What makes a movie gay?

I once got into a heated argument over a simple question: What makes a gay film good? The debate exploded when someone mentioned Dostana as a potential good gay film. “Oh please,” said one person, “It’s the oldest trick in a filmmaker’s manual — get a straight actor playing a straight hero to pretend he’s gay. It’s exploitative comedy.” Another said that the stereotype of the gay couple, one effeminate and the other macho, gives youngsters the wrong idea about gay relationships. “But you can use the scene where the mother accepts her pretend-gay son’s sexuality to get families to talk,” said a third. The most violent argument was: “None of the leads are gay! This is not a gay film! Why do we need to argue about this?”

These are reminders of how much ground mainstream Indian cinema has yet to cover. Will new ‘gay’ themed films or films with gay characters — those which aren’t pretending to be gay for comic effect — change the way movies get made? If we recognise that audiences are mature, why do stereotypes still populate our screens? Should we consider that any representation is good as long as it gets people to talk?

I believe that no matter how many gay-themed films get made — regardless of how filmmakers target gay audiences — they will still be subject to interpretations.

Earlier, when gay audiences found absolutely no representation in cinema, we resorted to reimagining the film by looking for homoerotic subtext. For instance, a close friendship between the hero and his friend would mean something different for us. Sometimes for gay men, an entire romantic scene between the leads will get re-imagined in our minds. With gay characters in mainstream cinema, the search for subtext has probably slowed down, but not ended.

Filmmakers generally shy away from gay leads in mainstream films. The marketing of Philadelphia and Brokeback Mountain as non-gay films goes to show how much producers fear the ‘gay’ label. Films with gay leads are still believed to be a distributor’s nightmare. This homophobia is, unfortunately, still prevalent both in the industry and among audiences. Despite their successes at film festivals around the world, serious films like Tom Ford’s A Single Man and Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right didn’t really see the kind of box office success they deserved.

Filmmakers rake in the big bucks when they show a heterosexual hero don a dress and act effeminate for comic relief. The exploitation of such stereotypes ignores two things: first, that it insults effeminate members of a community that have struggled with years of bullying; and second, that the queer community is in reality far more diverse and deserves the kind of representation that will help increase acknowledgment and acceptance.

Eventually, all representation of gay characters (however offensive) will reach the living rooms of the average middle class household. In a country where any conversation around sex is still hesitant, guiding audiences to talk affirmatively about gay rights is a huge responsibility for filmmakers and one they might have to seriously consider.

— Vinay Chandran is executive director of Swabhava Trust, an NGO that works with LGBT populations