Middle-Finger Emoji To Fist In F1, No Nudity In Oppenheimer: Most Ridiculous Censor Changes In Recent Films

Sports action drama F1, starring Brad Pitt which released in India on June 27, is the latest movie to be censored by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). According to several posts circulating on social media, a scene in the Joseph Kosinski directorial shows a middle-finger emoji replaced by a fist emoji.

The Internet is having a lot of fun with this completely unnecessary and unintentionally funny edit in F1, it's time we revisit a few of such changes, cuts, and chops by the CBFC AKA Censor Board in the last few years.

Oppenheimer (2023)

Historical epic Oppenheimer, which went on to earn multiple Oscars, including the first best director trophy for Christopher Nolan and best actor award for Cillian Murphy, created quite a stir in India after eagle-eyed viewers found out that the CBFC made Florence Pugh wear a little black CGI dress in a scene from the film.

Some countries are censoring #Oppeneheimer by putting a CGI black dress on Florence Pugh 😭 pic.twitter.com/Bt0Ymxd859— 🖤 Physical Media Forever 🖤 (@VHSDVDBLURAY4K) July 24, 2023

Florence Pugh played the role of psychiatrist Jean Tatlock who has an affair with Murphy's J Robert Oppenheimer in the film. In this scene, Jean Tatlock and J Robert Oppenheimer are engaged in a deep conversation, in which she was originally topless, as Christopher Nolan envisioned.

Who would have thought that master filmmaker Christopher Nolan's film would fall prey to the Indian Censor Board.

Padmaavat (2018)

In what is a running joke in one of Varun Grover's most popular stand-up comedy acts about Padmaavat and the controversy that broke back in 2018, people are so gullible that they wouldn't know if the name of the film was changed from Padmavati to Padmaavat.

The lavishly-mounted Rs 150 crore period drama, featuring Deepika Padukone, Shahid Kapoor and Ranveer Singh, was based on the 16th century epic poem Padmavat by Malik Muhammad Jayasi.

The CBFC suggested that Padmavati must become Padmaavat so that the sentiments of the public, particularly a few fringe Rajput groups, are not hurt.

According to Censor Board Chief Prasoon Joshi, the board had only advised five modifications in the Sanjay Leela Bhansali epic, including the title change, but "no cuts".

Rajput groups had also raised an objection over a dream love sequence between Rani Padmavati (Deepika Padukone) and Alauddin Khilji (Ranveer Singh) in the movie. Since Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh were dating at the time, the speculation added fuel to the fire.

All went sort of bust when these claims turned out to be completely untrue. But then there are still many who believe the dream sequence was very much a part of Padmaavat, which would have appeared right before the song Binte Dil in which Ranveer Singh is shown relaxing in a bathtub.

Spectre (2015)

James Bond may have the licence to kill but he didn't have the licence to kiss for as long as he would have wanted to. When Daniel Craig's James Bond kissed Monica Bellucci's Lucia Sciarra in Spectre, the CBFC members apparently counted the number of seconds that kiss lingers. The length of the kissing scene was reduced to half.

Hashtags such as #SanskariJamesBond also trended on Twitter, now X, with memes galore on the microblogging site.

Even Emraan Hashmi, who had infamously earned the tag of an on-screen 'serial kisser' courtesy kissing scenes in his films, spoke against the Censor Board's decision.

"They (board) had cut the length (of the kiss). They have their rules and regulations. There are a lot of people who are against it (the kissing scene). Snipping it has no logic. I also feel it is like going back to the dark ages. We are not taking steps forward," the actor had said at the time.

Baar Baar Dekho (2016)

In this Katrina Kaif and Sidharth Malhotra-starrer, the Censor Board removed a scene featuring a bra because the CBFC found it allegedly offensive and because it could do so.

At the time, people would stutter even while uttering the word 'bra', so showing it on screen would have been revolutionary. Previously, 2014 also saw bras being blurred in films such as Dum Laga Ke Haisha and Queen.

That's not to say that people have become comfortable with talking about bras out loud. But, at least, filmmakers have somewhat come of age. Karan Johar's Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani (2023) had a full sequence dedicated to bra shopping and thankfully the filmmaker didn't blur any of them.

Babygirl (2024)

This erotic drama, starring Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson, was heavily censored for its sexual content and received an 'A' certificate.

According to reports, a 1-minute-34-second intimate scene featuring "jerking off and frontal nudity" was chopped. Several other cuts were made to remove nudity and tone down scenes with sexual context.

What Lies Ahead

It is another day, another movie, but it's still a great time to be reminded that the CBFC stands for the Central Board of Film Certification and nowhere does the full form mention the term censor. The film body is meant to certify the films, not censor, chop and cut films.

F1 is certainly not the first film to be censored and it won't be the last.

Diljit Dosanjh-starrer Punjab 95, directed by Honey Trehan, is still stuck with the censors. The makers of the film, based on the life of the Punjabi human rights activist Jaswinder Singh Khalra, have been asked to make 127 cuts to Punjab 95.