Pearl Clutchers, Start Your Engines! Bollywood’s Jism 2 Hits Theaters Tomorrow [Film Schooled]

There's an increasing trend in the Indian cinema to sexy things up a little bit. For a long time, India's government censors wouldn't even allow kissing onscreen, a restriction that evaporated in 1996 with a long tongue-kiss in the film Raja Hindustani (Indian King). Now, however, filmmakers such as Pooja Bhatt are starting to test the boundaries by making films that feature actresses dancing in lingerie or sensual oil massages, films like Bhatt's Jism 2, which at heart, says its director, is really just an old-fashioned love story.

"Jism" is a Hindi word for "body," but that hasn't eased concerns among companies like Google, YouTube, and Apple, which have all expressed reservations about the title. Though filmmakers have insisted that no in-your-end-oh was intended, Apple has balked at filmmakers' request to have Jism 2 included on Apple's Movie Talkies app (Google, however, has allowed filmmakers to tag their ads with "jism," and YouTube has allowed the promotional videos to play on). If American companies are understandably squeamish about the title, Indian authorities (along with moralizing private citizens) are having a full-on shitfit about Jism 2's content. The film doesn't depict any full-frontal nudity (India isn't quite there yet), but it does feature oily massages prominently, as well as some lingerie promenades by its leading lady, Sunny Leone.

The push for sexier cinema and more sexual freedom in general has, unfortunately, ignited a backlash from traditionalists who have torn down posters for Jism 2. Police have even started arresting women in Mumbai bars who are dressed in "provocative" Western fashions, employing a rarely-enforced law that all bacchanalian revellers need to first obtain a drinking permit from the local authorities. Critics of sexier film fodder are often those people living outside of Mumbai's cosmopolitan social scene. As movies have gotten more naked, traditionalists have turned away from Mumbai's sleek productions in favor of regional cinema.

Pooja Bhatt's father Mahesh — Jism 2's screenwriter and a noted Indian provocateur — has dismissed the outrage his daughter's film has been greeted with as sanctimonious. He told the AP, "Pretending to police the moral values of a society is the easiest way for politicians to earn brownie points." He cast Leone for her role in Jism 2 on live TV, a stunt that caused a minor public uproar similar to the uproar that minor Bollywood starlet Sherlyn Chopra's < href="http://jezebel.com/5930079/first-indian-woman-to-pose-for-playboy-calls-it-an-international-accomplishment">appearance in Playboy has recently caused.

India's shifting moral tectonics have increased the rift between upwardly-mobile, Western-gazing Indians and traditionally-minded Indians who view a "good" Indian woman as a modest sari-wearer and a "bad" Indian woman as one who dresses in Western fashions and is "sexually available." The friction between these two groups, writes Mint newspaper's film correspondent Nandini Ramnath, is inevitably rooted in persistent economic disparities between those who have more and those who have less. Explains Ramnath,

There is a strong backlash against increasing economic freedom - against a certain kind of Indian woman who likes to wear what she pleases and eat and drink out at restaurants and pubs because she can now afford to. The sad thing is that women like Sherlyn Chopra are not blazing any feminist trail. They are reinforcing a notion that women are objects. They increase anxiety among the self-appointed moral guardians.

Jism 2, contends cultural studies lecturer Bhaskar Mukhopadhyay, really just functions as a tangible manifestation of the economic "grievances" of the "have-nots" — here is a movie that represents all the indolence and luxuriance of Mumbai's cultural elite. The movie, with all its underwear oil massages, is representative of a Western lifestyle that many in India do not have access to, especially when one considers that it's a sequel, and that, if all goes well, we can all expect the third iteration, Return of the Jism, to be even more controversial.

Bollywood gets racy with provocative new movie [AP via Yahoo!]

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If You Want To Succeed, Start Lying to Yourself [Games People Play]

My first impressions are always right. I never regret my decisions. I don't care what people think. Humans lie to ourselves all day long. You know the old saying: fake it 'til you make it. And, as Sue Shellenbarger writes for The Wall Street Journal, self-deception has its benefits.

Researchers have found that children as young as three have a "positivity bias" — a subconscious tendency to see themselves in the best possible light and conveniently forget about some negative traits.

Shellenbarger reports:

When people are asked to choose the most accurate photo of themselves from an array of images that are either accurate, or altered to make them look up to 50% more or less attractive, most choose the photo that looks 20% better than reality, research shows.

And!

In an unpublished study earlier this year, young women were asked to stand in front of a sheet of brown paper and sketch outlines of their bodies. Some were then asked to read a story about dating to put them in a romantic mood. The others were asked to read about buildings and architecture, says Carrie Keating, a psychology professor at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., who led the research.

When the women were asked later to outline their bodies again, those who had read about dating sketched themselves as slimmer, with narrower waists, compared with their earlier drawings, reflecting an effort to "block out any negative information about their bodies" and succeed at the dating game, Dr. Keating says. The women who read about buildings didn't much change their sketches.

Harmlessly deceiving yourself to get ahead — believing that you are a great public speaker, telling yourself you have a real shot at the gold medal — can make you seem confident, assured, influential, powerful. Shellenbarger writes: "Benefits tend to come, research shows, when people simply block out negative thoughts, envision themselves enjoying future successes or take an optimistic view of their abilities — all of which tend to improve performance or persuasive ability." (Apparently it works in love, too.)

Since I do this all the time, I thought I'd share a few of my favorites:

I have good instincts.No one cares what I'm wearing.I know what I'm doing.

But letting it get out of hand is dangerous. There are limits. Confidence is great; losing track of the truth is not. As Dr. Michael Norton, an associate professor at Harvard Business School puts it, "a little bit of self-deception isn't an unhealthy thing, a lot is an extremely unhealthy thing."

The Case for Lying to Yourself [WSJ]

Image via Complot/Shutterstock.

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Start Screaming, There's Not Enough Ice Cream [Stick Figures]

Jul 28, 2012 2:00 PM  

Dana Zemack has been making stick figure comics since she was 12. This week, she made one just for us.

We're at the tail end of National Ice Cream Month, and if everyone else in the country happened to share my continuous craving for ice cream (or gelato or sorbet, as long as it looks good in a cone), I could decisively say that the U.S. demand for ice cream might possibly be at an all time high. But what if we run out? In light of the very scary Good Humor shortage that befell us last month, and an apparent Uber ice cream delivery fail just a little while ago, I must admit that I have some concerns. Sure, Anderson Cooper might not be worried about it, but I sure am, as are all these innocent children. (I suppose I could always seek out one of these, but what if it rains?)

Not to be overly dramatic or anything, but based purely on the fact that the bodega across the street from my house ran out of Chunky Monkey yesterday, I predict that soon we're all going to be screaming because there's not enough ice cream.

Or not.

Happy National Ice Cream Month! (What's left of it, anyway.)

Today is Dana's birthday, and it will be the best ever if you check out all of her stick figures at danavore.tumblr.com. Or follow her on Twitter.

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