Remember the voluptuous Jessica, the woman with the curves to kill for, in the Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Roger Rabbit’s wife might soon have competition from Lady C. Come June and the buxom beauty in a red tube two sizes too small, flaunting a bare mid-riff that would give Mallika Sherawat the blushes and a cleavage that could send Pamela Anderson scampering for yet another ‘enhancement’, will descend on the small screen.
But while every channel has a character or two gyrating to the latest remixes, Sa Re Ga Ma’s Lady C is not your item girl next door. She is India’s first 3-D one. What’s more, Lady Chatterjee (or Lady C) is a seductive woman with a tale, says animator Arun Kumar — divorced by her husband because she spent too much time on the Internet. Adds Kumar, “She is sexy and in nocent at the same time, very much like the characters of Betty and Veronica from Archies.” But isn’t Lady C too much titillation? Pratibha Naithani who has campaigned against vulgarity on TV, says the characters may be just a little too sexually charged for comfort. “Promoting a cartoon character, something that usually attracts children, in this fashion seems objectionable.” Describing the videos as an art form, animator and director of Hanuman, VG Samant says, “These music videos are not lullabies but songs with sexu al overtones, meant for a grown up, fun audience.
The quality of art can make a sexual clip look hilarious or aesthetic or sleazy.” Lady C would be the first animated item girl and the first in a series of lewd music video animations to hit the idiot box. But whether our virtual bombshells will fall foul of the censors is anyone’s guess. Whether spurred by the entry of the Japanese Manga comics in India — a series of cartoons for older juve niles — or the success of the hilarious South Park gang satirising American culture, adult animation is arriving on the Indian scene in a big way.
The quality of art can make a sexual clip look hilarious or aesthetic or sleazy.” Lady C would be the first animated item girl and the first in a series of lewd music video animations to hit the idiot box. But whether our virtual bombshells will fall foul of the censors is anyone’s guess. Whether spurred by the entry of the Japanese Manga comics in India — a series of cartoons for older juve niles — or the success of the hilarious South Park gang satirising American culture, adult animation is arriving on the Indian scene in a big way.