Safe Space: A Study of Queer Spaces in OTT

Abstract

Queer cinema has never been part of the mainstream. But the Pandemic changed the situation. The platform that catered to the masses for viewing films in the comforts of your home also has become queer friendly and creative. Audiences have a chance to experience stories that are truly inventive, authentic, and diverse in their origin and execution. The digital platform is quickly emerging as a medium for narrating stories from the queer community, whether through the main characters or sub plotlines. This paper is trying to critically analyze the widely acclaimed Indian shows like ‘Made in Heaven,’ ‘Four Shots More,’ and ‘Ajeeb Dastaans’ that features queer characters in the lead. The democratisation of content via OTT platforms is truly changing the way stories are being told. This paper is also looking at the politics of representation in OTT and how it is redefining the mainstream.

Keywords: Queer, Mainstream, OTT, Pandemic, Space

“The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something betweenand life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life andtakes from it…”, as Jean Luc Godard puts it, cinema the youngest of arts extends towards life a bit more than other art forms.

Cinema is a site where the ideas of sexuality, gender, and identity are contested. With the ability to transcend physical space and time, it has proven to be a means of entertainment, learning, and escape. Hindi Cinema, also known as Bollywood, continues to be the world’s largest producer of films. Mainstream Bollywood had created and disrupted representations over a period of time. The queer representations found in the early mainstream cinema has always been transphobic and homophobic.

The pandemic caused mass disruption worldwide. The new online space, OTT (Over The Top) platforms is widely growing due to COVID-19 lockdown and due to its experimental, fresh narratives. The rising and thriving of OTT platforms changed the way people consumed media. It holds the power to influence people and also gives public visibility to marginalized communities. It can confirm or subvert the dominant culture. The content aired on these platforms enjoys greater artistic freedom since they are currently not being censored. As a result, queer representation is making its way to the surface. Audiences have a chance to experience stories that are truly inventive, creative, and diverse in their origin and execution.

Queer theory critically examines the way power works to institutionalize and legitimate certain forms and expressions of sexuality and gender while stigmatizing others. Queer theory, is an oppositional orientation to understanding how bodies and psyches are produced. Queer theory suggests that all bodies and psyches are offered intelligibility through their relationship to a particular set of norms, ones that privilege the idealised white, heterosexual, middle-class, young, normatively sized and abled body. Whereas LGBT Studies seeks to analyze LGBT people as stable identities, Queer Theory problematizes and challenges rigid identity categories, norms of sexuality and gender and the oppression and violence that such hegemonic norms justify. It embraces the freedom to move beyond, between, or even away from, yet even to later return to, myriad identity categories. The title of the paper refers to OTT platforms moulding themselves as safe spaces. Safe spaces are the places where people who identify within the LGBTQ communities feel comfortable and secure in being who they are, without the fear of being judged, criticized or ridiculed.

Ruth Vanita (2005), Leila Rupp (2009), and Susan Stryker’s (2008) work is foundational in evaluating the status of sexual minorities. Dean Spade (2011) and Arvind Narrain (2004) take the legal debates about queer identities into question and highlight important landmarks. Nikki Sullivan (2003), Judith Butler (1990), and Jack Halberstam (2011) provide theoretical contexts to the intersections between gender and queer studies. B. Ruby Rich (2013), Gilad Padva (2014) and Barbara Mennel (2014) discuss American filmography at length, but in India research on Indian queer cinema is still a fledgling field. This paper tries to analyze the change that OTT narratives tries to bring-in in depicting gay, lesbian and transgender characters. Diana Raymond in her work ‘Popular Culture and Queer Representation’ state that, “Today, popular culture is rife with gay and lesbian characters offering the potential for new sorts of analysis and that change is significant.” One of the reasons attributed to the sweeping change in representations is the influence of foreign films and webseries. This increasing visibility to gays and lesbians in media have important effects like availability of new homosexual cultural icons, more attention to existing homphobia, growing demands for human rights for LGBTQ people etc.

Queer representation is not just about romance, love, and struggle, it is also about bringing focus to the people living on the sidelines and reaffirming their existence beyond the constrictions of heteronormativity. According to Gonta, Hansen, Fagin & Fong (2017), some of the stereotypes related to homosexuals comprise lacking stable relationships, being humorous, being preoccupied with their sexuality and one-dimensional figures. Media, since its existence, has impacted the lives of people in many ways. And with this type of representation, the media create and represent the undesirable images of homosexuals. According to Sanifel and villa, Gays and lesbians are frequently depicted as sexually dissatisfied, promiscuous, and HIV-positive. According to McRobbie, the representation of homosexually oriented people, lesbians, as a term, adhere to the traditional paradigm of femininity in which a woman is an object of desire. ( as cited in Sanifel, Villa &Ibiti, 2014).

In the wake of the decriminalisation of section 377 from the Indian Penal Code, we are beginning to see directors and producers dip their toes into queer representation. Some shows like ‘Made in Heaven‘ (Amazon Prime), ‘Four More Shots’( Amazon Prime), ‘Feels Like Ishq (Netflix), ‘Ajeeb Daastaans’ (Netflix), and ‘Call My Agent‘ (Netflix), among others, feature queer characters in the lead in an Indian setting.

OTT platforms sure have begun to give more visibility to queer experiences, but most of them still suffer from representational problems. Here I would like to analyze some Indian series that have bought a remarkable freshness in the representation of LGBTQ and also have portrayed their stories as other heterosexual stories are treated. I have tried to quantitatively study certain web series and short films from different OTT platforms in order to understand how their narratives have created a difference. Most of the new age representations have contributed towards the visibility and growing acceptance of the queer people. This paper is divided into different sections and in each section, a web series or short film is critically evaluated.

Made in Heaven

“Made in Heaven”(Season 1, 2019) is about two wedding planners in New Delhi’s elite and all their wedding spectacles. The series made by Zoya Akthar and Reema Kagti, who had created films like Honeymoon Travels, Zindagi Na Milengi Dobara, Bombay Talkies, Gully Boy, Lust Stories, etc. It is delivered in a blend of English and subtitled Hindi, and dares to look inside modern India’s many closets. The featured wedding in each episode is seen through the eyes of two central characters, wedding planner Karan Mehra (Arjun Mathur) and his business partner, Tara Khanna (Sobhita Dhulipala). Karan, a closeted gay man in a homophobic society is depicted as person drowning in debts and personal conflicts. Tara is a middle-class woman unhappily married to a wealthy entrepreneur. While Karan heads discussions with their clients in a largely patriarchal culture, Tara is often looking out at her wedding designs quietly, hidden behind her designer sunglasses. In an elegant chain of flashbacks, the backstories of Karan and Tara are revealed, and it becomes clear that the show is more interested in using weddings to explore these characters. Refreshingly, the gay character in the series is portrayed as a man who struggles with his sexuality as well as other affairs of life. His sexuality is treated limitedly as an underlying theme.

As Shukla in his 2019 studies states, a closeted gay man drowning in debt and personal conflicts, his identity is beyond the stereotypical gay men Indian filmmakers have often thrown at us. Despite being aware of the taboo he has to live with every single day, he doesn’t perceive his sexuality as a burden.

The story is interestingly set against the background of the campaign to decriminalize homosexuality in India, and the writers search for the self-hatred and homophobia that drives Karan’s seething rage and loneliness. Karan gets arrested under section 377 after his landlord secretly films him having sex with another man and sends the video to Police. It was a pressing point that the voyeurism of the landlord goes unnoticed, but Karan’s private acts in the sanctity of his home are punished. The female and queer gazes are at the heart of what makes the show so daring and revelatory. It is a provocative exploration of gender, marriage and love in a society still wrestling with how to blend patriarchal traditions with modern urban life. By centering its story on two friends who are not romantically involved but proudly queer and unapologetically feminist, the show is quite different from the stereotypes of Bollywood. These shifts in narratives clearly allowed non heterosexual characters in major and supporting roles. (Raymond, 101)

Bollywood had mostly created crude queer representations, or hyper sexualised homosexual characters who are mocked and subdued in order to serve humour. ‘Made in Heaven’ takes a different turn altogether and explores the situations of homosexuals in India. Karan’s arrest under Section 377, sexual abuse by the Policeman, and baggage of guilt from the past evolves his storyline. The makers of the webseries have created milestones and more hope for such refreshing queer representations.

Four More Shots, Please!

'Four More Shots Please!'(Season 2, 2020) is an Amazon Prime series about four younger women and their tales of love, career and life. We find the four women trying to fit into the shoes of 'Sex and the City's middle-aged Single women and the modern manners of from modern-day metropolitan centres (Adrianens & Van Bauwel, 2011) will create ripples in Indian private Spheres. But the question is if these ripples would lead to feministic thought processes or will miss the opportunities given the market pressures like other postfeminist oriented content. (Jaggi & Manohar, 2019; Anwer & Arora, 2021). Jaggi & Manohar (2019) examine the ‘counter-hegemonic gender representations’ byidentifying ‘postfeminist ideological stance’ in web series streaming on online platforms. Although these web series try to withstand the hegemonic gender representation by portraying certain aspects of post-feminism but falls

back upon patriarchal designs too (Jaggi & Manohar, 2019).

Four More Shots Please! revolve around the life, fears, accomplishments, anxieties, and relationships of four women. The character Umang, played by Bani, a bisexual physical trainer has come to Mumbai in search of livelihood from Haryana, a non-metro state of India. The politics of representation is also intrinsically crafted within the text by portraying the muscular physical trainer from the hinterlands as bisexual instead of other feminine characters such as Damini, Siddhi, or Anjana. These depictions of the dichotomy of feminineness of Damini, Siddhi, and Anjana and the masculinity of Umang questions newly created images of women depicted in popular media as being financially independent, and powerful, are these same images invalidated because of the patriarchal system.

Despite its popularity as a show that embraces bisexuality, it completely ignores gay stereotypes portrayed through several dialogues of the show. A man who knows about fashion could only be gay (Sharma, 2019). A show that tries to smash different stereotypicalimages of women and tries to discover diverse characters of women confirms to yet another stereotype. The show tries to speak about LGBTQ rights and stresses breaking societal norms. These new queer images and tropes marks this era distinct from previous times. Popular culture like OTT platforms throws new proliferating images of queerness who suggest the possibility of new normative understandings of sexual difference.

Ajeeb Dastaans

In the Netflix anthology AjeebDastaans (2020), the short story Geeli Pucchi explores the lesbian relationship with an intersection of class, caste and gender. Bharti belongs to the Dalit community whereas Priya is a married woman from an upper caste, Brahmin family. Through Priya’s constant reminiscence about her childhood friend, Kavita, and a video on Bharti’s phone, their hidden sexualities come across.

Their relationship blooms but takes a rough turn when Priya comes to know about Bharti’s caste. Priya terminates their relationship because of the caste differences. A loving husband and motherhood don’t satisfy Priya because of her repressed sexuality. She is confused and feels that, because of the heteronormativity, the problem lies within her which needs to be treated. Bharti believes that being a lesbian is natural and not a disease. However, she tells Priya that motherhood is the solution to her distress. It is a solution to all instances of deviations from ‘normal’.

Bharti’s representation as a dalit queer woman a hard one. With every added marginalised identity, the representation becomes harder to find. It is also a story about multiple identities. According to Larry Gross (1995), gays and lesbians tend to be even more isolated and invisible than members of racial and ethnic minorities and are therefore probably the least permitted to speak for themselves in the mass media. This ‘double marginalisation’ of Bharti Mondal is showcased in minor instances like being served in a steel cup because she was an ‘untouchable’, not being able to enter the office reserved for upper castes, being rejected for a job she is qualified for etc.

Without any mention of the terms ‘lesbian’ or ‘homosexual’ throughout the film, the complexity in accepting and embracing one’s sexuality is visible. Through Priya’s character, we understand that conforming to the heteronormative idea might bring respect and status in society, but it doesn’t bring happiness and satisfaction that every individual seeks within. Neeraj Ghaywan’s ‘Geeli Puchhi‘ stands out as a nuanced depiction of caste, patriarchy, and queerness with an honest narrative and a realistic portrayal of the complexities of our society.

Thangam from Paava Kadhaigal

Set in the 1982 Kovai district, Paava Kadhaigal is a heart wrenching story of Sathaar, a transgender personwho is subjected to ostracization, ridicule and harassment. Sathar’s father continues to nag and ill treat him for bringing shame to the family. Sathaar is in love with childhood friend Saravanan and is saving for their sex reassignment surgery, after which he dreamt of living as a normal couple. But after knowing that Saravanan loves their sister Saahira, he helps them to elope with the money they had saved over the years. Saathar is later ostracized in the village with nobody to help them and left in the streets to beg. When hooligans attack them, villagers are fearful of their identity and refrain from touching them. Nobody, including their mother lets them in their house.

Because the transgender identity doesn’t fit into gender binary, they were criminalized during British rule. Even after independence, the stigma remains prevalent. As shown in this short movie, the stigma eventually kills Sathaar. Not only transgender people, but queer identities face oppression from societal institutions such as family, law, religion, etc. As Mohr points out “Without demonization, it is impossible to conceptualize homosexuality as a corruptive contagion, a disease that spreads itself to the pure and innocent by mere proximity” (333).

The Married Women

The Married Woman (2002) is an Indian web series featuring Ridhi Dogra and Monica Dodra. It narrates the story of Astha, an educated, upper-middle-class, working, Delhi woman. Astha longs for a purpose in her life, other than being a wife and mother against a vividly realized backdrop of Indian politics. Kapur portrays Astha as an individual who engages in constant negotiations of her religious identity and personal desires between the private and public spheres. The Married Woman depicts the journey of Aastha’s emancipation through queer love. The series explores Astha’s and Peeplika’s relationship in the backdrop of the Babri masjid riots of the ’90s. Although Astha doesn’t take the complete flight of freedom, there are many small empowering moments. For instance, in the initial few episodes, her hair is tied up in a tight bun, but as the season progresses she starts wearing her hair down, reflecting her journey from restriction to liberation. Rather than searching for the meaning in sexual orientation, queer theory encourages us to consider how sexual orientation is made to signify a range of meanings about the self.

The gender representation on OTT platforms is steadily becoming more inclusive. However, inclusive and comprehensive representation can act as a spur to bring progressive changes in the mindset of people and the way they perceive different gender roles. In terms of gender inclusivity, OTT media platforms are experimenting and attempting to smash misconceptions associated with the LGBTQ community by providing equal and just representation.If Doty (1993) is right then queerness should “challenge and confuse our understanding and uses of sexual and gender categories” (p. 17). Marginalized identities are not just oppressed by power; they are also, as Foucault points out, constructed by those very same power relations. Thus, there is no doubt that these new representations of queer characters and of heterosexuality will give birth to new meanings and new signifiers attached to queer sexuality.