India got its Sex Education in the form of the Netflix series Super Subbu, but it has little to do with educating people about sex. The premise is similar to Panchayat or Gram Chikitsalay, except Super Subbu keeps mentioning sex every now and then. Here, Subramaniam, played by Sandeep Kishan, is forced by circumstances to take up a government job as a sex education officer in a village where people don’t even believe in consent. The series explores Subbu’s life in the village and the stereotypes surrounding not sex, but safe sex and family planning. The problem is that it mistakes mentioning these issues for actually engaging with them.
The first episode begins with Subbu’s backstory. The day he hits puberty, his father, played by Murali Sharma, starts imposing restrictions on him to prevent him from committing the “sin”. He is banned from talking to girls, making girlfriends, sleeping alone in his room, and when he is caught doing what he’s not supposed to, his father even takes him to a baba, who ties a bell around his wrist so that it rings whenever he performs the act.
While Subbu only wants to understand himself, explore love, and live a normal life, his father is always there to hold him back. Eventually, a series of events forces him to become a sex education officer. If he refuses the posting, he loses his teaching job, and without that job, he cannot marry his fiancée.
Dealing with stereotypes
The whole series teaches nothing but to shout “sex education” aloud. During Subbu’s training, the instructor simply asks the trainees to shout “sex education” as loudly as they can, and the training is over. That, ironically, feels like the reality of sex education in India. The series is not really about educating people about sex. Instead, it deals with stereotypes by creating even more of them, without taking a clear stance. As a result, expectations gradually fall to zero.
The villagers represent a larger section of Indian society. The series touches on early pregnancies, consent, men with fragile egos who see contraceptives as a threat to masculinity, and family planning. But after merely mentioning these issues, the show abandons them. The villagers reject Subbu, force their wives to have sex without consent, and turn against him when he teaches women that “no means no.” Yet, as the story progresses, those same men are portrayed as normal, marital rape is treated as an innocent mistake, and by the time Subbu celebrates his birthday, everything is back to normal as if nothing had happened. In the entire series, Subbu talks about menstrual hygiene only once, something no different from government advertisements. A lot more was needed to make this a series about sex education.
Every time Indian entertainment tries to deal with sex and education through the same lens, it fails. The failure lies not just with the makers but also with the audience, because everyone is trapped within the same stereotypes surrounding sex. In Super Subbu, Mahesh Yadav Chintala’s character is constantly mocked and teased over his short stature. The series criticises one stereotype while comfortably relying on another for comedy.
Within the first two or three episodes, it becomes clear that Super Subbu is not really interested in talking about sex education. When Subbu is made fun of by his colleagues for knowing nothing about sex, he turns to pornography to educate himself. The irony is hard to ignore — a government-appointed sex education officer is trying to learn about sex by watching porn. Even that journey is interrupted by his childhood memories, where his father warns him that he will go blind if he masturbates. Instead of challenging these myths, the series simply uses them as comic moments.
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Falling short
This has become a pattern in Indian shows and films. Conversations around sex rarely move toward education or awareness. Instead, they are reduced to double-meaning jokes and comic subplots that are often unfunny and demeaning to women.
The portrayal of the sex worker is another example. She is repeatedly referred to as a “social worker”, stretching the joke so far that it trivialises her reality. Every time she appears, the series treats her profession as a punchline. In one scene, villagers are shown keeping track of how long Subbu spends inside her room, while he is only talking to her. When he comes out, he is proud to see people appreciating him, and the entire behaviour is presented as completely normal.
The disturbing reality that a woman is forced to sell her body to survive is never explored with empathy. Instead, the people around her become spectators, and the series expects the audience to laugh with them.
The biggest problem with Super Subbu is that it mistakes the mention of sex for sex education. Merely saying the words “safe sex”, “contraception”, or “family planning” does not amount to education. The series raises important issues but never stays with them long enough to explore them. It chooses comfort over confrontation, comedy over conversation, and stereotypes over substance.
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(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)