Homosexuality: The new normal in Bollywood

Homosexuality: The new normal in Bollywood

Shubarna Mukerji ShuUpdated: Wednesday, May 29, 2019, 02:52 AM IST
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Remember Sulabha Arya as Kanta Bai with that god-awful background chorus, hamming a faint whenever Saif Ali Khan and Shah Rukh Khan hugged each other in ‘Kal Ho Na Ho’? That was homosexuality for Bollywood cine-goers for the longest time — a laugh riot! Filmmakers like Karan Johar — who has gone on record to say, “Everybody knows what my sexual orientation is. I don’t need to scream it out. If I need to spell it out, I won’t only because I live in a country where I could possibly be jailed for saying this. Which is why I Karan Johar will not say the three words that possibly everybody knows about me!” — were treating homosexuality as a vent for comic relief. But this was 2003; a decade and half later, we have films like ‘Bombay Talkies’, ‘Aligarh’, ‘Kapoor And Sons’ and more recently, ‘Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga’, which herald a change not only in Bollywood but also in society.

It is a chicken-or-egg kind of discussion every time someone asks whether society inspires cinema or if it is the other way around. To begin with, let’s agree that the two feed off each other, so every time there is a Dostana being made, somewhere someone is uneasy with indigestion because everything that they are is being mocked 70mm style. Stereotyping homosexuality in the crudest expression filmmakers have been resorting to, which plainly put is the death of sensitivity and more importantly, sense.

Sex over sense
We cannot really rightly track the first time a filmmaker dealt with homosexual orientation on screen. There have always been men forced to act like ‘pansies’ and snickered around in whispers passed off as homosexuals. But it was the year 1998 that really tipped the scales for Bollywood in terms of same-sex oriented people. There was Deepa Mehta with Fire and Kaizad Gustad’s ‘Bombay Boys’. Unfortunately for both these filmmakers, the films didn’t turn out to spread awareness; they only titillated the audience into the theatre. Most ticket-buyers didn’t care about what was being said, they knew there were scenes where there was intimacy and that was enough.

Homosexuality predilection
Handling the subject is, unfortunately, not every filmmaker’s cuppa. Onir, one of the most sensitive filmmakers of our times, has given us one of the best films dealing with homosexuality – ‘My Brother Nikhil’. Without getting into too much of the sexual aspect, Onir spoke about the aftermath. Sridhar Rangayan has been incessantly, doling one film after another to speak about this subject. And yet, none of these filmmakers make the cut. Their superb, sensitive and sensible cinema has not been seen by the masses.

Commercial coupe
What homosexuality needs in Bollywood is to hitch a ride from a commercial coupe, which is where films like ‘Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga’, play an important part. ‘Margarita With A Straw’, starring Kalki Koechlin did it beautifully; with irony in the form of a song All I need is a man, playing on as Laila (Koechlin) discovers her sexual interest in Khanum (Sayani Gupta) in the film. But how many people accepted that chemistry as opposed to those whose hearts tear apart for say a Rahul Kapoor (Fawad Khan) when his well-kept secret is outed in Kapoor And Sons?

So while Manoj Bajpayee’s portrayal of Prof Ramchandra Siras in Aligarh was thought-provoking, how many will remember his hauntingly disturbed face as opposed to the number of people who saw the commercial periodical ‘Padmaavat’? The plain truth is that the people who really need to accept and embrace it would have had a better sense of acceptance with Ranveer Singh as Khilji getting intimate with his man-Friday in ‘Padmaavat’.

So full-marks to Sonam Kapoor and papa, Anil Kapoor for taking on a subject that needed to have a larger audience, but what’s more beautiful is how they are projecting the film. Without speaking overtly about lesbianism, they are giving it the normalcy it deserves. “I don’t know about bold character but there is one thing that I don’t believe in and that’s ‘labels’. When I decide to do a film or a character, I get encouraged by the fact that nobody else would say yes to it except for me,” maintained the leading lady.

She continued modestly, “I don’t think I am immodest enough to say something like I am pushing the envelope here. I am humble enough to understand that I am certain kind of person and actor. I can’t do what other people do. So, I can only do what I can do. I don’t think I am talented enough to do what other people do. So, I am very happy in my space. I am just trying my very best to do what I can do.”

That’s homosexuality for you from Bollywood, today. Acceptable and normal, with a healthy dose of song and dance!

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