SLEAZE MOVES INSIDE


The walls of Chennai, be they public or private never see any dearth of posters announcing everything from birth to death – and a dozen movies or more – in between. That has undergone a sea change these days. No, if you think Chennai’s walls are now cleaner and bereft of posters, you are wrong. It is just that just one kind of poster has now made an almost unannounced exit from the city’s walls.

These are the posters that announced the run of sleazy movies, mostly made with low budgets, and exhibited at sleazy cinemas to an even sleazier crowd. The fact that these were ‘enjoyed’ by top ranking professionals and the beedi smoking front benchers alike was a social leveller like no other. It was public knowledge that there were some movie halls that regularly screened such movies, and sometimes, pushed in a reel or three of such porn even though the movie per se did not have it.

Is liberalization and the easy availability of cheap electronic goods the reason then? Today, CD players, DVD players and TVs come dirt cheap, and are not beyond the budget of even the poorest of poor. Some applicances are even given free by vote catchers. This has led to the proliferation of hard core porn videos – all different kinds of them – Indian, phoren, animal lust, homosexuality and the like.

The videos are as easy to obtain as a cup of tea in you neighbourhood tea kadai. With such ease, even easier way of duplicating and circulating, almost everyone in the city can have a dekko for just about a hundred rupees – if you spread the copies far and wide, that is. This proliferation has led to almost the closure of movie halls that screen such movies. Many have gone through a correction – post renovation, they have become decent halls showing decent censor board cleared movies. Some have given way to malls residential apartments. Those that refused to be corrected are mostly in a decrepit and irreparable condition. It is only these halls that still show sleaze, and their clients are now very limited – alcoholic and incorrigible porn watchers.

Not that the others do not do this movies once in a way or regularly – why go out for something which you can get at home? This is the only reason that we are still seeing posters announcing everything from birth to death – it is only the sleaze that has moved from the walls to the living room.