SVF

Now streaming is steaming

Earlier this year, when actress Flora Saini was getting an ice cream in Mumbai, the cashier said she’d seen her somewhere. Saini asked her if she was referring to her role as a ghost in last year’s critically acclaimed film Stree.

No, she’d recognised her from the web series Gandii Baat 2, where Saini plays a domestic worker who has an affair with her male employer and when he betrays her, she transfers her affection to his wife. The two women then rule the household.

“I didn’t think a woman would be watching it,” says Saini, who is part of a growing tribe of actors unafraid to dare-bare on screen. “That tells you a lot about how society is changing.”

In a country where Bollywood showed two flowers touching as a metaphor for a kiss and sanskaari censor boards snipped smooches even from a James Bond film, homegrown streaming platforms such as MX Player, AltBalaji, Vikram Bhatt’s VB On the Web, Ullu and hoichoi are churning out potboilers on couple-swapping, threesomes, friends with benefits, same-sex relationships and bondage.

Apart from the freedom of censorship online, Paromita Vohra, a filmmaker who runs a digital sex education project called Agents of Ishq, says it also has to do with the privacy of the internet. “Things you could not watch with the entire family are more comfortably watched alone on your phone, tablet or laptop.”

While there’s no denying that some shows are using sex to get eyeballs, it does go beyond that. Flora Saini, who has also starred in erotic web series such as XXX: Uncensored and Wanna Have a Good Time, says that the growing number of women directors, producers and writers is putting female desires centrestage.

On a personal front, she says the roles helped her get over body consciousness. “I was a fat child and when I went to audition and saw the other gorgeous aspirants, I thought I had no chance,” she says. “My selection and the audience’s response helped me become more comfortable with my body.” Professionally, the Gandii Baat role boosted her career like nothing had.

It’s not just the female actors who are pushing the envelope. For instance, Made in Heaven normalises homosexual desire in a way that few shows have done before. Paras Tomar, who has acted in web series such as Four More Shots Please and 377 Ab Normal, says: “Initially it was shock value — pushing sex scenes and gaalis (cuss words) when it wasn’t needed just because they could do it. Now it’s become more toned down, more real and organic,” he says.

When Naina Ganguly got a chance to make her screen debut in Bengali streaming platform hoichoi’s Charitraheen, a modern-day adaption of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyaya’s novel, she didn’t hesitate even though it involved intimate scenes. “I decided I had to be confident and natural whether it was a kiss or a bedroom scene,” she says. Vishnu Mohta, co-founder of hoichoi, says that the erotic drama has been one of its most successful web series.

The Tamil web series F*ck Buddies on MX Player was inspired by the real-life story of Jayesh Calpakkam and Jikki Nair, a live-in couple who are the show’s writers, directors and stars. “Our show focuses on the current norms of romance for millennials, to simply portray life as it is,” says Nair.

However, not everyone is fine with this sexual liberation. In 2018, actor Rajshri Deshpande was trolled for a few scenes involving frontal nudity and sexual intimacy with co-star Nawazuddin Siddiqui in the Netflix series Sacred Games. “I know I’m not degrading women. I know my job, my craft,” she says. “A naked woman on screen is more beautiful than people ogling at a woman in a salwar kameez.”

Kyra Dutt, who acted in Alt Balaji’s XXX: Uncensored, says that audiences need to be ready for female characters who are in control of their sexuality. “We have item songs, raunchy moves and dirty dialogues in films. It is even acceptable for male actors to be eve teasing, but when you talk about sex openly, or have a female protagonist who is confident about her sexuality, it is a problem,” says Dutt, one of the first actresses in Bollywood to sign a nudity clause before appearing in three nude scenes in XXX in 2015. “As an actor, we should know what we’re getting into,” she says.

Post MeToo, Hollywood has started hiring intimacy coordinators for sex scenes. However, in India, female actors are still vulnerable to exploitation by producers who use sex as titillation. Two years ago, Kajal Shankhawar agreed to do a web series about a boss who falls in love with her younger male intern, after struggling for a few years. Her first scene involved a kiss. “You need a day or at least a few hours to understand the co-actor,” she says. She was also in for a rude shock when the show was released. “I was prepared for a kissing scene, but they included semi-nude wide shots rather than close-ups,” she says. “They also added moaning sounds which wasn’t me. I didn’t want to be shown like this.” The clips went viral in her hometown Etawah, where many criticised her for doing the show. “I’m more careful now and even sit at the editing table,” she says.

It is important to agree upon everything mutually in advance, says Rangita Pritish Nandy, who created the Amazon show Four More Shots Please which shows four women, including a bisexual character, exploring their sexuality.

“Scripts and intimate scenes must be descriptive, references shared, conversations encouraged so that every apprehension of a creator/ director/ show-runner and actor is addressed before you get onto a set,” she says.

“Contracts must be transparent. Blindsiding an actor must not be encouraged.”

Saini says it also helps to have a closed set, with only crew members who are required for the scene and monitors turned off or facing a wall to ensure there is no peeping. When she was shooting a kissing scene with another female actor for the first time, it helped that the director had briefed them to finish it in one take. Another set had banners and brochures proclaiming that it was a ‘work safe’ area and offering redressal for workplace complaints.