Social and Psychological Dimensions of Queer Representations in IndianCinema: anInterpretative Analysis

Abstract

There are many subject matters that are concealed under the veils of invisibility and ignominy by the society and the issues revolving around sexuality and gender rightly qualifies under this category. Such is the overwhelming presence of stigmatization around the topic that any analytical study attempted on it opens up another Pandora`s Box of troubles owing to its spillovers into other quarters of the society. India too is not an exception from this social set up where heterosexuality is viewed as the only form of organizing sexuality invisibilising all the othercategories i.e. homosexuality, transgender, etc. which does not fallin the normative one. Protests against such essentializing tendencies have taken various forms within the sub-continent. In this paper, we focus onone of most influential tools of resistance, i.e. cinema. We proceed in doing this by taking the cases of a few movies and analyzing its impact on the fulfilling the larger objective of bringing about inclusiveness in the society. The conceptual framework of this research is designed to evaluate the subject matter through a qualitative research methodology which is mainly based upon secondary sources. While doing so, we start with an interpretative analysis of queer cinema in India and look at the larger debate of queer theory in understanding its impact; we also try to understand the larger queer movement in India and the role of cinema in it. We use both social and psychological dimensions of representations of queer sexuality in the Indian cinema. Hence, on the basis of an interpretative analysis,we make a case for the presence of queerness in Indian cinema as the first stammering steps towards bringing about inclusiveness in the Indian society from a social and psychological perspective.