Does cinematic representation really matter to the LGBTQ+ community of India?
Bollywood has been inclusive of all communities of India but the LGBTQ+ community is neither represented accurately nor talked about respectfully. The real question to ask, now that the legality of the situation has changed, would be, does cinematic representation really make a difference to the community?
While the community has gained legal status a year ago, the reality of the situation, unfortunately is changing only gradually.
Film makers are people with the power to communicate through cinema. It is important to use cinema to paint a real picture of all sections of society, including the LGBTQ+ community.
Practices like stereotyping of the community by using homosexuality and cross dressing as a comic relief element, asserting certain mannerisms or colours to the community, not casting actors from the LGBTQ+ community, portraying being queer as a phase or mental illness, etc. are how queer people are portrayed in Bollywood today, which is unrealistic and sends the wrong message.
“It is never about actual lives, it is not actual queer [stories] and most often than not it is not written by a queer person so it’s honestly just a straight view of how queer people live, which is problematic because it’s almost like appropriation. Like, what do you know about my life that you’re going around talking about it, right?” says Pooja Kumar, the digital editor for Gaysi (www.gaysifamily.com)
The term ‘LGBTQ+’ stands for Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer and/or Questioning. But the ‘+’ at the end of the acronym really makes you contemplate how vast of a community this is and how incalculable the terms gender and sexuality really are.
So, when a section of society this large is being ridiculed, stereotyped and made fun of on a renowned platform like Bollywood, is it really appropriate?
Kamalika Mukhopadhyay, in her chapter of Deconstructing the Stereotype, writes that the recent narrative governing fluidity of sexuality and gender is that it is a concept taken from the West and that it is an ‘inevitable consequence’ of globalisation and modernity which is not true since gender and sexual fluidity has been around in India for aeons.
In fact, according to Alahdita Panicker, people were much more accepting of the LGBTQ+ community in the past, before the British rule. “…but when the British came, they put down section 377, society’s mindset completely changed because suddenly people from the LGBTQ+ community were criminalised. So, the society changed because of that. Now that the section 377 has been scrapped, society has still not changed and whatever Bollywood is doing right now is just feeding that mentality,” she adds. Alahdita is a dancer and an active influencer in the LGBTQ+ community.
There are countless Bollywood films that have explicit ‘item’ songs and ambiguous lyrics that are left uncensored while any realistic illustration of sex is continued to be held a taboo, stereotyped and teased, according to an article published on Firstpost.
“I think it is unfair, because at the end of the day you are mocking a set of people of your community and the lives they live,”
says Tulip Dutta, a bisexual poet and writer who identifies as part of the LGBTQ+ community.
Indian cinema has a vast and rich history, where the year 1990 saw a drastic change in commercial Hindi cinema as films reflected the Indian society and Indian mentality through an entirely new lens.
There are endless examples of films in Bollywood from the year 1990, before that and even today, that include characters especially from the transgender and homosexual community but are cast as villains set to ruin the life of the main characters or used as comic relief in the role of the funny sidekick.
In Sangharsh (1999), an Akshay Kumar starrer, Ashutosh Rana, an actor from the film who plays the role of a transgender is shown drenched in blood in one of the scenes. He is made scary to look at, almost like a sexual predator and such a portrayal of the transgender community is not normal, according to Tulip.
“Such a type of portrayal is not okay because that simply isn’t true. You cannot just throw a stereotype like this and make transgenders look so scary that people might not even consider them as a part of the society. So that’s not acceptable, like showing gay people with feminine characteristics almost like a woman, is very wrong and mis-constructed,” she adds.
In an article written for News18, commenting on how Indian films have dealt with the subject of homosexuality over the 100 years that films have been running in India, Rituparna Chatterjee writes that in the year 1990, film makers were more inclined to give screen time to transgenders than in the year 1970.
“I think Bollywood just want to make fun of the community and hence come up with a certain stereotype. They will easily show the hand gesture, and catwalks but shy away to show the fights that we go through,”
says Nabhaneel Tiwary, a freelance journalist from Patna.
With explicit language and a real exploration of sex between heterosexual characters still censored in movies, Bollywood has a long way to go when it comes to showing sensitive content such as same sex relationships in a normalising way and owning it.
Independent film makers and the Bollywood industry itself must handle the subject of LGBTQ+ in cinema gently and thoughtfully without stereotyping or using LGBTQ+ as comic relief because the LGBTQ+ community is as much a part of society as any other and treating a section of society differently by ridiculing it, should not be the aim of any film, according to an article from The News Minute.
“If I’m watching a movie with my family about something LGBTQ+ related and if its shown in the true and real sense like how it is okay to love and respect whoever, my parents would be comfortable watching it, I would be comfortable talking about it but if its only limited to sex then I think that is what is being misinterpreted by Bollywood. Bollywood is trying,” says Tulip.
Cinematic representation from the point of view of film makers with the aim of educating their audience will herald a positive change for mainstream Indian cinema, but the current treatment of LGBTQ+ characters prevalent in Bollywood does not sit well with the community.
For Nabhaneel Tiwary, cinematic portrayal is more than just giving justice to the community. It is about being able to relate with a character and their story when it is shown on a screen, which Bollywood currently lacks, with its muscular and masculine leads, believes Nabhaneel. “It’s weird to justify your love every time, cinema can do that for us, at least. Majorly it has made me angry because mostly Bollywood stereotypes us. No, pink is beautiful but not all of us like pink, I like black and purple. Not everyone cross-dresses, not everyone talks in a certain way. What about transgenders, why are they always villains?” he says.
Queer characters have been in Bollywood for a long time but since they were being made fun of, there was no objection against showing them in films but when they were started to be portrayed as regular people that just happen to be queer, people suddenly started seeing them as different, when the only thing different about them was their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.
So, it is not enough to show characters from the community and call it representation. Doing justice to the portrayal of the LGBTQ+ community through queer characters in films is equally important, so that the audience normalising way that will end up having a positive impact on the audience.
“I have been put in a tough spot where once when I asked my mother what she would do if I was bisexual, and she said, ‘Don’t worry, something like that won’t happen to you’ which was very hurtful because they saw it as a mental illness so I would like to see me represented properly without being made fun of,” says Mehak Badoria. Mehak is a bisexual woman studying dentistry.
Using Bollywood as a medium to educate the audience about the community, having popular actors speak up about this issue and take it seriously, taking ownership of what is being created and put out for the audience to watch, involving actors and writers from the community in projects and making films about what it is really like to identify as queer and lead a queer life would be a much needed step in the right direction, according to Pooja Kumar. She elaborates on this more, in the video.
Having a voice to express your views on subjects like these is essential and the Gaysi Family website does just that by pushing discussions, literature and films about the community.
This is what people like Tulip Dutta, Alahdita Panicker, Mehak Badoria, and Nabhaneel Tiwary, a writer, a dancer, a dentist and a journalist, respectively, who are regular people like you and me, are also doing as much as they can, in their personal capacity by writing blogs, through art and poetry, running social media pages, and creating debates and conversation around this subject.
“I have educated and ‘woke’ friends who know about LGBTQ+ but still don’t talk about it as respectfully and I try to engage in conversations with them especially through movies because many of my friends and I have been ridiculed by people for being part of this community. I’ve understood the way people are, but I have also accepted the way I am, and I refuse to believe humanity is dead. So, I try as much as I can to do my bit,” says Tulip.
“I had a separate Instagram account where I blogged my views and opinions about LGBTQ+ films and try to create conversation around it and engage as many people as I can in this. But I had to stop because I started getting a lot of threats and six months ago I shut it down. But I do feel I’m not doing enough but I had to stop that account because it took a toll on my mental health,”
says Mehak.
Social media, forums and blogs play a significant role in spreading information and creating positive conversation about the LGBTQ+ community. But, there are still people who create an unsafe and unwelcoming space for people from the community but with people like Harish Panchbhai, things just might start looking up.
“If it represented accurately, please laud it. Please make sure that content is getting more money and attention. Tweet and share on social media and make sure people know the movie and that you are doing your bit and appreciating the team because they need to get that push from the audience. taking it in a very intellectual light and keeping it in front of people to consume is something that I do and that is all that I think I can do, honestly,” adds Harish Panchbhai, a Flames University alumnus.
Mr. Panchbhai believes it is important that at the grassroots level, it is imperative that people are educated about the negative content along with the positive content and if films can act as a tool to educate people, it would be a bonus. At his own level, while in university, he was the pioneer behind the QSA, the Queer-Straight Alliance movement.
“At my university I had started the QSA, the Queer-Straight Alliance where weekly meetings happen. We firstly put the notion of the university being a safe space. We have discussions on Indian cinematic content and western cinematic content and different happenings, laws and legalities of things and getting influencers to talk on things,”
adds Mr. Panchbhai
Growing up in Patna, it took a while to feel accepted but once he accepted himself, Nabhaneel says he started becoming more vocal about misrepresentation of the community because it was important that people who were unaware of the community and the problems they faced, were educated and informed.
One such initiative that Nabhaneel works towards, called Behes, is a pan-India debate tournament that discusses and debates on several subjects, one including the LGBTQ+ scenario in India.
“Yes LGBTQ+ has been a point of discussion in Behes. In 2017 and 2018, we had numerous debates in Kanpur, Patna, NCR, Northeast, Jammu that discussed the issue of the LGBTQ+ community. In fact, in Kanpur, after the debate was over the school coordinator took stage saying it’s a mental illness to which her own kids revolted. This gives hope,” he adds, speaking about Behes, a pan-India debate tournament that holds debates and discussions on various topics.
Negativity surrounding the community can be dealt with better if there is appropriate representation of the queer people in the media, be it film or TV. No matter the kind of portrayal, the more people speak about it, the more people are willing to listen, and the more knowledge and awareness is spread.
Finally, one of the ways to make our society kinder and a more accepting one for the LGBTQ+ community might just come by pushing for equality on all platforms be it cinema or television, speaking about queer literature and queer cinema because at the end of the day, we are talking about real lives of real people.
Take a minute to familiarise yourself with the various terms under the LGBTQ+ umbrella.
