Fawadians CC #2 (Strictly I/O) - Page 12

Anna MM Vetticad Jan 3, 2017 07:15 IST

#Ae Dil Hai Mushkil #Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan #Alia Bhatt #Aligarh #Amitabh Bachchan #Bollywood #Dear Zindagi #Dishoom #Fawad Khan #Kahaani 2 #Kapoor and Songs #Karan Johar #Mary Kom #Pink #Salman Khan #Shah Rukh Khan #Shakun Batra #SRK #Sultan #Varun Dhawan #Vidya Balan

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In many ways, 2016 was almost tragic for the Hindi film industry. This will, after all, go down in history as a year in which a director was brought to his knees by fascist forces demanding a Rs 5 crore donation to the Army as "penance" from him because he cast a Pakistani star in his film; an elected representative of the people holding a Constitutional office brokered that abominable deal; all this after the same filmmaker had issued a conciliatory video message promising never again to work with artists from "the neighbouring country". It later emerged that he had drastically changed the content of his film to remove all references to Pakistan, to avoid further controversy.

Bollywood made several good films that we can be proud of in 2016, but if you are a cinema lover who believes in freedom of expression and choice, nothing can overshadow the heartbreak of watching Karan Johar make that video apology for having cast the wonderfully talented, wonderfully handsome Fawad Khan in his film.

Still, we must at least try to repair those hearts and scan the sky for silver linings, if we are to maintain our sanity. I did and the result is this list of stand-out moments from Bollywood in the year gone by - milestones crossed, corners turned and glass ceilings breached.

In order of significance - social, political and cultural - here they are:

Milestone #1: A legend said, "No means no"

In a country with a shameful track record in the matter of crimes against women, the issue of consent has been widely debated but little understood. Hindi films themselves continue to suggest, through aggressive and predatory heroes, that when a woman says no she means maybe and when she says maybe she means yes, that the way to a woman's heart is through harassment and that stalking is a legitimate form of courtship.

So when Amitabh Bachchan playing a lawyer in Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury's Pink lambasted a creepy misogynist with these simple words, they meant way more than the time it took to say them. Three words: no means no. So obvious, and yet for the socially conditioned, so confusing.

It came in a film where a character played by Angad Bedi, who had tried to rape one of the heroines, had spat out this line in court: "Aisi ladkiyon ke saath aisa hi hota hai" (this is exactly what happens to such girls). Pink was not flawless and its marketing was disconcertingly opportunistic, but that sterling sentence will go down in Bollywood history for its socio-cultural importance. No means no.

So has Hindi cinema been forever reformed? Obviously not. Just a couple of months earlier, Sultan's exceedingly affable director Ali Abbas Zafar had told me in an interview: "There are two ways of stalking. One way is ugly, one way is politically correct. Sultan does not misbehave or send texts. He does not assault. He just follows her. He's not obnoxious or sleazy. You can't say that is stalking. If I want a job in a company and I go repeatedly for interviews, will you question me? No. The day I prove myself you will give me that job. So the idea was, the day I earn respect you will let me in your heart. That is what Sultan pushes, that nothing comes easy, prove yourself." Sigh.

Bachchan has not covered himself in glory in this area. His filmography is filled with roles that romanticised patriarchy and normalised sexism, misogyny and sexual harassment. Remember how Tiger, the man he played in Hum (1991), virtually molested Kimi Katkar's character to the song Jumma chumma de de? When such a star, now a cinematic legend, gets to a place where he plays a character fighting for women's right to say no, you know film writing has evolved, even if the collective mindset within the industry has not.

"No means no." Yes, Bachchan played a man who said that in 2016.

Milestone #2: Homosexuality came out of the closet

Mainstream Hindi cinema so far has used homosexuality as a source of cringe-worthy caricatures or at best, inoffensive humour. No doubt some gay jokes, like the Kantaben track in Kal Ho Na Ho and the entire storyline of Dostana, have served to spark off a continuing conversation in mainstream society, but these were not films with any degree of gravitas in the matter. Sensitive films with LGBT themes - including Onir's splendid My Brother Nikhil and I Am - have all been consigned to niches.

So history was made in 2016 when Karan Johar's Dharma Productions - as mainstream as it can get in Bollywood - produced director Shakun Batra's Kapoor & Sons (Since 1921), a film with all the trappings of a commercial, mass-targeted project (songs, dance, drama, romance and conflict) that featured a mainstream, glamorous male star as a gay man without turning his sexual orientation into the issue' around which the film revolves. It is worth mentioning that Johar was the producer of both Kal Ho Na Ho and Dostana.

Just months before Kapoor & Sons came the real-life-inspired Aligarh, in which Manoj Bajpayee gave us the performance of the year as a reticent academic hounded out of his teaching position in Aligarh Muslim University because he was gay. And shortly afterwards we got Dear Dad, in which Roja boy Arvind Swamy made a Bollywood comeback as a middle-aged father coming out to his school-going son.

It could be argued that Kapoor & Sons' Fawad Khan, popular though he is, is yet to become a major star in Hindi cinema; that Bajpayee, after all, is a character artiste; that Dear Dad was a tiny film and Swamy is barely recognised by the current generation of Hindi film-goers. Well then, there is more. In the John Abraham-Varun Dhawan-starrer Dishoom released in July, box-office darling Akshay Kumar did a cameo as a gay gangster who is funny no doubt but definitely not a joke.

Kumar's surprise appearance in Dishoom should end all arguments. That he was willing to play a gay man is an incredible turn of events. Even if his character had been formulaic, it would have been a risk for a star whose roles tend to be patriarchal and directed at patriarchal male masses. Yet he took the plunge, and as it happens, the character is not a clich.

The year-end brought us Kaira's gay friend in Dear Zindagi, another corner turned since he was not a punching bag for her gang and his sexual orientation was not the theme of the film. We do need LGBT-focused films that dwell at length on the subject of discrimination, but we also need films where some characters just happen to be gay because because.

In a year when the Supreme Court agreed to take another look at Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which is interpreted to criminalise homosexuality, a usually stereotype-driven Bollywood gave the country's embattled LGBT community more good news than the greatest optimist might have predicted.

http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/pink-kapoor-sons-dear-zindagi-10-stand-out-moments-from-bollywood-films-in-2016-3185050.html