Last week, The Shameless, which centres on a forbidden love between two female sex workers in North India, competed in the Un Certain Regard category at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. The film by Bulgarian director Konstantin Bojanov, which touches on topics such as women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights, also won its main lead, Anasuya Sengupta, the Best Actress award.
The film spoke to her, says Sengupta, because “for women, sex workers, queer people, and other marginalised communities, every day is a series of obstacles; just living is being a hero. And they remain unsung for it”. So, to get a chance “for a sex worker and queer woman to be a protagonist in a film, and the opportunity to add layers to the character was exciting”, adds the actor, who dedicated the award to the LGBTQ+ community.
Anasuya Sengupta (left) and Omara Shetty at a photocall for The Shameless at the Cannes Film Festival
| Photo Credit:
AFP
Coincidentally, earlier in May, Sanjay Leela Bhasali’s Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar dropped on Netflix, creating debate. The ambitious series on an elite house of courtesans in British-ruled India attracted a lot of criticism for its misrepresentation of the tawaif culture and its characterisation (or lack thereof) of Ustaad ji, the pimp played by Indresh Malik. His identity — intersex, transgender or cisgender gay man — is never clarified, his queerness is used as a tool to portray his villainy, and his tragic story arc pushes existing stereotypes.
Gender fluid Ustaad ji in Heeramandi
This dichotomy of representation is the reality of LGBTQ+ stories in India today. Queer characters are increasingly stepping out from the shadowy sidelines into more central roles in films, television and OTT — think recent titles such as BadhaaiDo, MadeIn Heaven, Kaathal – The Core, and Khufiya. But as Kolkata-based writer and broadcaster Sandip Roy puts it, “Now, the problem is the reverse [as compared to the 80s, 90s and aughts]. It’s not scarcity, but the fact that the room for normalised queer characters is small. Either one is overcompensating by making the queer person the most wonderful character, or harkening back to stereotypes. The thought process seems to be: ‘If I am going to put in a queer character, I better get a good return on investment.’”
A still from Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan
Mammootty in Kaathal – The Core
Nitya Vasudevan, one of the co-directors of the Bangalore Queer Film Festival, agrees. “There has definitely been more queer representation, but what form they take still has room to be fully explored,” she states. “Queer characters in Indian films and shows still seem to address the institutions of family, marriage and law. Like in [Mammootty-starrer] Kaathal – The Core, where the protagonist’s sexuality plays out in court within the triangle of these societal structures. The gay relationship isn’t central to the storytelling.”
Nitya Vasudevan
Making space for queer narratives
The pandemic was a turning point for queer conversations in the mainstream. During the lockdowns, more people used social media to talk about their situations: be it loneliness, moving in with their partner, or being caught up in unhealthy situations, such as living with parents who are not queer inclusive. “As more queer conversations took the forefront, more people and creators [especially in OTT] saw these stories,” explains Sakshi Juneja, the co-founder of Gaysi, a platform for queer expression and dialogue.
Sakshi Juneja
For Juneja, no matter how much is put in the ‘queer’ box, it is less. “I’ll take whatever I’m getting on the big and small screens. Obviously, some work, some don’t; it’s a learning curve. But till you put it out there, you can’t be corrected. So, it gives us a good way to mainstream conversations around a flawed character, such as in Heeramandi, and push narratives that are not on a superficial level.” This Pride Month, Gaysi and filmmaker Jaydeep Sarkar are curating a two-day event at Soho House in Mumbai, bringing together queer filmmakers, scriptwriters, and non-queer people who have dabbled in queer content, to discuss possible next steps: how to move beyond coming-out stories, how to look at queer intimacies, and how to bring out meaningful stories that also keep the commercial element in mind.
Myna Mukherjee, cultural producer and curator of the I View World film festival, underscores these sentiments. “Recently, there has been a range of queer characters added to the mix in surprising ways, but I find myself searching for density, layers and complexity in their character development, that I’ve seen in the films of the late Rituparno Ghosh,” she says. Mukherjee recently brought Deepa Mehta’s documentary I Am Sirat, which portrays the trans experience from multiple angles, to India. “Stepping outside of sensational storylines, telling stories that view sexuality outside of the male gaze, and bringing more queer people into writing rooms will produce less stories about fitting in and more about authentic, lived experiences.” One of the overriding criticisms against the much-lauded Kaathal, she points out, was that the Malayalam film had been stripped of any physical intimacy between the gay men, played by veteran actor Mammootty and Sudhi Kozhikode.
Myna Mukherjee (right) with Sirat Taneja and Deepa Mehta (centre)
Diversity and representation
This “sanitisation”, as Mukherjee frames it, and likely to continue for sometime, might have to do with the multiple platforms these films and shows traverse, from the big screen to the handheld. “India has moved forward, but in a small way,” says film writer and director of the New York Indian Film Festival, Aseem Chhabra. “We are not there yet [at the level of world cinema or Hollywood], where we can do a Brokeback Mountain or a Call Me by Your Name. We can’t compare ourselves to other countries because the feudal elements in our society are still strong.”
Constant exposure and dialogue, however, could turn the tide. For directors, the opportunities to tell stories of queer lives have opened up through OTT services, especially post pandemic, and the striking down of Section 377. “Mainstream films and series with queer persons as central characters show that there is a great hunger and need for these kinds of stories,” says Sarkar, the director of docu-series Rainbow Rishta on Amazon Prime Video, which highlights six real-life love stories. “Producers and OTT platforms have realised that stories need to be richer, contemporary. They are giving more space to diversity and representation.”
Filmmaker Jaydeep Sarkar
The missing element
According to Juneja, the involvement of queer people in the making of shows is still largely missing. “While a lot of attention is given to the people on screen, a lot more focus should be given behind the scenes, too,” she says. “Making up a queer included production is key because they will bring their sensibilities. And if you are looking at true allyship and contributing to the art and culture space, it is also about bringing in skill building. Production houses can partner with support groups, NGOs and other queer content creators to do workshops. This is happening, but it could be done a lot more.”
Gay couple Suresh Ramdas and Soham Sengupta in Rainbow Rishta
Gender rights activist Daniella Mendonca in Rainbow Rishta
Among the people in the community we spoke to, many picked out Karan of Made In Heaven (MIH) — a closeted gay man who doesn’t perceive his sexuality as a burden, played by Arjun Mathur — as a normalised queer character. Trinetra Gummaraju, in MIH season 2, brought her trans identity onto the small screen with no stereotypical baggage. “I was told that the makers were mindful of having a trans actor as part of the filmmaking process, and approached it with sensitivity and from a place of inclusivity in front of the camera and behind it,” says Juneja, who does sensitivity checks for scripts at Gaysi. Human, on Disney+ Hotstar, starring Shefali Shah and Kirti Kulhari, is another show Juneja believes has done a good job. “The two main leads are queer women, and I thought it was nice because it brought very grey shades of the characters to the forefront. Their queerness just happened to be a part of who they are.”
Arjun Mathur in Made In Heaven
Shefali Shah and Kirti Kulhari in a still from Human
But while the ground is fertile for queer storytelling, Sarkar warns there are many hurdles to overcome, the first being merely showing “the victim and the villain dynamic” — where tragic subjects or stories of victimhood float to the surface. The other is finding ‘crossover’ audiences for queer stories. “It’s slowly growing, but it’s going to take some time to break the mould of the boy-meets-girl trope. And I don’t know if we are ready yet for a gay romance film to be the next DDLJ,” Sarkar says.
In order to build an audience, “queer people must show up for these things as a critically-engaged audience that gives feedback”. And once there is a “breakthrough box office hit”, then the power equations will definitely change. “Queer creatives will no longer have to wait for someone’s benevolence to give us money to make these shows. Being in the position of receiving charity isn’t the best place to tell one’s stories from,” he adds.
Importance of film festivals
For queer stories, the film festival space continues to be an important medium between the market and the mainstream. “Through our film selection, we try to move out of representation alone and also screen films that allow for queer people to swim in and out of moments and experiences,” says Vasudevan of the Bangalore Queer Film Festival. “Last year, we screened La Reproduction by Jean-Marie Villeneuve, which follows a man jealously looking at another man across the street through his camera and binoculars, photographing different parts of his body. For us, it was queer because the film was about a man’s gaze on another man.” Such films allow the LGBTQ+ community to see themselves in the world through other means “escaping the solidification of queer identities created with representation alone”.
Film festivals are also bellwethers to the potential shift in the kinds of stories being told, and give hope for more inclusive ones. Sengupta, who created history by becoming the first Indian to win an acting award at Cannes, says it isn’t just the “recent complexity” of queer characters in Indian films and television shows that is exciting, but also that change in the industry. “The change is palpable but not nearly enough,” she says, speaking from her experiences of working as a production designer for the past 15 years. “But I love the growing momentum of it. It isn’t just representation on screen but also behind the scenes, there are more women, queer people and others on the margins on sets, but there could always be more.”
The author is Bengaluru-based poet and writer.
With inputs from Surya Praphulla Kumar
