkure packet. And there's many videos where the tv is playing – or some serial is going on, or music channel is going on. The television is blaring and they're having sex while the tv is on. Lot of little details. Once a curtain falls down and they put it back again. Things like that - small things. But many of these films do have details – strange details
Namita: The way I see it - I get what you're saying about the lack of the image that you can relate to in a way. Its hard to find movies in which the Indian body is made to look good, or made to look sexual - forget looking good. Or being desired in a certain way. How does one contrast that to something like Savita Bhabhi? Does that help in that process or is it solidifying another kind of acceptable image?
The savita bhabhi case is interesting – it was only after savita bhabhi was shut down that I got to know that it was infact Indians who were living abroad doing this. I had no idea it was being done by Indians living abroad. So they had all legal leeway to do what they wanted. Till then I had thought people sitting here and doing this. So it would have been a very brave thing to do, but now not so brave.
Savita bhabhi was interesting to me – with this knowledge that they are from outside, they are NRIs – that they were showing a woman of their fantasies, a fantasy woman which we had only spoken about. These things are there in jokes. The bhabhi, having sex with your neighbour, all that stuff. Its there in our psyche, especially in the north and in the south. But it being represented in drawing, in comic form was something new. Just drawing a pornographic act is very very different from filming a real sexual thing or a real sex act. In pornography that is the first basic difference that I see– on the one hand, you have real bodies engaging in sex and you film them, and the other side is imagination – where you write pornographic text or you draw. The status of these two things are totally different realms. One is art and the other is absolute real - where real bodies and people are involved. So there's a different type of law should work there.
Its similar to the experience we had in Japan while filming this documentary on Doujinshi. Where they tell us not to confuse real child pornography, where real children are involved, which is a category of sex crime. And drawings of children having sex with adults, or whatever it is but drawings. That should not be considered as a sex crime, in terms of the law. these are two different worlds. The same confusion has occured here in the Indian scene – this confusion is a western, borrowed confusion. The Japanese were always pointing fingers to this western confusion. They were in effect saying - You Westerners don't confuse us. We've got our law very clear. There is the drawn image or written pornography and then there is the filmed thing with real people involved. Savita bhabhi falls in the first category of art, broadly put it as literature.. or the field of imagination. One cannot apply same law to both.
Namita: I'm just throwing up this reaction. You were saying about Mysore Mallige that somehow you put yourself into it. Or that it is mutating into different characters. I'm just sharing this, don't know if it will or won't strike a chord with you. If one watches Mysore Mallige alone, or far away from home. A friend of mine watched it when he was in Amsterdam, and he said he felt like a horror film. Maybe it was the night vision or the night shot thing. There's a sense of loneliness or something that comes out of the experience of watching that film.
Bharath: Boredom
Namita: Yeah. But there is also something there that makes it far more compelling than other material. Also something that bleeds into everything else. The story that couples took it to a studio and then it leaked through the video tape guy, and then online.
Bharath: About how the video tape leaked?
Namita: No, about this whole reaction of..
Bharath: About that particular film and why..
Namita: or that feeling you get
Bharath: Of watching reality porn like this ..
Namita: Yeah maybe. I'm not sure what I'm getting at
Bharath: Maybe what you mean is the kind of boredom or everydayness, or the boredome of everydayness that is there in these kind of images. Its obviously not adorned with any other effects. Its not a fiction film, its not adorned.
Namita: Its not about fear. I mean, there is the obvious fear - it could be me. It could be someone taking a video of me and putting it there. Thats the obvious fear. There's some other fear that sort of ...
Bharath: ... the horror of reality ..? I don't know
For me the reaction was not one of fear at all. I was excited , extremely excited by this new development. For me it was a development. There was something new. It put my thoughts and perception in context. It put everything in context. I could now use this film - Mysore Mallige, and look at the entire Hindi film industry and all the images that are shown on television. I could put this as the benchmark and compare everything else with this.
It gave me a sudden focus. That you film this and that it is there, this is real. Its right there in front of you. We didn't know it, so for me it was like a discovery. I discovered reality- something like that. All my fantasies were now, any delusion that I might have had about myself, about us, about me living in a particular society and the cultural clichés that we deal with, all that was shattered in one go. So for me, it was a very important event. That is what made me to look deeper into this film. I consider this film as a film- I give it that value. It is a film among all the other films made in India, as in like all the other fiction films we see, or any documentary. I see it as a very important document. I give it a historical importance. It might be a little too - over stretching the point. But for me, I think it does have that value.
It made us look at things differently which was not there earlier. Because we don't have a history of seeing. Thats another whole chapter. But just to say it in one line. In visual art, all the traditions are destroyed in India. That's the fact that we start from, irrevocably, irreitreivably destroyed. Indian vision of art or painting or anything – it stops at 6th century, with the Ajanta etc. and Buddhist painting. There's a huge void for about a 1000 years, and suddenly in the 16th century you have miniatures – Mughal miniatures which is not Indian, it is Persian. So there's a jump from sixth to sixteenth century. Even that is destroyed, when the British come in with all new scientific techniques, which made these guys go really bonkers. Then we made some very strange art in the 19th and 20th century. So the traditions are broken. We have to find a way of looking – we have to start from scratch. My growing up was trying to do that. I was trying to start from scratch. Trying to see what is this reality, to see it clearly.
Does realist cinema so-to-speak help with that?
My theory and my opinion is that realist cinema didn't really help..because it worked with another fantasy of what is real. Infact realist cinema was – it was only the subject matter. So what they thought was that if you have subject matter that is something to do with with contemporary issues, then that would make it real. But that is not so at all. So putting it in a different way, what the realist cinema did was introduce subjects, subject matter which were not addressed by the Hindi mainstream commercial industry. But the devices they were using to portray the subject was the same technique that the mainstream, or the Hindi film industry was using. There was no difference in the approach of filming reality. What it resulted in, is just a variation in style. I would see realist cinema as just a variation in style within one Indian cineama .. its a different style, but I didn't see any reality in it.
(question about internet porn missing) The material that people are putting up on the internet is instantly accessible. Its only speeded up the number of viewers of such material, millions now. And websites are proliferating. And it has also encouraged people to make more images like that of themselves. And also upload. You see some image and you want to give it back. So its sort of a response. Its very strange – this ______ blog – has a little contest, which is also there in lots of websites, amateur video websites and foreign websites also. That you write ______ blog in some way, on your naked body or have some nude picture, some sexual picture and __________
blog.com should come somewhere in the picture. So people come up with this innovative or creative methods of putting the name, writing it on their butt or something. Or showing it in a mirror on a paper. So people posting pictures like that. So the website has also encouraged, and very concsiously encouraging people to film themselves and to take pictures of themselves and upload them. So that direct contact – the loop has become faster. Its not just a passive consumer. The internet forces you to be active and respond quickly to what you are seeing, in comments or posting pictures also. I think that is the difference.
Namita: To pose the hard question, or to pose the question that a radical feminist might ask. Do you think that there are women who are not being asked when their videos are being put up
Bharath: Ofcourse
Namita: And how does one respond to that. Is that a question? Its a harsh thing to say, like I say - its not relevant to my pleasure. But how does one deal with that question? Or how do you try to address it. I feel sometimes, that it becomes so polarized - people who are pro-pleasure, to put it broadly - we are so defensive or so pushed into a corner. Then there are times, when even well meaning questions are asked, like what if someone's privacy is being violated. We don't want to listen to that question, because if we listen to that question, we have to listen to child pornographic drawings being a problem, we have to listen to laws, we have to listen to IT legislation .. yeah, so...If say, it was a well meaning question.
Its a perfectly valid question. There is something wrong there. If you look at the amteur video – most of the amateur videos that are being made, it is the woman that is exposed more. And in most cases, it is filmed by men. It is the male filming the female he's having sex with. Or there is a third person, maybe. A few videos have that, but its mostly two.
And what I saw, after watching tons of these kind of videos. The woman in question is, knows very well she's being filmed, and even performs for the camera. So its clear that she is performing. So many videos you see the woman looking directly into the camera and doing it for the camera, and so is the guy. In that situation there is a mutual consent to being filmed. There are instances when the camera passes onto the girl and she's filming the guy. Ofcourse, majority of them the camera is with the guy. And it is definitely not, of the videos I've seen - I've not seen a rape being filmed, which is very possible, which is the next step in fact. Which is what maybe a viewer might want to see. There have been videos like that infact, I have not seen. But its there - videos in which rape has been filmed. So the line is there, the line is drawn infact.
You could make the case that – first of all it is illegal, and whether the woman is being oppressed or not then becomes a question of what is there in the video. But the funny thing about the law, when such a question comes up, is the evidence of the video itself. You can always say that that person is not me. That is the common argument that we hear when the video comes up as evidence, and its incriminating for some person, the person can claim that it is not me. So there is a sense of disbelief of the reality that is being shown. Which is the question that the law has to, I think, address, of what, of how can a video an image be used as evidence. Every now and then there is a thing, that it is not me and its somebody else. So how do you address that. That is the main question. If you address that – you can make a distinction by watching the content. Whether the woman has consented or not .. if you consider that as reality, that is.. it's a thin line, but what is real in an image, maybe the law has to encompass that question – what is real in an image.
When it comes to images like this, the next step, as I said, is that you film a rape, and the next step after that is that you might even film death actually happening. And that is there - you have videos like that on the net. Its the logic taken to its extreme. Where there are pletnty of jihadi videos on the net, which you can easily watch – actual live footage of people being killed. It's the extreme of an image. You cannot have an image more extreme that that – the edge of reality, you could say.
The torture images that you see from Guantanamo Bay, or what is broadly described as war-porn.
Bharath: Yeah, war porn
Any pornographic image, basically the definiton of a pornographic image - its an image that is not supposed to be seen, but is seen. So it can be any image. But that not-supposed-to-be is either morally not-supposed-to-be, or socially, politically not-supposed-to-be. It can be any image that is taboo. Any taboo. So ofcourse killing is the ultimate taboo. And that is pornography obviously. So now the lines – you can see the gradation – you film one thing and it leads to that. That doesn't mean, that one shouldn't film anything obviously. So there are .. so one has to believe in the content of the image, you have to give it the status of reality – if you don't believe in the image, if you say that is not real, then the entire argument just breaks down. So that is the starting point, of what you state as real.
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