The LGBTQ+ community and Indian cinema have existed separately for aeons but together, they don’t have the best history.
“I think somewhere if heterosexual India could have a Dilwale Dulhaniya Leh Jayenge (DDLJ) then homosexual India deserves a Dilwale Dulhaniya Leh Jayengetype movie where you know it doesn’t really make any sense and its larger than life,” says Pooja Kumar, speaking about queer representation in mainstream Bollywood. Pooja Kumar is a digital editor and content creator for Gaysi, a website for the Indian LGBTQ+ community.
For a very long time, sex and money making have been two of the many driving forces of Indian cinema, sex and gender being considered as one and the same. The ever-existing LGBTQ+ community of India, is but a miniscule part of the legendary, larger than life cinema produced in India even today.
“Indian cinema is one of the most popular forms of entertainment today in India and has been for a long time. It exudes almost a sacred appeal for many in India. For one, many films today are made with the intention of sending a message about our culture, society or religion,” says Sana Syed, an independent film maker from Aurangabad, currently based in Leeds.
Here, Indian cinema consists of mainstream Bollywood films and parallel cinema. While speaking of Bollywood, it’s important to realise that it’s a very popular yet loose term to describe cinema in India.
“I think that’s what Bollywood is, it’s larger than life and it is completely unnecessary, but I think that’s important that we also have it because that’s also why it’s so normal and beautiful,” says Pooja Kumar, a digital editor and content creator for Gaysi (gaysifamily.com).
As Rachel Dwyer aptly puts it in her book, Bollywood’s India, Bollywood is, more than a reflection, an imagination of Indian society as it should be, and one that also creates a path for understanding the working of it.
Throughout the evolution of cinema in India, there was certain narratives that ended up moving out and beyond cinema halls and multiplexes into the everyday, impacting beliefs, understanding and shaping society along the way.
Till around 1980, the scope of Bollywood was limited to films that projected a strong sense of family commitment and values along with cliched romance and comedy. Over the years, Bollywood has expanded its horizons by producing films on politics and controversial cultural and social phenomena like the caste system, divorce, untouchability and minority groups, but only gradually took LGBTQ+ under its wing.
This does not dismiss that there were films before the 1990s that included characters from the LGBTQ+ community but most of the narratives of these queer represented films made since then portray such characters as an instrument of comic relief, ridicule, ‘the entertaining sidekick’, etc. and so positive representation for the community is only gradually growing.
“Although Bollywood has members from the LGBTQ+ community, it has miserably failed to represent the community. In fact, it has misinterpreted love and misguided sizeable or rather majority of our population who blindly follows India’s biggest film industry,” says Nabhaneel Tiwary, a freelance journalist and coordinator for Behes, a non-profit pan India debate tournament.
It is only in the 20th century that more and more film makers have started turning towards creating films with the LGBTQ+ community in them. There is still very less real representation and the films are only a reflection of what the Indian audience really understands by the term LGBTQ+.
Recently there was an Ayushmaan Khurana starrer film, Badhai Ho (2018) (Congratulations) in which there was a character who was gay, and the movie was quite ‘woke’, according to Pooja. The movie explores the theme of pregnancy in old age, a fresh and unexplored theme for a Bollywood film. “They had a random gay person as comic relief for some reason and it was completely unnecessary so most of the comic relief that happens within Bollywood cinema is quite unnecessary,” she adds.
Bollywood films hold a cultural value and but also a global audience, but it has evaded creating films that speak about homosexuality, same sex relationships, and transgenderism, for years. Films such as Bomgay, Tamanna, and Dayra are but a few early attempts at a serious representation of the community in mainstream cinema.
“In mainstream cinema, Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (What I Felt When I Saw A Girl) is a very recent film. I wouldn’t say they hit the nail on the head with everything but there were definitely some scenes that really spoke about how it is to be a queer person,” says Pooja.
“Sure, with a recent movie, ‘Ek Ladki Ko Dekha…’ we had main lead as a lesbian, but the overall film still stereotyped the community,” adds Nabhaneel. Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (2018), attempts to show a lesbian relationship. Despite the critiques, the film is considered by many a start at visualising a normalised society for the LGBTQ+ community.
According to an article published on News 18, it is only the third film in mainstream cinema to attempt queer representation in all of Bollywood after Fawad Khan as Rahul Kapoor in Kapoor and Sons (2016), and Jim Sarbh as Malik Kafur in Padmaavat (2018).
“…I don’t mean that [queer people] need to have tragic endings because there are also always tragic endings for queer people…there is never something that shows their hopes or dreams or their normalcy so, I think that is where we still are but I think independent cinema does a great deal,”
says Pooja.
Independent or parallel cinema is the other sector of Indian cinema that take up the subject of LGBTQ+ and is different from commercial Bollywood films in the aspects of budgets, audiences and content.
“It’s often about the economy, the film’s market, how much money the film will make and about pleasing your audience. This is mainly why independent and mainstream cinema have different representations,” says Harish Panchbhai, a Flames University alumni and founder of the QSA, the Queer Straight Alliance initiative.
Parallel cinema films have smaller budgets for production, their audience is different, and they are less star studded and more story driven and finally, these cinemas usually have less viewings in commercial cinema halls and multiplexes, as written by Rachel Dwyer in her Bollywood’s India.
“I think it is about pleasing the audience. Bollywood is commercial and works on heavy capital. For Bollywood cash is more important than cause, unlike independent cinema where in fact people leave their meals behind the lens for the cause,”
says Nabhaneel.
“It is all about the money,” says Pooja Kumar as she explains how capitalism is another reason why representation in both strands of cinema differ. When there is money and famous production houses, their stigmas, opinions and prejudices tend to affect the making of a film heavily, however the workings of independent cinema are different, according to Pooja.
This video sees her talking about the producers’ choices, the legal process and how representation of a certain community has a lot to do with the audience who watches films.
Another element of cinematic representation of the community that I would like to touch upon is regional cinema which has been doing more with representing the community and taking an effort at normalising it, even though it might not always be accurate.
“…And they have been doing this since a very long time, since the Naz Foundation started working towards getting legal status for the community. If you look at films like Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish, Njan Marykutty and Sancharram, you’ll see that they are tackling insecurities and showing problems that are way ahead of its time. For example, in Chitrangada, the homosexual couple are shown deciding to adopt a child and this came at a time when the section 377 battle was not as prevalent as it is today, so hats off to regional cinema,” says Sana.
Elaborating on what Pooja already mentioned in the video that there are queer film makers who are not able to make good queer films in mainstream Bollywood, there are film makers and producers in regional cinema, according to her, whose films are neither ‘indie’ nor mainstream.
“For example, Rituparno Ghosh, like all the films that they made also is not clearly indie, it’s not clearly mainstream also because it greets the kind of population that mainstream films reach but they were talking about things that mainstream films don’t talk about also, so, I think regional cinema, is the place to be,” she adds.
One cannot ignore Deepa Mehta’s revolutionary film, Fire (1996) while talking about queer representation. One of the very first films to speak about same sex relationships between two women, the release of the film was met with protests, riots and threats all across the country until the courts intervened.
Through its representation, the film was pivotal in creating conversation about the LGBTQ+ community in India. However, it took almost a decade after Fire for films with serious representation to enter mainstream cinema.
According to Faraz Arif Ansari in an article published on the Economic Times, portrayal of same sex relationships or other sexualities in films is done in such a way that it would subtly convey the audience the presence of it, which should not be the case. The community is present everywhere, closeted or not, in all neighbourhoods, classrooms and workplaces and people should at least acknowledge that they exist and breathe the same air as the majoritarian sexuality, according to Nabhaneel.
“Bollywood has masses, it has an audience who believe in it. Bollywood has the power to help society. It can educate, it can convince parents who are not accepting their own blood, it can help our children to not bully a feminine guy, it can shake the government and join the march for our basic equal rights. To name some, right to marriage, right to parent a kid. It can help the country becoming more inclusive,”
adds Nabhaneel.
Access to internet, education and feeling validated through the media content one consumes, plays a big role in shaping minds of society and diversity attempts to normalise all kinds of people, according to Pooja.
“…but all the movies I was seeing were so explosive. Forget homosexuality, but heterosexuality was also so toxic that I thought that’s how a relationship should be. When you don’t have diversity in media, that is being consumed by all kinds of people everywhere, this is what tends to happen. I just grew up not feeling valid…I don’t think any child should grow up feeling away from society or like they don’t belong somewhere,” she adds.
“[Why shouldn’t the community be represented?] I mean LGBTQ+ is an equal part of the society as any other community or any other just anyone else and I think if you’re including common stories or just about people, it is as relevant to show LGBTQ+ stories,” adds Sana Syed.
According to Mr. Panchbhai, it is also not obligatory to portray the community but if film makers can make content that is inclusive of all, then it should be done because it only showcases the film maker’s inclusivity.
“Eventually everyone wants to mint money, right? They’re not making films, TV shows or writing articles for free. They’re not doing it for social service, they’re doing it to earn money. So, if you think you can tap into an entire community by content which is pure and rich, why not? It is only going to be beneficial business-wise,”
adds Mr. Panchbhai.
According to an article published on Economic Times, the representation of the community in mainstream Bollywood has been less because of the fewer number of openly gay and transgender persons finding the space to fill such characters.
“…very recently Vidya Balan had put up a post of pride parade in New York, which represented solidarity and it was all over the Indian news but representing a community in something like film is not a one-man job. It’s a collective effort and now solidarity is being represented in personal lives of actors and directors and somewhere reflecting in their work as well, so hoping for the best,” believes Mr. Panchbhai.
A lot of work within queer representation is being done by Indian TV shows and web series. The audience that consumes this type of content has allowed creators to be more free-flowing and LGBTQ+ inclusive with the content they deliver.
The latest example of this is seen in Made in Heaven, an Amazon Prime original TV show that has a gay wedding planner named Karan Mehra played by Arjun Mathur in one of the lead roles. A lot of buzz is surrounding the normalcy with which Karan Mehra is portrayed as this is one of the first TV shows to be made after the decriminalisation of 377.
“A very good example I think of is Made in Heaven in which they have not focussed on a stereotypical character for a gay character, perhaps how earlier Bollywood has depicted it like they have to have certain body language, or they have to wear a certain type of attire. I think it isn’t defined by that and mature cinema and mature writing is out there. For example, the character of Karan in Made in Heaven where he is just a normal guy and every other guy and that is how the community is in real life also,” says Sana.
Many other alternate media platforms in India such as ALT Balaji, MTV, etc. are creating web-series and online shows that are increasing the queer representation within that sphere. While ALT Balaji’s Romil and Jugal is a show that explores the theme of a homosexual relationship, Netflix India’s original show Lust Stories set in India, generally focuses on exploring one’s sexuality openly.
“I would say it’s evolving. Bollywood doesn’t stick to films because media consumption has changed drastically to include Netflix and amazon and other platforms as such. In Bollywood, representation is coming very heavily, content-wise and it is an evolving process that Bollywood is going through and it’s something to look out for. I think with more exposure towards global content Indians have developed this sort of fear of missing out even they are trying to incorporate that in films,” says Mr. Panchbhai.
It is a long way before actors from the community and those outside of it, get a chance to star in mainstream cinema and continue to normalise it for society, but be it cinema or alternate media, the winds of change affect one and all.
For a country that has very recently scrapped the section 377, cinematic representation would be an important step in normalising the community in the public eye and with the rise of knowledge and awareness in the air there is a hope for a better future for the LGBTQ+ community of India.
