Research in Gender Studies

‘Just Like Everyone Else’: Queer Representation in Post-Millennial Bollywood

 

By Nikki Sylvia

Portrait of Nikki (Paige) Silva

 

I am a Psychology major and member of the Psi Chi honor society. In Spring 2021, I took a course on “Gender and Sexuality in Bollywood Films,” with Professor Anupama Arora (English & Communication; Women’s and Gender Studies). In this course, we watched popular Hindi-language Indian films from the mid-twentieth century to the present. For my final research paper, I focused on two recent films that focused on same-sex love/desire, a subject rarely dealt with in classical Hindi/Indian cinema. I presented a version of this paper at the annual conference of the National Council of Undergraduate Research (NCUR) which was held virtually in April 2022; and I am grateful to the Office of Undergraduate Research at UMassDartmouth and the CAS Dean’s Office for supporting me. Furthermore, along with Prof. Arora, we have developed this paper into a longer co-authored journal-length article, which is currently under review at a scholarly academic journal.

 

The paper is titled “‘Just Like Everyone Else’: Queer Representation in Post-Millennial New Bollywood.” In a film industry where representations of heterosexual romance reign supreme and where explicit or sympathetic portrayals of non-normative desire or sexualities, while existent, have been marginal and few and far between, two recent films in particular stood out to me for their unapologetic expression of gay and lesbian struggles: Shelly Chopra Dhar’s Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (How I felt When I Saw That Girl, 2019) and Hitesh Kewalya’s Shubh Mangal Zyaada Saavdhan (Be Extra Wary of Marriage, 2020). These films followed in the wake of a historic legislation in India: on September 6, 2018, after decades of queer activism, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (the centuries-old law against sodomy) was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of India.

 

The essay examines these two films as milestones of sorts in queer representations in post-millennial Bollywood. It shows how the films seek to disrupt the larger discourse around nonconforming gender/sexual subjects in popular Hindi cinema. Both films bring attention to, and contest, discourses around homosexuality in India that pathologize it – as unnatural, abnormal, filthy/dirty, disease/sickness, a crime, or as a Western import. The films make complex maneuvers to normalize same-sex love, and incorporate queer identity in ways that render it non-threatening to the heteronormative status quo. However, through their intertextual interventions (allusions to many other popular Hindi films and the conventions of this cinema), both these Bollywood “malltiplex” (mall + multiplex) films carry the potential of unsettling the dominant cis-heteropatriarchal order and imperatives of Hindu Indian society reflected in popular cinema. Thus, these recent films, even with some of their shortcomings, are refreshing for breaking the barriers of same-sex visibility in mainstream Indian cinema and can be seen as critical steps toward broader acceptance of queer identities and relationships.

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