What Was Censored Out Of Joyland?
Based on my conversation with Pakistani filmmaker and journalist Hasan Zaidi, who caught the censored version in a theater yesterday, it seems three important scenes were cut out.
The first time Haider and Biba have sex — where Haider’s desire takes over his sense of family and marital faithfulness — was axed. As was the last time Haider and Biba have sex. This scene, I argue, is essential to the film, for it brings to the surface the discomfort of the dysphoric body during anal sex. In it, Haider wants to bottom, to be fucked by her, but this infuriates Biba, because she thinks that Haider has never, and will never be able to see her as a woman; that he still thinks of her as a woman with a penis. She throws him out of her house in a volcanic, saw-toothed rage, and never speaks to him again. Without this scene, you would not know why Biba and Haider parted ways. It was, in fact, a point of confusion with Zaidi, who wondered why they abruptly stopped meeting.
The third scene that seems to be cut out is Haider’s wife, Mumtaz, masturbating while voyeuristically leering, through binoculars, at her neighbor jerking off to something he is seeing on his phone. She gets caught by her brother-in-law. The spying and the getting caught have been retained in the film, while Mumtaz’s erotic writhing in between has been dispensed with. Even in the first moment that Haider and Biba come close to kissing, a hypnotic scene that teases tension, frames were blurred for a moment. Then, there were the abuses, the gali-galoch, that was beeped out.
The thing about Joyland is that the film is propelled through desire. Sex is not something that breaks the pace of the film, adding mere eros, but it builds the film’s plot and intentions. To cut it off is not just puritanical. You are rendering the film incomplete.
Born and raised in Lahore, Sadiq got his MFA from the Columbia University School of The Arts. Written about six years ago, the first draft of Joyland was tapped into shape in six months. Over 16 drafts later, the script was perfected into what can only be described as a perfect jigsaw, with seeds established to sprout later, or intentions introduced to be complicated. What does a censor know of such narrative intricacy?
