Gay Representation in Bollywood Films

I recently rewatched Kal Ho Naa Ho, a Bollywood movie, with my little sister and while watching the movie, I came across some interesting gay representation. The plot of the movie revolves around Aman and Naina, the two main leads, falling in love and the obstacle in the face of their relationship. Although none of the movie characters are gay, a repeated joke in the film involves the male lead, Aman, and his friend Rohit, being misidentified as a gay couple by Rohit’s maid. Aman plays into the maid’s misconception by kind of flirting with Rohit, while Rohit stays oblivious to his maid’s assumption about his sexuality.

While watching these scenes I was reminded of an episode of Seinfeld that we recently watched in American History Through Pop Culture. In said episode of Seinfeld, Jerry and George are mistaken as a gay couple by a reporter who was interviewing Jerry. Upon realizing this George plays into the assumption a bit while Jerry remains ignorant until much too late into his interview for him to convince the reporter that his not in fact gay. In both Kal Ho Naa Ho and Seinfeld, the joke revolves around straight men being perceived as gay with little to no depictions of actual queer characters. 

Kal Ho Naa Ho and this Seinfeld episode both came out around 20-30 years ago, so the representation is a productive of its time. Neither aims to demonize gay people, but there is no attempt at a serious representation of queer people. Instead of acknowledging the struggles that gay men dealt with at time, both the film and episode choose to instead poke fun at sexuality. The lack of actual queer representation in Bollywood and in American media at the time also points at what was considered okay by the media. Both send the message that is okay for men to act gay as long as they are actually straight, with real gay love being something not deemed acceptable or worthy of screen time. 

It is nice to see how far both Bollywood and American media have come in last few decades as we now see an increase in queer representation, but these problematic past depictions are also worth acknowledging and analyzing. Kal Ho Naa Ho and Seinfeld are considered classics in their respective genres and are still often watched by people today, so it is important to highlight that the flaws with these depictions of queer people, so that people who consume the media do not mistake what is being shown as okay just because it could be worse.

Comments

  1. Isabel DennisonDecember 3, 2021 at 10:50 AM

    I really like the angle you took on this post. It's weird to think about, because sometimes these kinds of jokes can land without being offensive or ignorant. However, it's all about intent. Is the joke that they are being mistaken for something they're not, or does it go deeper than that? Is the joke that it's ridiculous for them to be misperceived as being gay, and that being gay in and of itself is a ridiculous concept? It's hard to properly quantify. Furthermore, shows like Seinfeld can often fall into the pit of making straight-centric gay jokes while simultaneously not making any attempts at actual queer representation, which makes the joke sting a little bit because it's making fun of a demographic that isn't even present.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rithika PatnamDecember 10, 2021 at 7:05 AM

    This is a super interesting post. I think it's cool to see the parallels between media pieces from two different cultures, but the same time period. In this way, we were able to see that this neglect of Queer people seemed pretty universal. And it's definitely good to questions why acting gay at this time was considered funny, especially if they put it in comedy shows. Were they cheap jokes or were they actually entertaining for viewers back then?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is Gender Dead?

At the end of their article, Dembroff asks, “Are we nearing the end of gender as we know it?”, and I feel that the answer is both yes and no. The way people view gender in American society has changed a lot in the past few years, and I see this evidenced in my own views of gender, which have evolved dramatically over my time in high school. In middle school, I had no idea there existed genders outside of male and female, and now here I am identifying as nonbinary.  Before going further, I think it is important to acknowledge that Dembroff’s question has to be analyzed within the context of American society. If we try to apply what they are saying to the broader world, we run into issues, because the way people in America view gender both now and historically cannot be applied globally. Many indigenous cultures pre-colonization had different perceptions of gender that were not inherently oppressive, and for some cultures reclaiming these views of gender may be more impactful than tr...
Read more

Including Men in Conversations Around Feminism

More often than not, when talking about the patriarchy we focus on its harmful effects on women. Since it's a system that’s based on providing men with power and keeping women from having any, it makes sense to see women as the primary victims of the patriarchy.  What’s interesting, though, is that the system that men benefit from is also harming them at the same time.  For men to maintain supremacy in our society they have had to set behavioral standards for themselves leading to the creation of toxic masculinity.  Toxic masculinity dictates that for men to maintain their masculinity and their status as men, they need to behave within certain guidelines. These standards are considered toxic because they are unhealthy and often result in men causing harm to themselves or others.  Masculinity does not have to be toxic though. It can be redefined and attributed with positive behaviors instead of negative ones. So, masculinity is not inherently toxic, but much of w...
Read more