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| Under Cover |
Masti , a film directed by Indra Kumar,
is supposedly a light-hearted comedy about the nuances of marriage and
adultery in urban India. In reality, the film — a poor adaptation of
The Seven Year Itch — consists of slapstick humour, an inane plot
and some unimaginative acting. But what makes this film different is its
distorted representation and vilification of homosexuality. Films like
Masti and Kal Ho Na Ho — which have the dubious honour of
making gay bashing fashionable in Bollywood — mirror heterosexual India’s
deeply entrenched phobia for same-sex love. For those who feel that
sexuality, like some of the other crucial things in life, is a matter of
individual choice and freedom, Masti and KHNH’s perverted take on
homosexuality is a disturbing development.
The thin plot revolves around the lives of three
college friends, Amar, Meeth and Prem (played by Vivek Oberoi, Aftab
Shivdasani and Ritesh Deshmukh) who are driven to despair by their
obsessive wives. The trio decide to indulge in adultery — clean but
straight fun. In their search for a woman, they get entangled in a plot
that sets in motion a bizarre chain of events involving transvestite
lovers, blackmail and even murder. Finally, they manage to untangle
themselves from this hopeless situation with the help of (who else?) their
pativraata wives. It is also learnt that these women had hatched
the plot in the first place to punish their straying husbands.
So far so good. But what makes Masti
disturbing, even sinister, is the character of a doctor (played by Satish
Shah) who suspects Aftab and Ritesh to be a gay couple. His attempts to
shun and ridicule the two are clearly intended to make up the lighter
moments in the film. In one sequence, the portly Shah is seen hiding under
a chair, hopelessly inadequate for his ample girth, to avoid the friendly
overtures of Ritesh, who happens to be his colleague.
On another occasion, Shah mistakenly believes
that Ritesh and Aftab are engaged in fellatio. In reality, poor Ritesh is
only trying to fix Aftab’s zip. The scenes, as expected, make the audience
laugh; but at all the wrong things and for the wrong reasons. Shah’s
disgust merely reflects the larger physical, moral and cultural
discrimination against homosexuals.
In India, the social identity of homosexual men
and women is defined strictly in terms of their sexual preferences. To
make matters worse, the perverse humour directed at homosexuals in films
like Masti — their lives, mannerisms and desires — only goes to
strengthen the collective prejudices against them. The question is: should
films, which have immense potential to influence the public mind, have the
right to debase and ridicule sexual minorities on questionable moral
grounds?
Lesbianism has not been allowed to slip through
the morality net of commercial cinema either. Fire (1996), a film
by Deepa Mehta, faced the ire of the Hindu right. Activists of the
sangh parivar went on rampage all over the country, protesting
against the depiction of a phenomenon which they felt was alien to the
Indian cultural ethos. Many cinema-owners stopped screening the movie in
fear of the arm-twisting tactics of the saffron brigade. Similarly, Karan
Razdan’s Girlfriend has recently come under fire for daring to
depict lesbianism. Funnily enough, the controversy in the case of
Girlfriend is unnecessary and even puerile. For all its claims of
being a daring and honest cinematic projection of a taboo, the film only
aims at titillating the male audience. The act of two men making love puts
off most straight Indian men. But the same lot wouldn’t mind casting a
furtive glance (or two) at the portrayal of sex between two women.
Cinematic distortion of homosexuality has wider
and deeper ramifications. Moral policing and gender disparity are common
in Indian society. Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code confounds
homosexuality with sodomy and deems it an act against the order of nature.
As a result, homosexuality is a punishable offence under Indian law. This
section also legitimizes the unjust harassment and discrimination of
homosexuals in the hands of our legal custodians, most notably, the
police. More disturbingly, it is now also being identified as a cause of
HIV/AIDS — that is, a threat to sexual health. It is not uncommon to find
“facts” that point to the irreversible connection between homosexuality
and the rising number of AIDS cases in India.
Some non-governmental organizations fighting
AIDS in India have identified homosexuality, and not the practice of
unsafe sex, as one of the most important causes of the epidemic. The agony
aunt columns in national dailies often advise those harbouring an
attraction for members of the same sex to undergo counselling and therapy
sessions to bring them back into the fold of “normal life”.
Such distortions, along with the repressive
social conditions, alienate sexual minorities from the social mainstream.
By putting homosexuality under the moral scanner, these distortions
cleverly prevent homosexuality from entering the ambit of civil rights.
They also prevent the creation of mistrust, prejudices and a frightful
absence of dialogue with, and empathy for, homosexuals.
Consequently, very few people seem to understand
or believe that homosexuals are entitled to enjoying social, political and
cultural rights like heterosexual men and women. Homosexuality is not a
medical or a moral issue. It is an issue of basic rights, played out on a
cultural battleground that captures a wider set of discourses; private
versus public, individual versus society, inclusion versus
exclusion and so on.
Commercial Indian cinema has largely restricted
itself to the debasement of homosexuality. This however, is not the case
in all film industries in the world. For example, in the United States of
America, films have occasionally given a voice to the gay movement.
Philadelphia (1994), a film directed by Jonathan Demme, tells the
story of Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks), a gay man and an AIDS patient, who is
fired by his employers for being so. He hires Joe Miller (Denzel
Washington) as a lawyer, the on-screen representation of America’s
homophobic masses. As the film progresses, Miller confronts and overcomes
his own parochial views and sides with Beckett. Philadelphia, in
sharp contrast to Masti, casts an honest look at the experience of
being a homosexual and the discrimination that surrounds this experience.
Significantly, the goings-on in the real world
are refreshingly different from what we witness on screen. Despite the
overwhelming odds stacked against them, many gay men and women are coming
out of their cloistered existence. Perhaps the best example of this social
visibility is the increase in the share of their public space — buying
tickets at Calcutta’s underground stations, sharing an ice cream at
Victoria Memorial or just laughing at some private joke in a cafeteria.
The political empowerment of hijras, and media interest in
transvestite fashion shows in south India are some other examples of this.
However, the fact that homosexuality is peering
out from tiny slits in an otherwise puritanical social cloak is the result
of wider social and cultural processes — economic and social
globalization, the sparse but enlightened activism of like-minded persons
and organizations. Bollywood’s demonization of homosexuality actually
represents the failure of the desperate attempts to brush the issue under
the carpet.
In an ideal world, perhaps most Indians would
undergo a transition similar to the one which Miller undergoes in
Philadelphia. But in a society where very little is perfect, it is
likely that the doctor in Masti would have the last laugh over
Miller. | 
