‘Oppenheimer’ sex scene condemned in India: ‘A direct assault’
THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE FILM “OPPENHEIMER.”
A sex scene in the highly anticipated drama “Oppenheimer” is being slammed by Indian officials who claim the scene is “a scathing attack on Hinduism.”
The biographical drama tells the story of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer as he and a group of scientists rush to complete the infamous Manhattan Project, which culminated with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan on August 6, 1945.
In the film, Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy, 47) and Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh, 27) are engaged in sexual intercourse until Jean walks over to a bookshelf and grabs a copy of “Bhagavad Gita” and asks Murphy to read from it.
“Oppy” then reads the line, “I am become Death, destroyer of worlds,” as the duo resumes sexual intercourse.
The line is said to be what the real-life Oppenheimer thought as the first nuclear bomb exploded.
Thousands of Indians flocked to see the movie upon its premiere last week, but many of them began protesting on social media immediately after the scene.
“It has come to our notice that the movie ‘Oppenheimer’ contains a scene which makes a scathing attack on Hinduism,” tweeted Uday Mahurkar, an information commissioner for the Indian Government, to the film’s director, Christopher Nolan.
“As per social media reports, a scene in the movie shows a woman [making] a man read ‘Bhagwad Geeta’ aloud while getting over him and doing sexual intercourse.”
“She is holding Bhagwad Geeta in one hand, and the other hand seems to be adjusting the position of their reproductive organs,” Mahurkar’s tweet continues. “The Bhagwad Geeta is one of the most revered scriptures of Hinduism. Geeta has been the inspiration for countless sanyasis, brahmacharis and legends who live a life of self-control and perform selfless noble deeds.”
Mahurkar added that he does not understand the “motivation and logic behind this unnecessary scene on life of a scientist,” and regards it as “a direct assault on religious beliefs of a billion tolerant Hindus.”
The scene, the commissioner concluded, “amounts to waging a war on the Hindu community and almost appears to be part of a larger conspiracy by anti-Hindu forces.”
The letter sent by Mahurkar accused Hollywood of being more sensitive to depictions of the Quran and Islam and wants that same courtesy extended to Hindus.
According to the tweet, the government official has asked Nolan to “remove this scene from your film across the world,” adding: “Should you choose to ignore this appeal it would be deemed as a deliberate assault on Indian civilization.”
The Post reached out to Nolan for comment.
“Bhagavad Gita,” which translates to “Song of God,” contains 700 verses and is part of a larger Epic called “Mahabharata,” featured in a conversation between the book’s protagonist, Prince Arjuna, and a divine entity known in the Hindu religion as Krishna.
This is also not the first time the “Bhagavad Gita” has been used in an inappropriate way.
In 1999, the lines “for the protection of the virtuous, for the destruction of evil and for the firm establishment of Dharma, I take birth and am incarnated on Earth, from age to age,” were used in the Stanley Kubrick film “Eyes Wide Shut” during an orgy scene.
After several protests from Hindu groups, film distributor Warner Brothers has since edited the lines out.
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