What's with gay and lesbian ads peddling clichés?

Gayness in India is a peculiar predicament. Re-criminalised sexually, but omnipresent culturally - in practices, rituals, marketing stratagems - gayness, like nudity, is both provocative and censured as well as banally everywhere and at times, even boring (since being boring is the last bastion of acceptance, I expect my LGBTQ brethren will forgive me for saying this). There are gays in almost every family, some individuals are in "gay stages", experimenting with and experiencing sexual fluidity, while some, especially the more politically oriented ones, are resisting the sociolegal oppression and anti-gay bias through law, art, literature and other means.

Of course, it's downright unfair to expect innate radicalism and progressive political views from the sheer fact of being gay. Gayness is certainly no guarantee that you'd be a theory-spewing, academically-inclined hardcore leftist. However, when expressions that are squarely pegging themselves on "being gay", drawing attention to it in no uncertain terms, that too in a country where the highest court has reinstated a decrepit colonial law that brands them criminally delinquents punishable by law, then the sheer boldness of the act asks for greater scrutiny, after the social cheerleading has had its time under the sun.

Expressions like, for instance, the "first gay matrimonial ad" in Mid-Day, or more recently, the "first lesbian Indian commercial, titled The Visit". (Although, now a Fast-track ad is claiming it was the first to show a lesbian couple). While the Indian media can't stop raving about them, and while there have been, justly so, cheers and whistles of exhilaration at their reception, hardly any caveats have been sounded at exactly what were they trying to achieve other than tangoing and hopping about with the social steps that have left the tuneless legal animal far, far behind.

The gay matrimonial ad, placed finally in Mid-Day after several rejections from top-of-the-pack newspapers, including the Times of India, the Hindustan Times and the DNA, had sought a "groom", but with a little twist of its own: "Caste no bar. Iyer preferred". While it is all very good and very courageous to be tongue-in-cheek and actually seek a groom for a man, is it enough to dismiss the "Iyer preferred" clause as just a harmless instance of some insider trading in jokes?

Sure, that's a valid reading. But, still a partial reading.

Since, underneath the brouhaha of the wink-wink-nudge-nudge "Iyer preferred" breeziness, a simmering cauldron of caste obsession and discrimination rages on. If the "activists" (as Harish Iyer likes to describe himself) themselves are closing their eyes to rampant prejudice for the sake of a humorous stunt, and if the said stunt, while advancing the cause of gayness, is pushing back the fights on other fronts, how progressive and laudatory can that be? And, if all the good-natured banter and the exchanged knowing smiles between the mother and her gay son who wanted him to find a partner, "settle" down, even if it were with another man, cannot overcome the (perhaps playful, admittedly cosmetic) need to mention the "caste" preference, even if as a prank to perk up its authenticity, isn't that a dent on the purported progressiveness of the advert as a work of art, speech act, expression, literature?

Exactly where does parody end and stereotyping begin? Admittedly, the lines are blurred.

Consider the situation reversed. A patently anti-caste (matrimonial/civil partnership) ad says "Sexuality no bar. Straight preferred". Now imagine the uproar on national and social media. Imagine the invectives: homophobic, politically regressive, uncouth, repressed, right-wing, and so on and so forth.

So, why didn't we have a similar outrage against the patently casteist advert? Because it was about a "gay" man. It was the "first" of its kind. So, the novelty of it (and it was novel) can excuse any residual discrimination disguised as parody, dig at stifling hierarchy masquerading as tradition.

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Discussing Anouk's "The Visit", Sandip Roy in Firstpost and Vikram Johri  in this website have argued that while there is a Section 377 in India, there is also the matter-of-fact presence of queer prides, queer film festivals, cultural programmes, art exhibitions and of course, novels and poetry, exploring (homo)sexualities. Plus the classic "culture/society moves faster, law simply catches up" argument has been extended by both of them. Both are right, of course. However, both have partially overlooked an important aspect of what claims to be India's "first lesbian ad".

Actually, Johri does not miss it. He emphasises it, magnifies it. He celebrates the "similarity" between any heterosexual and this homosexual couple, as an instance of "normalcy", of inching towards acceptance by projecting the "we-are-just-regular-folks" image. Everything about this ad oozes "regularity". The same "lived-in-ness" (Johri's beautiful phrase, also quoted by Roy, but it can easily be also the lived-in-mess), the same trepidation about kurtas, the in-house jokes about the colour orange (marigold), the indecision over earrings and then with touchy-feely dénouement to that conundrum, the parental trap, the impatience to please them, to appear pleasing, the casual sensuality, the (reversed, inverted, tossed around with) "butch-femme" (or not), dark-fair, division of romantic labour, the curtains, the cushions, the square dining table, the all-so-metro-chic city-idyll of domestic/domesticated performance of ethnicness through sartorial and drapery choices. Typical, we say. Well captured, we applaud.

At the fag end of the three-minute-long video, this regularity seamlessly merges into the talk ("Are you sure of this?"/ "I am sure of us. And I don't want to hide it anymore.") There's the hug, the momentary hurt, the mischievous teasing. All designed to give this situation the required air of normalcy. Different is not just normal, it's also similar: same emotions, same turmoil, same hang-ups even.

It is here that the maximum adulation pours in. But is this "craving for regularity" really everything that captures gayness - its problems, the hurdles it faces, the numb ostracism that's its daily reality? Because regular can be, and often is, oppressive and discriminatory. Casteism is regular. Heteronormativity is regular. Or at least perceived to be so. And if the props and engines of an institution that openly propounds various exclusionary ideas, why should performing gayness fall back on those tired tropes?

Both the ads, featuring the gay matrimonial and the lesbian couple, are replaying the heteronormative marriage plot as path to aesthetic (and dare say sociopolitical?) salvation. For both, parodying and simple tweaking, but not fully challenging, the deep-set structures of heterosexual, caste-conscious, language/religion-bound matrimony, is the way forward. To novelty. To sell conscientiously.

Now it's perfectly fair to ask why should "regular", or perceptions thereof, be shunned? Why should being gay/performing gayness be such an overbearing political project? Why can't it have the same lightness of touch as the non-gay portrayals? And, why should we expect almost an ascetic aversion to consumption and playful displays of everyday bourgeoisie "lived-in-mess" from our LGBTQ friends?

Of course, not.

But when celebrating difference is the keyword, then understanding degrees of difference is a worthwhile examination. Because this craving for normalcy and trying to fit into the heteronormative template is exactly how the sheer panoply of other lived-in/lived-out messes and realities get airbrushed. Realities involve parental disapproval, interference, violence; often. FIRs are regularly lodged against gays and lesbians who come out and want to live-in with their partners. They are subjected to punitive rapes, electroconvulsive therapies, corrective censure. And this from the society that is busy tangoing and foxtrotting by itself before the law learns to match its steps, before it too gets on the dancing floor.

Plus there are other, logistical, issues. Kurtis will sell, as Roy points out, but what about equal opportunity in the job market, freedom of expression and security of expression (such as safety during a queer film fest or exhibition when goons ritually vandalise in the name of Indian culture/religion), questions of children (birthing/adopting), spousal entitlements, etc.?

So while Anouk is trying to sell ethnic wear to contemporary, ostensibly forward-thinking people, will this gay-friendly marketplace, like its older cousin Dalit-savvy capitalism, be now the terminator of hard-felt, legally-defined discriminations?

Bold is beautiful. But what is bold and when and how much?