Bollywood wants to be queer but without making its audience uncomfortable

Amar Prem Ki Amar Kahani starring Aditya Seal and Sunny Singh is touted as an ‘LGBTQIA+ film’ and a part of India’s ‘queer cinema.’ In reality, it is just the end product of what happens when a room full of straight people write queer stories. 

But it is not just the Hardik Gajjar directorial that serves no purpose. Indian cinema and especially Bollywood has seen multiple ‘queer films’ that attempt to represent the community while ignoring the lived realities of millions. 

Boy meets boy 

It is a classic trope to represent queer people (often only gay men)  as forever forlorn about their sexualities, pining over random people belonging to the same gender, falling in love, fighting against society, and then living happily ever after.

It is what Shubh Mangal Zyaada Savdhaan did, with Ayushmann Khurrana wearing a pride flag and kissing his love on the pretext of ‘finding Elaichis.’ 

The movie hailed as a queer classic is entertaining enough as an introduction to queer issues. 

But we are now in 2024, 6 years after India decriminalised homosexuality, and almost a year after the marriage equality verdict and we deserve better.

Also read: Jigra movie review: Alia Bhatt is the real 'jigra' of Vasan Bala's film 

Profitable queerness

It seems that Bollywood has suddenly discovered that queer stories offer a profitable blend of uniqueness and oddity while also adhering to the classic ‘boy meets girl’ love story, only this time the girl has been replaced with another boy. 

It is important for the industry to remember that we also have films like Aligarh which showcased the actual struggles of the queer community without airbrushing it for all target audiences. 

By boxing queer people into hetero-normative romances, the filmmakers, though with mostly good intentions, are doing what society has done for ages, trying to make a queer person ‘straight.’ 

Intersectionality 

But being queer, like life, comes with its conditions. Being out of the closet is still a privilege that only the very few have in India. It depends on one’s caste, economic capacity, religion, physical ability, family, and so much more. 

The lives of Indian queers surpass them ‘discovering’ their own sexualities, waging battles against society and eventually winning. Many of us don’t win. Thousands of us continue to live stifled lives, every day. 

Cinema needs to acknowledge and reflect these struggles, rather than just making cute love stories. 

The so-called ‘Southern Cinema’ appears to be far more understanding than Bollywood. Movies like Kaathal, starring Mammooty address the issue of a closeted gay married man and even more so the struggle of his wife as she too lives a stifled life.

So much more than just gay 

It is important for Hindi cinema to understand that queer is not equal to gay and there is a gambit of other identities that fall under this five-lettered word. Understanding this will help create stories that feel authentic which do not blur same-sex intimacy like Amar Prem Ki Amar Kahani did multiple times, and show that queer people are full-bodied living, breathing humans, and not just robots that perform on the screen for the pleasure of straight people.