1. For almost whole of 20th century , there can be no comparison at all . HW had reached the depth of Mariana Trench while BW was reluctant to even take a dive . Leave sexually explicit content , even a peck on the lips was a big deal then which they mostly avoided ; any of those intimate moments were rather transitioned immediately to a figurative depiction like burning fire , nuzzling birds , swaying flowers etc. (more on
here) . I can literally count on fingers the scenes/movies in that decades which were sexually explicit (but again , unbeknownst to masses then) for eg. this :
2.Now comes 21st century when , for impetus like following , BW finally began diving & exploring the subject upto a certain depth for initial 10-15 years :
- dawn of the internet age granting inter-alia easier access to the other sex as well as sexual contents to desi youth
- mushrooming Western MNCs in urban India
- increasing Western liberal propagandas etc.
Thereby infusing elements of neo-western lifestyle/mindset into Indian society (especially urban) , all this^ aggregately also gave a wink to BW to capitalize on sex & a pressure on censor board to relax the norms . The result were soon visible with certain movies in 2003-04 being made a sensation among youth , thanks to strong PR & ad campaigns . Smooches , semi-nudism , erotic love making etc. then begun getting slid into movies in a flurry on pretext of script demand so that when depicting sexuality , they gradually become the norm in place of burning fire & nuzzling birds . And eventually , they did . A sample of such soft erotica is following :
3. Now with all things set for the next level & final push coming from OTT platforms that gathered steam from recent few years , they took the final plunge towards sexually explicit contents which now has been fast replacing soft erotica of previous decades when depicting sexuality . And the censor boards & ministries are quite helpless as currently they do not exercise any sort of jurisdiction over such platforms.
"There are a large number of OTT platforms working in India such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hotstar, Voot, etc. Unlike the content provided by cinema or television that is regulated by CBFC, BCCC, etc., the OTT platforms have no regulatory body over them to control the content streamed, and consequently enjoy their freedom.Recently , a petition was filed in MP High Court to deal with the regulations against alleged streaming of obscene and sexually explicit content. They alleged that these media content streamers are broadcasting content that is unregulated, un-certified, vulgar and legally restricted."
Just few samples :
To sum up - figurative depiction of sexuality (20th century) ----> soft erotica (2000-15s or so) ----> sexually explicit (2016-17 onwards with launch of Netflix etc.)
So.....it was from the turn of the century that things too began taking a turn to next levels quite briskly from a rigid & stable state existing for a prolonged duration , like different forces working in tandem under a common command to mutate the society .
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